MotoMatters.com | Kropotkin Thinks

It's Only Friday, as the riders like to say to hype-hungry journalists after the first day of practice. That is of course true, but this It's Only Friday has brought a whole ream of fascinating stories to follow. It is far too early to be drawing conclusions for the rest of the season, but so far, 2025 looks a lot less like 2024 than we feared.

Yes, Ducati is still clearly the strongest manufacturer. The Márquez brothers topped the timesheets on Friday, Gresini's Alex beating Lenovo's Marc by half a tenth of a second. And in terms of pace, Ducatis are looking strongest as well: Marc Márquez was running 1'29.9s on old tires, teammate Pecco Bagnaia 1'30.0s.

But there are signs the other factories are catching up. There are as many Aprilias in the top 10 and directly through to Q2 as there are Ducatis (three). All five manufacturers are straight through to Q2. There are two Hondas in the top ten, Joan Mir an impressive sixth fastest. And Pedro Acosta is both quick over a single lap and running just a tenth or two off Pecco Bagnaia's pace on used tires. It has been very interesting day indeed.

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.

While all eyes were on Ducati at the Buriram MotoGP test, especially because of the choice they faced between racing the GP25 or sticking with the GP24 and looking for improvements, it was easy to miss the other big stories on the grid. Stories which directly affect Ducati, as it happens. Because unlike last year, where Ducati pretty much had a free run at the MotoGP championship, it looks like the other manufacturers have made a big step in competitiveness.

Not enough to make betting on anyone other than Ducati winning the championship look extremely foolhardy. But enough to cause Ducati more than just inconvenience. MotoGP in 2025 does not look like being a one-horse race any longer.

Stepping up

It may sound strange, but Aprilia has come out of testing quite well, despite Jorge Martin injuring himself in the first couple of hours of the Sepang test. The bike is a big step forward, which I'll come to later. But the bigger step has been for Marco Bezzecchi, who has really grown in his role as factory rider in Martin's absence.

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

Marc Márquez' return to victory and the collision between Alex Márquez and Pecco Bagnaia ate up a lot of attention at the Motorland Aragon GP. Understandably so. Márquez winning after 1043 days and leaving the safety of the Repsol Honda factory team for the impoverished Gresini Ducati squad is huge. And the 13 or 16 points Bagnaia lost as a result of the crash could potentially end up making a difference in the championship.

But there was a lot more happening during the MotoGP race at Aragon. Pedro Acosta returned to the podium during a sprint race for the first time since Mugello, and for the first time since Austin in a Sunday grand prix. Though Acosta earned his sprint podium, his Sunday podium was gifted to him when Bagnaia and Márquez crashed out ahead of him.

Yet this podium is significant. It is the result of reverting to a setup with which Acosta had booked so many successes earlier in the season. A disastrous outing at their home GP at the Red Bull Ring had convinced KTM that something needed to be done, and by abandoning the changes which offered potential advantages for a setup they understood and knew would be more consistent allowed Acosta to ride like he wanted to again.

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