MotoGP 2025 Day 1: world champ Jorge Martin injured

Why so many crashes on the first day of testing when riders should be getting back up to speed, recalibrating their brains to 220mph MotoGP bikes, reawakening their muscle memory, rather than pushing the limit for fast lap times?

Some riders thought it was the morning’s windy conditions, when most riders fell.

“I’d say it was the wind – it was really strong,” said Yamaha’s Alex Rins. “I lost a lot of time waiting for the wind to go down.”

Others thought it was the tyres.

“We don’t have enough soft rears, which is the only tyre that works here,” said Aprilia’s Marco Bezzecchi. “The medium rear is very tricky, very difficult, the grip level is low.”

Others thought it was the usual issue – riders simply trying too hard.

“Now everybody wants to push a lot,” said Honda’s Luca Marini. “If you don’t make a 59 [the Sepang lap record is 1min 58.979sec] in your first exit you are nothing! Everything is on the limit – the riders are better prepared and you try to find the limit from the first day. I think this is the biggest issue.”

Lap times at this stage may not be important, but anyway, Fabio Quartararo ended the day fastest, partly because Yamaha’s inline-four continues to improve and partly because he rode in last week’s shakedown tests at the track, thanks to MotoGP’s concession rules.

There is no Yamaha V4 here. Last year Rins announced that he hoped to ride the V4 for the first time during a private Yamaha test at Jerez in December. Now it seems the bike won’t be ridden by Yamaha’s MotoGP full-timers until much later this year.

“I think they will bring it when it’s better than the current bike,” said Rins today. “But to have a V4 isn’t ‘mandatory’, because Honda has V4…”

In other words, the current inline-four M1 hasn’t yet been given the death sentence.

Looming large in second place, just five hundredths of a second behind Quartararo was Marc Márquez, enjoying his first full test as a factory Ducati rider.

Ducati’s dominance is such because its engineers always focus on the right thing at the right moment. Today they had Márquez and team-mate Pecco Bagnaia concentrate on engine performance, because when engines are homologated on the eve of the first race, riders will have to use the same spec until the end of 2026, when MotoGP switches from 1000cc to 850cc engines.

“The new engine is smoother and a bit faster,” said Márquez.

Bagnaia, 17th today and in no rush, agreed.

Ducati was so focused on engine homologation today that it had both its factory riders use 2024 chassis. The 2025 chassis, which improves braking and corner entry, may appear tomorrow or on Friday, the last day of these tests.

It’s all very ominous for the opposition – Ducati engineers could probably spend the next three weeks drinking beer on Bali and still smoke the rest of the grid in the Thai GP.

The others are trying to catch up, of course. Both Honda’s RC213V and KTM’s RC16 ran today with what appeared to be seat humps equipped with tuned mass dampers. Ducati has used a tuned mass damper since 2017.

Tuned mass dampers are obviously super-complicated pieces of kit – a few years ago HRC engineers spent a couple of years trying to engineer their own TMD before giving up.

How is that even possible? Because the man that made Ducati’s tuned mass damper is Robin Tuluie, a theoretical physicist who studied under Owen Chamberlain, the man that discovered anti-matter. In other words, his mass damper might even baffle a very clever motorcycle engineer.

The Ducati TMD uses weights, springs and much else to damp out vibrations created throughout the machine, because pretty much every part of a motorcycle vibrates and when those vibrations reach a certain frequency they can be transferred to the wheels and tyres, which can vibrate so much that the tyres literally bounce off the racetrack.

The vibration/chatter issues caused by MotoGP’s current rear slick obviously forced Honda to recommence work on a TMD. Honda’s three fastest riders wouldn’t say much about it, other than the fact that its lack of downforce wings caused them problems during braking.

Factory rider Joan Mir was the fastest Honda, an impressive sixth fastest, half a second behind Quartararo, using a non-TMD RC213V. There was some optimism in the Honda camp but its riders have so many new parts to test that they’re afraid they may lose the way.

Brad Binder didn’t say much about KTM’s TMD either. All he would say was that it’s all part of KTM’s work to explore a new bike balance.

Fastest rookie was Fermin Aldeguer, a mightily impressive fourth quickest behind Quartararo, Marc Márquez and Gresini’s Alex Márquez, riding a GP24. It’s very early days for the 19-year-old Spaniard, who was also impressive in the shakedown, completing a sprint race simulation which would’ve put him sixth in last year’s Sepang sprint.