The question everyone is asking: can Ducati’s long-suffering victims in MotoGP strike back strongly this season? Mat Oxley has the answer.
So what secrets does the GP25 hold? And what are Aprilia, Honda, KTM and Yamaha doing in their efforts to catch up?
Fed up with Ducati’s MotoGP steamroller? Too bad, you’re going to have to put up with it for a while longer, because right now there’s no indication that MotoGP’s balance of power is about to change any time soon.
It’s not that Aprilia, KTM, Yamaha and Honda are slow, because during this year’s first preseason tests at Sepang the entire grid lapped at least eight-tenths inside the lap record! And the fastest seven Sprint race simulations were faster than Jorge Martin’s 2024 Sprint-winning race pace! But Ducati is still way ahead, with factory riders Marc Marquez and Pecco Bagnaia expected to dominate in 2025.
Ducati: catch us if you can
Ducati enjoys such a technical advantage in MotoGP that chief engineer Gigi Dall’Igna has the luxury of taking carefully calculated steps forward, instead of throwing all kinds of new parts at his bikes in the hope of finding a few tenths, which is what his rivals are forced to do.
Dall’Igna’s former righthand man Max Bartolini knows how this works.
“When I worked with Ross Brawn in Formula 1 (at Ferrari), he always said that if you’re in front and you work properly no one can catch you,” says Bartolini, who left Ducati at the end of 2023 to become Yamaha’s technical director. “The others need to rush and make tests and try things and make mistakes, but if you are in front and you work in a proper way, you just bring something better and better and better and better. This is what Ducati is doing.”
Ducati has worked perfectly over the last five seasons – five constructor’s titles and three rider’s crowns – and it’s still working perfectly, even though its factory riders will race with 2024 engines and 2024 chassis. The GP24 is a ridiculously good MotoGP bike and it will get better in 2025 as Ducati engineers continue its development.
“Ducati has taken a smart decision to be with the ’24 engine… There’s no point in risking homologating an engine we don’t know,” says Marc Marquez.
Some people were surprised when Ducati made the decision to revert, because when Bagnaia started testing he praised the GP25 engine. But… he was lying! Riders and engineers lie all the time because they have secrets to hide.
“I was a bit of a liar,” he said. “We call this bike the 24.9 – it’s very close to the new one.”
“The good problem at Ducati is that you start from a very good base, so to improve that base you need to be very sure it’s better,” says Marquez. “So we try many things and work on the small details to understand which parts are better or worse. It’s difficult but super-important for the engineers – our preseason job is only for the engineers.”
GP24 riders Alex Marquez and Franky Morbidelli have also shown super-fast pace in testing, suggesting the gap between GP24 and GP25 is narrower than the gap between GP23 and GP24. The Gresini and VR46 riders also have the advantage of riding fully sorted bikes, with no need to allocate track time to evaluating new parts.
“Factory riders are like engineers riding the bikes,” explains Bagnaia. “And when you have to test many, many things, a bit of the performance goes away.”
Eight-times Moto2 race winner Fermin Aldeguer has also impressed, adapting quickly to his Gresini GP, working with former Marquez crew chief Frankie Carchedi.
VR46 GP25 rider Fabio Di Giannantonio had a red-faced start to 2025 – he crashed at Sepang while doing a wheelie, breaking a collarbone.
Yamaha: M1 breakthrough?
Is this the start of the Japanese fightback? Yamaha started 2025 with Fabio Quartararo showing mightily impressive speed at Sepang aboard the latest inline-four YZR-M1. His lap times at the opening tests improved more than they did in his first five years on the bike.
“Between 2019 (his rookie MotoGP season) and 2024, my lap times at Sepang improved by
six-tenths,” says Quartararo. “This time we are eight-tenths faster than last year.”
The M1 doesn’t look much different but features plenty of upgrades. Quartararo and Yamaha’s other riders compared two chassis, one which they first tried at last November’s Barcelona tests, and an all-new unit.
“They are very, very similar and I’m fast with them both,” adds the Frenchman. “But the way I ride, I feel better with the older one.”
Yamaha also has a new engine spec with more top-end but the biggest improvement is new electronics strategies, which the Frenchman has been working on since late 2024.
“Our engine is a bit faster than last year’s but we are really struggling with rear grip out of slow corners,” reveals Quartararo, suggesting that Yamaha will continue to struggle against the V4s at most tracks.
Yamaha once again has four bikes on the grid, with new partner Pramac running full-factory bikes. This is part of the push to build an all-new V4, which we may see later this season.
However, new Pramac rider Jack Miller isn’t convinced a V4 is a necessity, even though V4s have won every race since the start of 2023.
“I don’t think it’s set in stone that you need a V4,” Miller says. “Obviously there are pros and cons to everything, but the inline-four we’ve got is pretty strong. And I feel more at home on the bike every exit.”
KTM: fighting back
The factory KTM and Tech3 garages bore no sign of the company’s financial woes during pre-season testing, with Pedro Acosta, Brad Binder, Maverick Vinales and Enea Bastianini running busy testing programs with numerous upgrades.
Most important is a tuned mass damper, as pioneered by Ducati eight years ago! These gadgets are more important than ever, because they can exorcise the vibration and chatter caused by Michelin’s super-grippy rear slick, a problem which really hurt KTM in 2024.
“We are trying to make bike more calm,” explains Acosta, who once again looks like he can take the fight to the Ducati hordes.
“Last year the bike was often shaking (vibrating), so we were losing speed and making a lot of crashes, so fixing this is our priority number one.”
But it may take a while to get the mass damper working right.
“It’s a work in progress,” says Binder, who hopes to learn from his young teammate to get closer to the front in 2025.
“One thing I need to do is start the process of going into corners earlier,” says the South African. “I always delay, delay, delay, then bam – put it on its side as fast as I can. But when you’re missing a bit of front grip, that puts you in trouble – so I need to do that more gently, which is what Pedro did from the beginning.”
Vinales and Bastianini, who have joined KTM from Aprilia and Ducati, spent pre-season testing adapting to the very different RC16.
“I’m trying to understand the DNA of the bike,” says Vinales, who has won GPs with Suzuki, Yamaha and Aprilia. “I’m struggling on the brakes – I’m used to braking straight, using the front tyre. With the KTM you need to use some banking and brake sideways.”
Aprilia: a disastrous start but true potential
This was the year that Aprilia was finally going to challenge for the MotoGP title, with reigning world champion Jorge Martin joining from Ducati and former KTM and Ducati engineer Fabiano Sterlacchini taking control of development of the RS-GP.
But the Italian brand’s preparations for 2025 went badly awry in the first few hours of the first day of testing at Sepang, when Martin had two nasty off-gas high-sides, the second breaking bones in his hands and feet. The 27-year-old Spaniard needed surgery to fix his right hand and missed the Buriram test, so he will go into the season-opening Thai GP with no real experience with the RS-GP.
His absence left former VR46 Ducati rider Marco Bezzecchi to get the 2025 RS-GP up to speed, with test rider Lorenzo Savadori taking Martin’s place.
“I’m building more confidence with the bike,” says Bezzecchi. “The power impresses me – there’s a lot of power in the bike, but we need to improve the electronics to put all this power to the ground. The bike’s strongest point is the front.”
No one had bigger downforce aerodynamics updates during pre-season testing than Aprilia. The latest RS-GP aero set features a smaller upper fairing to make the bike less physical to ride, diffusers and vortex generators in the lower fairing to increase downforce (or reduce drag) and revised seat aero to load the rear tyre better during braking.
Moto2 champ Ai Ogura impressed in his first proper outings with Trackhouse Aprilia, making steady progress, which he backed up with top 5 finishes in the Thai Sprint and GP races. Teammate Raul Fernandez missed most of the Sepang test after breaking a finger in a scary high-speed crash.
Honda: glimmers of hope
Honda finished last season bottom of the constructor’s championship, but there are welcoming signs that MotoGP’s all-time most successful manufacturer may be reawakening after several seasons of grim results.
There’s no doubt Honda is making a massive effort, with its four riders almost overwhelmed by the quantity of upgrades – engines, chassis, electronics and aerodynamics – that they evaluated during pre-season testing.
Johann Zarco, Honda’s top-scoring rider last year, is convinced that the factory has taken a step forward.
“The gap to the top isn’t as big as in the past – the bike is working much better,” says the LCR rider, whose biggest problem last year was fighting wheelies. “One of the new fairings gives us better stability in corner exits, plus the new engine helps us manage wheelies.
“Also, the new chassis opens new doors of set-up we didn’t have with the old chassis, so we can play with balance to improve the wheelie area.
“There are so many things to put together, so it takes time… I’m sure we can fight for the top 10 from the first races.” Welcome words indeed.
Factory rider Luca Marini agrees that Honda is finally getting the hang of downforce aerodynamics, an area where it’s really struggled in recent seasons.
“The best new fairing improves turning (by increasing grip), without losing in acceleration, wheelie and stopping power, so it’s a perfect job,” he says.
Honda also has a new engine spec but still needs more power.
“We have a bit better acceleration, a bit more top speed and the bike is more rideable,” says factory rider Joan Mir. “But we improved 1km/h and we probably need four or five more.”
Honda also experimented with a tuned mass damper, but the gizmo is in the early stages of development because all four riders mostly rode with standard rear ends.
