MotoMatters.com | Kropotkin Thinks

MotoGP is back at Termas de Rio Hondo in Argentina, so what better way to start than with news about Austin, Texas? The reigning world champion isn't in Argentina, and wasn't scheduled to be in the pre-event press conference, but he called in anyway, phoning in from his car. His recovery from the scaphoid injury he suffered in a training crash wasn't proceeding as quickly as he hoped, he said, and he wouldn't be able to ride at the Grand Prix Of The Americas in Austin, Texas. And probably not in Qatar either.

"I'm really suffering," Martin said. "It's not my moment, I'm struggling to recover as fast as I would like." He would skip Austin and maybe also Qatar, and would really like to test himself before he returned to racing. "I would like to make some kind of test before coming back to racing, because I'm not feeling really good. And I know Massimo [Rivola, Aprilia Racing CEO] is also working on that, let's see if we can make it possible."

A test is going to be hard. Martin is able to ride a production bike, but Aprilia is in category C as far as concessions are concerned. That means no testing for contracted riders (i.e. riders on the official MotoGP entry list for 2025) outside of official IRTA tests. The first IRTA test is at Jerez. And if Martin is going to ride at the test in Jerez, he might as well try to ride at the weekend.

Patience is a virtue

In many ways, the 2025 MotoGP championship promises to be one of the more interesting in recent years. Perhaps not the most closely contested - the general consensus among fans and pundits alike is that you can take your pick of whether it will be Pecco Bagnaia or Marc Márquez who ends up lifting the 2025 MotoGP crown - but behind the title fight, there are some fascinating developments to watch out for.

We may as well start with that title battle. The dominance of Ducati was so great last year that it is hard to imagine anyone other than Marc Márquez or Pecco Bagnaia walking off with the title. Despite the fact that they are sticking with their GP24 engine - a little more on that later - both Bagnaia and Márquez showed pace during the test, Márquez' race simulation at Buriram almost fast enough to win a sprint race.

The Buriram MotoGP test confirmed Ducati as the preseason favorite, with Aprilia a close second and KTM possibly on the prowl. But what about the Japanese manufacturers? After a couple of years in the wilderness, are they any closer to regaining competitiveness?

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 hot and humid at Motegi. Humid enough to rain in the morning, chasing everyone back into the garage for 20 minutes in FP1. That disrupted everyone's practice plans, forcing a rethink of the afternoon session and leaving a lot of questions unanswered.

Questions such as, will the soft rear go the distance on Sunday, or should we use the medium? A lot of riders used the medium during the limited running in the morning, but the tire just didn't want to work for most people in the afternoon. "If you see everyone that put a medium tire in PR, they make 3 laps and come in and put a soft," Pedro Acosta said. "This is not easy to understand. And even the soft is going to be difficult to finish the race with."

That puts a lot of pressure on Saturday morning, to work out whether the medium rear is a better tire for the race. "Last season with this tire they made the whole race and they were fast, and it was not an issue," Acosta said. "But I don't know why, but this soft tire will not finish the race. But the medium, I don't know how is the level of grip, you know?"