So… I got bored again. Funemployment does things to a motherfucker. So I decided to do what I did for Formula 1 earlier in the Summer and give some mid-season vibe checks to the entire grid. Factory and team-by-team. Ratings, key stats, and some general thoughts on how all of their 2025 season’s have gone so far. So sit back, enjoy, and grab a coffee… this is going to be a long one.
Yamaha – So… Anyone else besides Fabio?
Prima Pramac Yamaha (11th in Teams)
Jack Miller – 14th in Points (52), 4 Top 10’s, 1 Top 5
Miguel Oliveira – 25th in Points (6), Best Finish: 13th (8 Races)
Monster Energy Yamaha (6th)
Fabio Quartararo – 9th in Points (102), 4 Pole Positions, 1 Podium, 1 Sprint Podium
Alex Rins – 18th in Points (42), Best Finish: 10th
Welcome back to the continued misadventures of the Japanese Cup. And to my genuine surprise, it’s Yamaha that’s down the bottom. I liked their new building blocks they put in place in their first year after Lin Jarvis. A Moto2 team for Pramac to aid rider development, a genuine customer team again, and a management that’s keeping more of an open mind. More on that in a bit.
The good news? The V4 you’re developing is coming along nicely. Bad news? You’ll be lucky if you get it on a track before the year’s out. There’s definitely progress being made, it clearly works, but by test rider Augusto Fernandez’s own admission, they’re still a couple of seconds off where they need to be.
The good news is in Fabio’s hands, and if Yamaha’s in their ideal performance window, they have a really, REALLY fast bike over a lap. Four pole positions on any level is exceptional in Ducati land. The bad news is that the moment the porridge isn’t to Goldilocks liking, they drop off a cliff. Sometimes it’s tire compounds. Sometimes it’s the chatter off the rear tire and the grip they have. Sometimes it’s too hot or too cold for them to really get going. And their lack of rider depth is now becoming a genuine problem with Fabio still ballin’ at times, but everyone else is barely in the Top 15 of the standings.
There’s going to be some at least short-term problems with their rebuild. First up is Pramac, who went from winning the teams title two years ago, to being the worst team on the grid 18 months later. Of course, being on Yamaha’s instead of Ducati’s are a big reason for the drop, but their riders have… not been great.
Miguel Oliviera has been hit with another truck full of bad luck, a shoulder injury in Argentina had him miss four weekends and even when he was back, it took him time to get back to 100% because cryo freezing his shoulder actually hurt his joints. Grim. Ever since then, he’s struggled to get to grips with the Yamaha and is just hovering around fringe points at most. With Double, World Superbike Champion Toprak Razgatlioglu heading to the team in 2026, it’s obvious that Miggy will be the one sacrificed if this doesn’t work out.
It still might be a double chopping too. Jack Miller’s not been too bad. At times, he’s genuinely threatened to be top Yamaha, and the rider closest to replicating talisman Fabio Quartararo. He’s still great in the wet, like his fifth place finish in Austin, and seventh at a Silverstone so slippery, it might as well have been. But is this enough for a Pramac team clearly keen to roll the dice? Jack admitted that there aren’t many offers on the table, with Ducati’s World Superbike team the most likely option, with Diogo Moreira in Moto2 said to be heavily linked with his seat as an avenue into promoting Yamaha in Brazil. I think Miller’s been fine, but is Pramac really here for 14th overall? I don’t think so in the long term, and Diogo might have the upside you need in the future. He’s raw in Moto2, but can be blisteringly quick.
The factory team is in similar flux, one in the immediate, the other for next year. Alex Rins needs this V4 to revitalise his career. He’s still looking like the rider he was before his catastrophic leg break for Honda, and Yamaha is running out of patience. He’s not crashing the bike, he’s finished every race so far this season in fact, but he’s just slow compared to Fabio again. You can see the Top 6 potential in the package when FQ20 is at the limit, Rins just isn’t near that. It very much feels like Yamaha are having the same problems Honda had towards the back end of the Marquez days, where one rider is so spectacular, everyone else looks worse by proxy.
Fabio Quartararo has been the poster child for everything good, bad and indifferent for Yamaha as a manufacturer right now. Four pole positions, including a couple of podium finishes thrown in for good measure. At times, I’ve genuinely thought he might be the one man in the field that could challenge Marquez if the machinery was truly there. But he’s also been the brunt of all the frustrating weaknesses that have led to Yamaha limping around the fringes of the Top 10. Like Marquez in 2023, there’s only so many problems talent can massage. And don’t get me started on Silverstone, a heartbreaking defeat due to a failed ride-height device just a handful of laps from victory. His tears on the side of the road will be one of the last images of MotoGP’s modern era. It’s now been three years since Quartararo’s last victory.
And that leads to Yamaha’s biggest problem – Quartararo really IS running out of patience this time. He had no problem parading their 70th Anniversary livery in Assen, while telling MotoGP’s own website that he needed signs of improvement and wanted a winning machine NOW. The V4 might be Yamaha’s lost roll of the dice with Fabio on the open market next year and probably right at the top of potentially available targets alongside fellow World Champion, Jorge Martin.
Yamaha have the resources and building blocks they need to fully mount an assault on the top of the sport again. Now they’re in a race against the clock to convince their star rider that what they have is worth two more years of Quartararo’s prime. This off-season and the development of their V4 is going to be a critical time for Yamaha. Their future may very well hinge on it, because a development path without Quartararo may as well have you starting over.
Jack Miller – 5/10 / Miguel Oliveira – 3/10 / Alex Rins – 4/10 / Fabio Quartararo – 8/10
Honda – God Save The Zarco
LCR Honda
Johann Zarco – 8th in Points (109), 1 Win, 2 Podiums, 5 Top 10’s
Somkiat Chantra – 26th in Points (1) – Best Finish: 15th (9 Races)
Honda HRC Castrol
Joan Mir – 19th in Points (32), 3 Top 10’s – Best Finish: 7th
Luca Marini – 15th in Points (52), 5 Top 10’s, Best Finish: 6th (9 Races)
Honda, have had a rollercoaster of a season both on and off the track. If there was an award for the most improved of the five major manufacturers on the grid, it would probably go to Honda.
They, like Yamaha, have been dealing with a large amount of rear-end chatter, with the vibrations kicking in on corner entry and especially longer corners. It’s been a big task that Romano Albesiano, their new tech head from Aprilia, has had to try and figure out a workaround for, including a new carbon swingarm as the team tries to figure out where their vibrations are coming from. The lack of top-end speed hasn’t made them an easy bike in terms of combat either.
The best thing I can say about Honda in 2025, is that they’re no longer stone dead last of the big factories, and have shown a lot more upside. Call the French GP a fluke if you want, but they had a “no shenanigans” second place at Silverstone, straight up, and are regularly getting bikes into the Top 8. That’s a huge step forward for a Honda team still in rebuilding, and you could even make a case they’re ahead of schedule given they have a rider deep in the Top 10 in the standings, and at one point, he was Top 5.
If we’re talking about Honda, we have to talk about Johann Zarco, as he’s been the franchise’s headline piece since joining the factory. He’s been immense. Consistently their fastest rider and has found a way to regularly combat the rear-end chatter the Honda has by adapting his riding style. He was the smartest man in the room in France when chaos led to wild decision making over the weather, but once the rain stayed, he was a second a lap faster than everyone else, including Marc Marquez to become France’s first home premier-class winner in over 70 years.
He backed it up with a second place in Silverstone when once again, tricky, low-grip conditions caught a lot of people out. He’s had a fair share of disappointing crashes (The Zarco way), that I think has denied him a chance of a Top 5 Championship spot, but he’s one of the very few Japanese-bike riders out there that can and has given Europe a bloody nose. And he just won the Suzuka 8 Hours with Takuma Takahashi. Nice bonus for the negotiation table, where we think he’ll likely stay at LCR, with a bit of extra cash and a promise of factory support. Well deserved by the veteran.
Across the garage… I just feel sorry for Somkiat Chantra. He was never the ideal candidate for a top end seat after Ai Ogura went to Trackhouse. But he was the next best fit for LCR and Honda’s partnership with sponsor Idemitsu, who have wanted to celebrate and push for a pathway to the Premier Class for riders from Asian backgrounds. Chantra, was a plucky, occasional Moto2 winner on his day, but he wasn’t ready for the top flight and he has struggled from Day 1. Adapting to a MotoGP bike with twice the power of a Moto2 bike is never easy, but Chantra has just felt and looked like he’s been out of his depth.
He’s been so poor in fact that LCR and Honda are actually thinking of re-evaluating their partnership to avoid this situation happening again. And with the next in line being… Ayumu Sasaki? (23rd in the standings at time of writing), it might be the time to see if LCR can afford a new partner. At time of editing, he’s confirmed to have missed both the Austrian and Hungarian Grand Prix with a torn LCL, a horrible injury.
As for the factory team, a tale of two very different riders and seasons. Joan Mir has consistently shown he has the speed to regularly be in the Top 6-8 at his very best. But at the same time, his rate of crashing at key times has been painful to watch. We have had 12 race weekends. Mir has finished four of them. In his defence, he’s been taken out of the last three by three different riders (Alex Marquez, Aldeguer and Ogura), but I do wonder at what point do the sheer lack of results begin to matter?
Especially when you see across the garage at Luca Marini. On raw speed, he’s a bit slower than Joan Mir has been in their time together at Honda, but Luca will always get the bike home. He crashed the least of any MotoGP rider in 2024, and he’s finished every Grand Prix of 2025 that he’s participated in. (He missed three rounds in the middle due to a punctured lung he suffered testing for the Suzuka 8 Hours.) And you’ve got to be in it to win it, like in Germany where his first race back from injury landed him in sixth place, the best factory Honda finish since Marc Marquez left them.
It’s that workmanship, extra support, invaluable feedback and all-round goodwill that’s earned him a one-year contract extension. A sensible re-hire. Don’t get it twisted, Honda will absolutely be in the market for Jorge Martin in 2026 and having flexibility in its lineup will only help with their rider management, but I see no reason why Honda should move on from Marini anytime soon. He might be a safer wager to keep in the lineup than Mir in the future.
Honda have taken a genuine step forward, faster than I think anyone expected. They still have very anonymous weekends at times, but that’s happening less frequently, and the bright sides have been impossible to ignore. Honda are a year ahead of schedule, and that’s great for the sport as a whole. They just need to keep on pushing, and we know they can. A star rider will certainly help…
Joan Mir – 4.5/10 / Luca Marini – 6.5/10 / Somkiat Chantra – 2/10 / Johann Zarco – 8/10
KTM – An Slightly More Certain Future
Red Bull KTM Tech3 (7th)
Enea Bastianini – 17th in Points (49), 4 Top 10’s, 1 Sprint Podium, Best Finish: 7th (11 Races)
Maverick Vinales – 11th in Points (69), 3 Top 10’s, Best Finish: 4th (10 Races)
Red Bull KTM Factory Racing (4th)
Brad Binder – 12th in Points (68), 6 Top 10’s, Best Finish: 6th
Pedro Acosta – 7th in Points (124), 1 Podium, 9 Top 10’s, Best Finish: 3rd
It’s been another news-based rollercoaster over in Austria for the KTM squad. They entered this season not sure as to what their future looked like. Now we know a little bit more. Bajaj Auto have upped their stake in the company to a majority share, with a chance to fully buy them out in the future, and as a result, able to pay off the 30% of their multi-billion dollar debt to get the Austrian Courts to waive the rest and get the company back on its feet. Stefan Pierer stepped down as CEO with Gottfried Neumeister taking over, and just a few weeks ago, KTM factories are back in production after months of shutdown.
It’s a light at the end of a grim tunnel for the Austrian brand, after over 1,000 members of staff were laid off. But where does that leave the racing team? Well, it’s still up in the air. KTM has promised racing is in its DNA and it wants to stay. It’s promised it’ll be on the grid for 2026, but nothing beyond that. And when the creditors were in and eyeing up the balance sheets, they recommended chalking the racing off the board. It’s hard to argue with the logic – You’re the market leader in adventure and off-road bikes, how do you justify spending over $80m a year in R&D, not winning and not selling anything at the end of it?
Whether KTM remains on the grid when the new regulations start in 2027 remains to be seen, but for now, the race teams are… okay?
We’ve heard this story before. On its day, good enough to challenge for wins, but big problems dealing with their rear of the bike and general inconsistency have left them leaving potentially big results on the table. Safe to say the stiffness of their carbon-fibre chassis hasn’t solved their issues either. But Maverick Vinales has seemingly unified a lot of KTM’s development and now has the majority of their camp marching to his drum.
Speaking of uncertainty, it seems Tech3 is about to be under new ownership. A consortium led by former Haas F1 Team founder Guenther Steiner is about to be finalised, alongside Apex, the athlete investment company who currently have Lando Norris as one of their investors, and own 20% of Alpine’s F1 team. It’s a good time for Herve Poncheral to cash out, with Liberty Media now in charge of MotoGP, genuine excitement over the future of the sport and the increased value that brings, sell while your stock is high. And trust me, if the rumours are true it’s a £18m buyout, it’s a colossal overpay and Herve would be a fool not to sell at that price. If you’re confused as to why that is… MotoGP teams don’t make money right now, especially independents who need financial support just for being on the grid.
Anyway, their riders. It’s been rough in these streets for Enea Bastianini. The multiple-race winner of 2024 has gone to KTM and has struggled pretty much right from the start. Some of the classic Enea traits of excellent rear tire management are still there and he’s often had late surges to break into the Top 10, but for someone of his talent, it’s hard not to expect more from the Italian as he enters his prime, and he’s been very vocal about his struggles. But his Brno weekend, where he finished 3rd in the Sprint and was running fourth in the GP before crashing could be the sign he’s found something. We’ll have to see how he goes after the break.
Maverick Vinales at times has looked like KTM’s best rider for large chunks of the season so far. Don’t let the scoreboard fool you, on the eye test, he’s not been 55 points worse than Pedro Acosta has been this season. You can’t talk about BatMav without talking about Qatar, a race he led for several laps, only for the idiotic tire pressure rule to catch the team out because they weren’t expecting to be so fast. It dropped him from second to 14th, costing Maverick 18 points.
While he’s only been in the Top 10 three times this season, they are chunky points, fourth in Jerez and running with the leading group, as well as fifth in France and Assen. Should have been in that range at Mugello too before Franco Morbidelli took him out. At his best, Maverick is as quick as the very best on his KTM. But a broken shoulder bone during qualifying at the Sachsenring has led to him missing the last two race weekends before the break. Hopefully the summer break will have him back to his best.
As for the factory team, pound-for-pound, Brad Binder might be the biggest disappointment in MotoGP this season. The slide-happy South African has been off the boil in 2025, openly admitting to the press that he’s been struggling with braking confidence, ala Pecco Bagnaia and as a result has lost speed and racecraft. Given Binder at his best was brilliant at making shapes out of KTM on turn-in and having no problem being bullish in a fight… this is a problem. The results have improved lately with three Top 10’s in the last four weekends, but given this is a rider that has challenged for wins in years past (And it’s been four years since his Austrian miracle), his talismanic status in orange is likely gone. He may even be third in their pecking order with the knowledge of Maverick at hand.
Across the garage, Pedro Acosta has also been working hard to figure out his tricky bike. It’s not helped that it’s been an open secret that for most of the first half of the season, he’d been shopping him out to other factories in an attempt to have someone pony up the six million euros needed to buy him out of his contract. Hence the noticeable grumpiness of the 21-year old Spaniard.
But recently at Brno, Pedro had a renewed focus, having given up that departure fight. And it showed on the track with the best KTM weekend of 2025, a second in the Sprint backed up by their first and only podium finish in a Grand Prix this season. It’s been the peak of a season where Acosta has had his fair share of spills on Saturday riding over the limits of his KTM, but knuckling down on Sunday. Between his crashes in Austin and Germany, was a streak of seven Top 10 finishes, including fourth at Le Mans, Aragon and Assen. Dare I say it, the process is very Marc Marquez-like…
KTM is far from terrible, only 12 points behind Aprilia in the battle for “Best of the Rest”. But given they now have a talent pool containing four riders from last year’s Top 8 in the standings, they don’t have an excuse for an under-performing bike. And they’re still not where I think they should be. Luckily, Acosta and Vinales seem to be steering them on the right path. But will they even still be here in two years time?
Pedro Acosta – 8.5/10 / Brad Binder – 5/10 / Maverick Vinales – 8/10 / Enea Bastianini – 4/10
Aprilia – Look out, they might be cooking…
Trackhouse Racing Team (8th)
Ai Ogura – 16th in Points (51), 5 Top 10’s, Best Finish: 5th (10 Races)
Raul Fernandez – 13th in Points (66), 6 Top 10’s, Best Finish: 5th
Aprilia Racing (5th)
Marco Bezzecchi – 4th in Points, 1 Win, 3 Podiums, 2 Sprint Podiums
Jorge Martin – 21st in Points (7), 1 Top 10, Best Finish: 7th (2 Races)
Lorenzo Savadori – 22nd in Points (8), 1 Top 10, Best Finish: 9th (9 Races)
And now time to review arguably the most newsworthy team on the 2025 grid, and really through no fault of their own – Welcome to Aprilia.
It’s been a peaky season for the Italians, as the F1 crowd might say. The highs have been stunning while the lows have been brutal. They genuinely looked like one of the fastest teams in pre-season testing, with pace that was rivalling the best of the Ducatis. But once the season actually got started, they were roughly where they’ve always been. Losing Romano Albesiano to Honda was a blow, but they did gain former Gigi Dall’Igna right hand man in Fabiano Sterlacchini.
A radically different RS-GP 25 with a new frame, swingarm, fairing and engine hit different. Too different. As we got into the European rounds, it was discovered that Aprilia had lost a lot of what had made them so strong in previous years – Losing a lot of their stability, especially on corner-entry, something that even Ducati riders were spotting as a core strength. Their early success story in Ai Ogura looked great in Buriram, but it was somewhat of a false dawn given how much testing he’d done around the track.
That lack of stability also translated into a weakness in qualifying as you’re more susceptible to errors when you’re pushing at the limit, something that has hampered Marco Bezzecchi all season.
But no, we all know why you’re here – The Jorge Martin contract scandal.
Martin had the pre-season from hell. A crash at the Catalunya test the day after 2024 finished. Another at the Sepang test in February after running wide and cooling his tires, right into a hellacious highside at the first corner sequence. He missed the season opener and the first three races, before coming back to Qatar… where he crashed again in the race before being literally hit by the avoiding Fabio Di Giannantonio. It was an impact that broke 11 of Jorge’s ribs and punctured his lung. We’re all thankful, it was only that.
During the seven races he missed, he turned up to Le Mans in secret for crisis talks with Aprilia, citing he had a clause in his contract that allowed him to leave if he was outside of the Top 3 in points after six races, a clause added to his initial contract at the 11th hour by his team after being salty that Ducati had snubbed him again. Aprilia disputed that Martin being injured rendered that clause null and void. Both sides disagreed, the Motorsport Network broke the story on Monday and I aged 15 years in as many hours as social admin.
It was like two separated people in a relationship thinking a baby might still save the marriage. Aprilia was the jilted lover who still had open arms, at times pleading for Martin to reconsider. All while Martin was pushing for a compromise where he’d give Aprilia another six races before reconsidering, which Aprilia wanted none of. Martin even showed up to Aprilia’s All-Stars event and hung out, despite threatening to take his own team to court. Weird.
Turns out that after the newly created “Martin clause” allowed him a private test as his chest healed, Martin had a change of heart, and declared he was staying at Brno, the final race before the break. He even finished the Grand Prix in seventh to a hero’s return. Seriously, if you watched it you’d have never guessed that he was weighing up visiting the Court of Arbitration for Sport during the downtime. (We’ll ignore the threat of a season ban by Dorna CEO Carmelo Ezepelta if he was a free agent for 2026, but sssh, it sounds nicer without these brackets).
It’s a promising sign from Martin that he finished Brno in P7. Think about it this way – TNT Sports’ own Gavin Emmett worked out that even if you ignore pre-season mileage, Martin has had roughly 5,000 less kilometres of running compared to the rest of the field… that’s over an entire season’s worth of Grand Prix. For Martin to be in full racing conditions (Not with full fitness), and to be great on pace so soon, is an excellent sign that he’ll be back to his best after the Summer Break. Promising scenes from a man who I hope has overcome the mental barriers that came from being in so many early crashes with his new bike. You don’t fluke a World Championship after all.
Meanwhile across the garage, welcome back to the big leagues Marco Bezzecchi. I was unsure what to make of his current ability after a brilliant 2023, but a languishing 2024. And while he’s taken some time to find his legs with Aprilia, he’s been arguably Marc Marquez’s biggest threat in the month of July. If it wasn’t for his crash at the first corner of poor judgement at the Sachsenring, we’d be looking at three runner-up finishes on the bounce on top of the win at Silverstone (Yes, he was fortunate that Fabio’s ride-height device got jammed, sue him)
It’s still a season of minor annoyance – He’s had far too many crashes in qualifying that have often given him too much work to do, but his race pace is as good as anyone NOT on a Ducati in 2025. I’ll be very curious to see how he shakes out against Martin once the latter gets some more mileage under his belt, but it’s hard to argue that he’s been the best rider outside of the “Big 3” in the standings. No doubt, Bez is back and with a vengeance.
Across the garage and the pond with Trackhouse, it’s been a season where it seems their riders have had polar opposite seasons. Ai Ogura started his rookie season hotter than fish grease, running alongside Pecco Bagnaia in Thailand like he’d been here half a decade already. He was the unfortunate victim of a team cock-up in Argentina when his bike was illegal via un-homologated software, but he had four Top 10’s to start the season…
…Until he broke his leg in a practice crash at Silverstone. He missed two races and has struggled since then, with just eight points in his last four weekends, and a string of heavy crashes. It’s felt a lot more like a rookie season now than it did in April, and it feels like he’s one of the riders who badly needed the summer break to reset and refocus, especially with what’s happening across the garage.
Raul Fernandez, after four years, contract buyout offers, a falling out at KTM and a boatload of development work, might finally be figuring this out. It was a controversial decision to keep him in US colours ahead of the more experienced Miguel Oliveira, but it seems that Trackhouse and Davide Brivio’s perseverance is finally starting to get some results. Six points in his first six weekends to start the season had the knives being sharpened after Ogura’s hot start. But he’s had 6 Top 10 finishes in the last eight, including the last five in a row. We even saw him in Parc Ferme as top independent in Brno. This was the Fernandez we were all hoping for when he had that record-breaking one-and-done season in Moto2. All of a sudden, he’s become one of the in-form riders in the field entering the break. I’ll be very curious to see if this trend continues.
Overall, there’s some genuine hope in the Aprilia camp again after a couple of years of metaphorical and literal wheelspin. If they can keep up their forward trend, they could be a Tier B Factory by this time next year. Stay tuned.
Jorge Martin – N/A / Marco Bezzecchi – 9/10 / Ai Ogura – 5/10 / Raul Fernandez – 6/10
Ducati – ULLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLTRA COMBO
Pertamina Enduro VR46 Racing Team (3rd)
Franco Morbidelli – 6th in Points (139), 2 Podiums, 2 Sprint Podiums, 9 Top 10’s (10 Races)
Fabio Di Giannantonio – 5th in Points (142), 2 Podiums, 1 Sprint Podiums, 9 Top 10’s
BK8 Gresini Racing Team (2nd)
Fermin Aldeguer – 10th in Points (69), 1 Podium, 2 Sprint Podiums, 5 Top 10’s
Alex Marquez – 2nd in Points (261), 1 Win, 1 Sprint Win, 7 Podiums, 10 Sprint Podiums
Ducati Lenovo Team (1st)
Francesco Bagnaia – 3rd in Points (213), 1 Win, 1 Pole Position, 6 Podiums, 5 Sprint Podiums
Marc Marquez – 1st in Points (381), 8 Wins, 6 Pole Positions, 10 Podiums, 11 Sprint Wins
Well… kinda one-sided ain’t it?
Only three things in life are certain right now – Death, Taxes, and Ducati-powered dominance on two wheels. (Unless you’re in World Superbikes, bad luck Nicolo.)
Beneath the surface and the ridiculous results, it’s actually been a bit of a challenging season for Bologna. They struggled getting the GP25 formula right in testing, with both Marquez and Bagnaia rejecting the first version of the bike, with the 25’ eventually becoming a weird amalgamation of 2024 engine, but rotated with a new swingarm, and bits of pieces of old and new aero. It led to a genuinely difficult season of adaptation for Bagnaia, and Diggia as they got used to the change from 24 to 25. The general sentiment we’ve learnt from rider comments is that the speed is certainly there in the package, but with less rear-end grip and control, meaning the rider has to work harder to unlock the pace. More on that later.
But even with all those kinks, Ducati is a well-oiled machine where a lot of cogs have to go missing before it starts to malfunction. Think about it, how have they not cleaned house?
- France: Generally poor rider decision making, Zarco resting his nuts on the field’s head
- Silverstone: Ducati can’t run the soft front, slippery track surface equals lack of confidence and speed, only finishes third
That’s it. They’ve won 22 out of 24 races this season, Sprint and Grand Prix. I don’t think it’s by quite the dominant margin they have had in previous seasons, but I think we all know what the big kicker has been.
VR46 has had the steady of the three teams, if a little unspectacular. Franco Morbidelli has been solid, with some decent early results on his GP24. It feels like ages ago when he got his first GP podium in three years at Argentina, followed up by another one in Qatar. But it wouldn’t be a Franco season without drama, and he’s been in the wars all season.
Twice he’s been penalised for blocking in Qualifying (His situational awareness has been atrocious for years), and he completely wiped out Maverick Vinales in Italy, and was fortunate he wasn’t hit with a harsher punishment. He’s probably at home right now sharpening his pickaxe waiting for Aleix Espargaro’s next wildcard appearance after Silverstone. He’s been good, but with Alex Marquez on the same machine, it’s hard not to draw harsher questions.
Fabio Di Giannantonio has had one of the three GP25’s this year after a strong 2024 season, but any gains he’s had on the 24’, it feels like he’s failed to fully utilise. He’s talked all season of struggling to adapt to the front end feeling of the bike, often feeling “numb” when under braking and cornering. It’s meant he’s sometimes struggled for confidence, and hence, pace.
He’s had a couple of strong weekends – Mugello at home stands out most with that beautiful penultimate lap pass on Pecco Bagnaia for the podium at Savelli. But Austin remains his only other podium finish this year, which feels unideal for someone on the best bike in the field. This is still his best MotoGP season by a distance, but more might be required soon, especially if he wants to keep the rights to the third factory bike. There’s been another…
Fermin Aldeguer is an intriguing case over at Gresini. It’s Year 1 of the four-year plan, and like with many rookies, there’s been some erratic results. At his best, he’s as quick as some of the strongest Dukes out there. Outstanding at Le Mans, and completely fearless in the rain to double podium there. He seems to like the Sprint format, he’s eighth overall there with four Top 5’s. But to be expected, there’s also weekends where he’s pretty anonymous and seemingly still figuring things out. You can see why Ducati has faith in the young man, there is definitely a good MotoGP rider there somewhere, if it can be harnessed and managed, I think there’s a lot of upside here. But they’ll be teething problems.
Alex Marquez though? Wow. What a season he’s had, and in the eyes of many, the season we all thought he could have been all those years ago when he was grinding away in Moto2, Moto3, and those Gohan in DBZ-esque flashes of brilliance when he was at Honda. Despite only one victory and that magical day at Jerez, he’s put together what would be in any other scenario, a Championship level season, via sheer suffocating consistency.
Alex Marquez has finished in second place or better in 17 out of 24 races so far this season. For the first two months of the Championship, he was keeping his brother honest via only losing 8 points a weekend if Marc doubled up, something he didn’t do early on. It was working brilliantly, until the most recent races. Silverstone will be seen as a chance gone begging – Winning the Sprint and looking like the genuine quickest rider, only to crash after just seven seconds of the race. Even with a Red Flag restart, the spare bike just didn’t have the setup to contend.
Then came the July from hell. A big crash at the Assen TT led to 25 lost points to Marc, and a broken metacarpal in his hand he had to nurse through the Sachsenring. Then he gets to Brno, and doesn’t score a point via wheelspin off the line in the Sprint, and then a crash taking out Joan Mir in the Grand Prix. The big problem? Marc doesn’t drop a point in that spell.
Alex Marquez was down by 40 points after Mugello. Three weekends later, it tripled to 120 and any long shot of a Championship is virtually dead in the water.
Did Alex need to be a title contender to have an outstanding season though? Absolutely not, we just moved the goalposts when we realised that the early podiums weren’t a fluke and this was a genuine step forward. Now he’s got to take on the biking equivalent of God. Good luck.
Speaking of which, the factory team. And man, what a weird season it’s been for Francesco Bagnaia. If you are a believer in him, I thought we were due for a fascinating title fight between him and the new to adapt Marc Marquez. Then Marc won in Thailand. And Argentina. Pecco got a freebie in Austin. Then got beaten in Qatar, one of his staple rounds. By then, we all already kinda knew where this was headed.
Pecco has been in a war with the Ducati GP25 from Day 1, and it’s not a battle he’s been winning. As said before, he didn’t like the adjustments made to the GP24 as it took away one of Pecco’s strongest abilities as a rider, his confidence under heavy braking and his corner entry. It’s what made him so hard to beat in his Championship years. He’s not had too many dreadful days – Just one crash in Grand Prix’s of his own making at Silverstone, he’s also kept his other major weakness, and that was Sprint races. He just can’t extract the Ducati’s speed when the Sprint fuel tank is on the bike. Pecco pretty much lost the 2024 Championship due to his shortcomings on Saturday, and it’s continued into this season.
Pecco is 168 points behind Marquez through 12 weekends. It’s done. And it’s going to be the type of beating that I fear people will use to diminish the two titles he has won. Harsh. You can only beat who they put in front of you, and it’s not Pecco’s fault we lost four prime Marquez years which he feasted on. But anyone thinking that Bagnaia was in Marquez’s league, have been slapped down.
You’ve waited long enough. Let’s talk about Marc Marquez. And I’ll cut to the chase. It may be the greatest first half of a season since 2014. And for sheer vibes, it might be the best since Mick Doohan’s 1997.
Why? Lemme explain. There are three Marquez seasons that stand out more than any other to me. The only two that clearly rival 2025’s, are his 2014 and 2019 Honda seasons. In 2014, you had the surprise factor. Honda had the genuine best bike on the grid that year, and Marquez then shocked everyone by consistently beating the brakes off the field. In 2019, Marquez lost many one-on-one dogfights but it was his most consistent season as a threat to win. 19 races, 12 wins, 6 second places, and just one DNF which was a failure of his engine braking in Austin, a race he was leading by four seconds.
This? This is different. This is Marquez literally and metaphorically aura farming. It’s the air of invincibility and inevitability that has come with this season. He had a ropey start with the crash in Austin in the rain from losing concentration with a two second lead, and then crashing in Jerez when he panicked and pushed too hard at his best corner. He’s been virtually unstoppable since. 19 wins out of 24 races this season, 11 out of 12 in Sprints, and the deep knowledge that at this point, if Marquez keeps it upright, he wins. He can make the deep, bold passes that Pecco and Alex Marquez can’t make. He has the raw speed to beat anyone in a dogfight. He can defend when under pressure like in Assen. And he can win in the wet like in Germany. It’s the most complete Marquez we’ve likely ever seen.
I tried to figure out the best way to try and explain his 2025 brilliance so far. And the best way I could do it was via maths. Here’s a comparison of Marquez’s 2025, and some other key recent milestones in his career through the first 12 races:
2025 Marc Marquez, if you ONLY counted his points on Sunday – 240 Points
2025 Alex Marquez so far, who’s on par with anything we’ve seen in the Sprint era – 261 Points
2022 Pecco Bagnaia’s entire Championship season – 265 Points
2024 Pecco Bagnaia, who’d win 11 Grand Prix that season and lose – 276 Points
2014 Marc Marquez, who won the first 10 in a row and 11 out of 12 – 288 Points
2024 Jorge Martin, who’d go on to win the title – 299 Points
2019 Marc Marquez if we multiplied his score by 1.48 to replicate the addition of Sprints* – 370 Points
2025 Marc Marquez through 12 Races – 381 Points
2024 Marc Marquez’s entire season at Gresini – 392 Points
2014 Marc Marquez, on the same metric we used with 2019 – 426 Points
*Why 1.48? Because a Sprint Win’s 12 points is 48% of a GP win’s 25. So it gives you a rough idea of what 2014 and 2019 Marquez could look like if the Sprint format was around back then. It’s not an exact science, but I like the idea of “pace” as a metric.
That’s 31.75 points per weekend so far. There aren’t many Superlatives I’ve got left for Marc’s season. It’s that ridiculous. His Sunday points alone would put him second. JUST his Sprints would put him sixth and one point behind Diggia. We are well on pace for what could very well be the greatest MotoGP season ever. It already doesn’t feel like it’s a matter of “if”, it’s a matter of “how early”. A Misano title win in September isn’t unthinkable. Which is just… man.
Marc Marquez – 10/10 / Francesco Bagnaia – 8/10 / Alex Marquez – 9/10 / Fermin Aldeguer – 5.5/10 / Franco Morbidelli – 6.5/10 / Fabio Di Giannantonio – 7/10
And that sums up 2025 so far. It’s been a tricky year, one with a lot of frustration over the state of the product. We’re still stuck in a lot of dirty air fests where passing is hard without obscene risk. Michelin ditching development of a tire that could have saved the racing product, and they’re now quitting the sport altogether. But there’s also the excitement in the air over MotoGP now being under Liberty Media ownership and what their clout could mean for the sport. The second half of the season feels academic, but that future over the horizon into 2027, is fascinating. And sometimes, it’s the hope that gets you. See you in December for my full season review, and this Sunday for the Austrian Grand Prix. Thanks for reading!
