The 2024 MotoGP season is tipping into the final third of the calendar, but there is a school of opinion that the 2025 championship is already decided.
When Ducati opted for Marc Marquez’s services for the next two seasons, ahead of pace-setter Jorge Martin, and paired him with double title holder Francesco Bagnaia it tantalisingly created another dream team: arguably the greatest grand prix rider of all-time against the best grand prix rider currently in MotoGP.
After a decade racing for HRC, four right arm operations and a slew of other injuries, Marquez has needed only half a season on Ducati machinery to clinch victory. He aced the Aragon and San Marino Grands Prix back-to-back on Bagnaia’s 2023 championship-winning bike and has edged into contention for a ninth crown, even if he insists this is not his target for 2024. This season was always meant to be a strategic transition to reach the confines of the best team, with the best bike and alongside the (other) best rider.
MotoGP fans can witheringly accuse Ducati of making recent seasons a ‘Ducati cup’. In 2024 alone, 34 of all 39 podium positions so far have been filled by GP24s or GP23s. A Ducati has been on a MotoGP rostrum for 59 consecutive meetings and the brand has had a rider on the front row of the grid at every race since the last round of 2020.
Those same fans begrudgingly must admit that the Italians have forged a possible inter-team sporting struggle for the ages for 2025; one that is already leading to echoes of Alain Prost and Ayrton Senna or any other similar clash of titans.
Marquez grabbed six MotoGP titles in seven seasons before his injury woes hit in 2020. He is the third most prolific premier class racer in history. Bagnaia has ruled MotoGP in 2022 and 2023 and is Ducati’s most successful grand prix rider ever, as well as the most seamlessly effective benefactor of Ducati Corse general manager Gigi Dall’Igna’s Desmosedici technology.
The fact that Marquez has now triumphed with two brands does tilt the appreciation scale a little further to his side against Bagnaia, who has all of his 25 wins in Ducati red. But the predicament for 2025 is the reverse of what he has encountered with team-mates in his career to date.
Marquez will be entering Bagnaia’s domain, where the team, the culture, the nationality is firmly set to boost the performance capabilities of the double champion. It’s a scenario that racers such as Jorge Lorenzo, Pol Espargaro and Joan Mir had to confront when Marquez was the overseer at Repsol Honda.
He has had the foresight to spend 2024 adapting to the Ducati and assessing whether he can rise back to former greatness with a different motorcycle. But his third team in three seasons and second period of integration – for all his MotoGP worldliness – will be a question mark.
There are only four years between the riders: Bagnaia is 27, Marquez 31. But the Spaniard has six more terms of premier-class experience against the Italian who completed his rookie campaign in 2019 during Marquez’s grand opus of 18 podiums in 19 GPs.
"He is still growing because he keeps showing us even more accuracy compared to even a few races before"
Cristian Gabarrini
It’s understandable that Marquez fans and admirers will assume that he will have the finest tools to lay waste to the series once more in 2025 and has renewed confidence through the affirmation of results in 2024.
“In ’19 my body was more or less okay,” he said in response to Autosport asking for an evolution of the Marquez today against his 2019 pomp, with the obvious allowance for age and ‘mileage’. “Now it’s okay enough and I show on the racetrack I can fight with the top guys but, of course, I need to work a little bit more at home.
“On the mental side, now I start to feel stronger and stronger. Aragon, Red Bull Ring, and this race [Misano] gave me the confidence. Aragon was always a good track for me, but today here to lead the race, open a gap, sometimes you forget that feeling and today I was able to do it.”
Sporting fate can always intervene and routinely does so, but to assume Marquez will dispatch Bagnaia’s threat with ease is a woeful misconception of how the champion has emerged as the best rider of the decade. And, according to his crew chief Cristian Gabarrini, who has worked with Bagnaia since his entry to MotoGP as a Moto2 world champion in 2019, one of the Italian’s gifts is his ability to learn and improve, indicating that his 21 wins and 35 podiums from the last two-and-a-half season is still a journey in progress.
“It’s incredible how much he has grown as a rider because in the beginning he was struggling a lot with a used tyre or hard braking and now I think he is the best Ducati rider in both of these areas,” Gabarrini told Autosport in San Marino. “He has the capability to grow and improve a lot and understand a lot when it comes to important things with riding. I think he is still growing because he keeps showing us even more accuracy compared to even a few races before.
“He has improved in every area. In some, like the speed for a single lap, it was there from the beginning. He already had it but, for example, to lead a race, not make any mistakes and be very consistent with the lap time: he has built year-by-year, race-by-race so I don’t think he will stop.”
Bagnaia’s resilience under pressure is another forte that will come into play against a foe like Marquez. He demonstrated his hardiness with slim victories over Fabio Quartararo in 2022 and then pressure-cooker events like the 2022 Malaysian Grand Prix (which he won) and the season ending Valencian races that year and in 2023. Bagnaia is also well weathered by the scrutiny of being the leading Italian for the leading Italian brand and the championship winning Italian team; another parameter of expectation outside of rivalries on track.
“Every time you ride a red bike you have pressure and, in my opinion, Pecco is really good at managing that,” affirms Gabarrini. “In some difficult races he has shown several times that he might be in trouble but then ended the race in a good way. He never lost his mind.”
If Bagnaia wins on Sunday again in 2024, then it will be his eighth success and mark his best ever MotoGP year during a half-decade spell where he has ascended from 16th to second and then twice finished first.
The Desmosedici is a versatile and conquering motorcycle that can cater to different riders’ styles. Six different racers used it to earn their spurs in 2023, but Bagnaia extols the finer points and was not afraid to demand that Ducati slow its engine ‘revolution’ ideas into an evolution at the beginning of 2023 and maintain the core strengths of the motorcycle. For him, that meant front end feel.
“His most important quality is the braking,” says factory Ducati rider coach Manuel Poggiali. “He brakes very hard and later with respect to the other riders. It is difficult to overtake him in this phase and it is then easier for Pecco to pass even if at the moment in MotoGP following another rider is not easy to ride in a normal way.”
“He is strong mentally,” he quickly adds. “He has made some errors, like everybody, but we can see that he grows from that. He understands why he made the mistake. This is one of the best qualities, and the mentality of a champion.”
The joust of techniques, mindsets and speed will be fascinating in 2025 but fans will also be watching the environment at Ducati and the relationship between the rivals. The last time MotoGP had a team with the scope of talent and titles was 2019 at Repsol Honda when three times champion Jorge Lorenzo left Ducati to join Marquez.
The Majorcan broke his wrist pre-season. He could then not adapt to the RCV. Fitness and the equipment doubts is a conversion phase that Marquez has already dealt with in 2024.
“Lorenzo was showing that he was Jorge Lorenzo and one of the strongest riders and, from the outside, looked like he would be one of the strongest competitors for Marc,” Harry Lloyd, HRC head of marketing and communications recalled to Autosport. “Dani [Pedrosa] had dropped off in his last two years in terms of being able to challenge Marc but when the Lorenzo signature arrived, I think many thought it would be the dream team or a new evil empire.
“The reality was a little bit different, and Lorenzo really struggled with the Honda whereas Marc had his best ever season with first or second in every race and only one DNF, and there was also the teams' and manufacturers' titles too…by himself!
"If one rider is here then it’s because he has a particular characteristic, and it’s that you are pushing in the same direction as all the other guys"
Cristian Gabarrini
“I think Lorenzo came in wanting to assert himself and make his way, but the situation he found with his style and the bike changed everything. When Dani left in 2019, there was also a big change with the mechanics on that side of the team whereas Marc still had his guys that were pretty well established. The other side were still coming together.
“The relationship was not super close [between the riders]. They were not going to speak to each other after sessions. As a team-mate, Marc’s relationship with Dani was a bit different and then with Alex [Marquez] obviously also… but then with Lorenzo or Pol [Espargaro] or Joan [Mir] he would not really hang out with them too much between sessions.
“If there was some sort of PR activity then for sure, they’d chat and joke around and Marc would be super-friendly. Otherwise, Marc was with his team and the other rider with theirs.”
Team chemistry could be tested at Ducati if its stars enter a duel and potentially a feud. But the Italians insist the foundations of the championship-winning squad is united across both sides of the pitbox.
“I think we doing a good job with that,” assess Gabarrini. “We are a group of friends first and we are very close. On the other side we are the same.
“Marco [Rigamonti], Marc’s [future] crew chief and I have made family holidays together and we have known each other for a long time. I know him very well. I think there is no danger that something will happen inside the team, and I don’t think it has happened in Ducati’s history: if one rider is here then it’s because he has a particular characteristic, and it’s that you are pushing in the same direction as all the other guys.”
“The ambience in general in the team is fantastic,” concurs Poggiali. “We are a good team, and we share all the data. We analyse everything among us. It is important to follow this line that came from Gigi. If Ducati is at the top now then it is because of this choice. It is really, really important and stimulates the riders.”
Lloyd also sees this harmony from his rival’s camp. It means any possible attempt by Marquez to enter and scatter the pigeons might be met with short shrift.
“One of the challenges that riders like Lorenzo, Espargaro and Mir had coming into the Repsol Honda team was that Marc was so established and had this unit around him, this family,” he says. “Next year in Ducati, my understanding is that things are a bit more open, and the team are ‘Ducati guys’ rather than being Marc’s or Pecco’s. It will be interesting for Marc to come more into Pecco’s territory and I’m sure Pecco will probably try to convey that it’s his house but I’m not sure that’s how Ducati operates.”
For a few weeks at least, before Lorenzo hurt his wrist and discovered the task at hand with the Honda RC213V, Lloyd was able to appreciate the magnitude of two big names in close proximity and with their competitive instincts primed.
“It would have tricky if they were both fighting hard, especially Marc because I think he would have stepped-up a level to assert himself as the dominant one of the two alpha males,” he considers. “Lorenzo had an injury and didn’t gel with the bike. He was worrying about his own thing rather than competing with Marc. If there had been a real challenge, then I think you would have seen Marc do what he usually does…and eat people alive.”
Whether the plate of the 2025 and 2026 seasons will be served as Italian or Spanish cuisine, it will be another reason to make MotoGP unmissable.
