MotoMatters.com | Kropotkin Thinks

The final preseason test is a strange creature. Most of the work has already been done at the first test at Sepang. Parts have been tried, and either accepted for use or sent back for scrap. (The parts may be scrapped, but the ideas will be laid aside and the results used to make something better next time.) So there really is a lot less for the teams and factories to test.

Looking at pictures from Buriram, you would be hard pressed to see any new parts compared to the bikes used at Sepang. Or indeed new parts compared to the Barcelona test. As I wrote after Sepang, we are at the stage of MotoGP bike development where designs are converging on the most efficient aerodynamic shape. And we probably won't see any major changes until the new technical rules arrive in 2027.

It has been quite the day at the Sepang International Circuit. The first day of the official MotoGP test at Sepang and we are already three riders down. For the second consecutive year, Raul Fernandez has crashed during testing and ruled himself out of the remainder of the test, fracturing a metacarpal bone in his left hand, as well has his little toe. Fabio Di Giannantonio had a silly crash, landing a wheelie badly at the end of the day after doing his practice starts, and breaking his left collarbone.

But the biggest news is that Jorge Martin had a massive highside at Turn 2, after completing just a dozen laps. The force of the crash was so severe that he fractured the fifth metacarpal of his right hand and the third, fourth, and fifth metatarsals of his left foot. The injury on his right hand is to the head of the metacarpal, where the bone in the hand joins the bone of the little or pinky finger. The metatarsal bones are the long bones in his foot joining his ankle to his toes.

The injury to his right hand will probably rule the reigning world champion out for the Buriram test, which takes place next week, and will leave him to ride the fully homologated 2025 Aprilia RS-GP for the first time at the opening round of MotoGP in Buriram at the start of March.

The Blame Game

In the second half of the Ducati Lenovo MotoGP team presentation, the host, Barbara Pedrotti, asked Ducati test rider Michele Pirro how he would sum up the Bologna factory's 2025 MotoGP project in a single word. Pirro chose the phrase "Dream Team", which prompted Pedrotti to give him a pass for ignoring the set criteria as, she said, he had said the phrase quickly enough for it to be a single word.

In the context of MotoGP in 2025, the pairing of Pecco Bagnaia and Marc Márquez certainly qualifies as a dream team. The rider who finally brought the riders championship back to Ducati after 15 years, then followed it up with another and came close to making it three in a row, paired with the greatest rider of his generation, and possibly of all time. As team manager Davide Tardozzi pointed out, they have 11 titles between them.

With the 2025 MotoGP season slowly starting to heave into view, it's time to make a few predictions of what may lie ahead. There are a few things that seem almost set in stone for this year, but racing and reality have a way of surprising us. So below are my hostages to fortune for 2025. The first part appears today, with the rest to come tomorrow.

Meet your 2025 MotoGP champion: Marc Márquez

It is pretty much a given that Ducati will make it four rider championships in a row. And it is indisputable that the pairing of Marc Márquez and Pecco Bagnaia at the factory Ducati squad is the best team on the MotoGP grid in 2025. So the chances that one of the two will take the 2025 crown are pretty close to 100%.

So why pick Marc Márquez, a rider who hasn't won a title in five seasons, over Pecco Bagnaia, who won two of the last three titles and has spent all of his MotoGP career on a Ducati? The flippant (if correct) answer is because he's Marc Márquez. But the statistics bear this out.

Motorcycle racing is relatively simple to understand as a sport. The rider that crosses the line first wins the race. Riders score points for their finishing positions, and the rider with the most points at the end of the season is crowned champion. Sure, there's plenty of detail crammed in the spaces between those statements, but at the end, it's pretty straightforward.

So the reason Jorge Martin won the 2024 championship ahead of Pecco Bagnaia is also very simple to understand. Martin did a better job over the course of 20 race weekends, scored more points, and earned the right to call himself champion. Jorge Martin is absolutely a deserving MotoGP champion.

But as much as Martin won the championship, Pecco Bagnaia lost it. Because of the curious and deficient way Dorna maintain their statistics (you can't ignore the existence of sprint races forever), the official season statistics PDF makes it look like Bagnaia should have won the championship. Bagnaia had 11 GP wins, and 5 more podiums. By comparison, Martin has 3 GP wins and 13 podiums.