Well… that was certainly a year.
Welcome back to another Season Review, by your boi, Dre. MotoGP’s 2024 season was one of Ducati’s dominance, maybe even more so than last year. Still, there were some interesting stories from within the dominant manufacturer, and further down the grid too. So it’s about time I run the numbers and try to make sense out of what was a year that felt familiar, yet also very different.
I’ll still be going team-by-team, in reverse manufacturer order, so Honda first, via Repsol, then LCR, Yamaha, and so on. This time, I’ll also include rider ratings because I don’t know why I omitted them last year; that was odd of me. Right, let’s rock…
The Rebranding
Turns out, MotoGP has had a rebranding of their main logo and typefaces at the end of the season and heading into 2025. Before anyone asks, there have been rumblings about this since the middle of last year, so don’t pin this one purely on Liberty Media – remember, they don’t officially own the company yet.
Firstly, I’ll say this has been needed for some time. Chequered flag-style logos in Motorsport for me are very cliched, and that style of logo had already been phased out by MotoGP for quite some time. If anything it had become quite inconsistent with some of the other typefaces and graphics the company had been using, so getting everything uniform for me, was a good idea.
My opinion? I think it’s fine. I don’t like the inconsistencies with the “A” and “R” in their new typeface, and the logo is a little on the bland side, but I get the usual trend of sports franchises simplifying things in the 2020s, and I don’t hate it. What I’ll be waiting for is to see how this new logo and style is implemented into their broadcasts and presentations before I truly pass judgement. F1’s current logo from 2017 was panned on reveal but I think has grown on a lot of people over time, and I wonder if MotoGP’s will end the same over the years. Even if right now it’s a little “F1 Manager”.
Right, onto what you’re actually here for…
Honda
What another tragedy for the most established big-name brand in the series. We knew losing Marc Marquez would be potentially disastrous, but we didn’t know just how much Honda would be down by. Remember, they had 185 points last year and won a race via Alex Rins in Austin. This year, they dropped to 75, and only cracked the Top 10 in Grand Prix twice all season.
In the overall standings, four of the bottom six riders were the Honda’s. They were often over a second off the pace, sometimes two. No one talked about their rear-end chatter because it didn’t matter, they were too slow, and too much on the ragged edge for it to become a factor. Ken Kawauchi, their technical director from the Suzuki dissolving, was moved to the test team.
And to top it all off, their most iconic partner in Repsol after 29 years together, ended their relationship halfway through the season. Castrol will be moving over next season, but I fear for Honda given the sheer lack of airtime their bikes will largely get at the back of the field. In any case, Repsol walking away is a damning indictment of where Honda is as a factory.
Honda to their credit, isn’t taking it lying down. They’ve brought in Romano Albesiano from Aprilia as their new technical director, a good camp given how far behind they’ve been on aerodynamics, Aprilia’s speciality. It also marks the continuation of Honda bringing in more outsiders from outside their camp to try and rectify their problems.
Aleix Espargaro is joining a fully focused test fleet of riders now Taka Nakagami is also retiring and Stefan Bradl is likely to join him. This is a Honda team that’s still assembling pieces, and they have a great fleet of riders on paper. But now more than ever looks like they’re truly at rock bottom. The only way from here has to be up. Right?
Repsol Honda
Joan Mir – 21st in Points (21), Best Finish – 11th / Grand Prix Ranking – 21st / Sprint Ranking – 20th (19 Races)
Luca Marini – 22nd in Points (14), Best Finish – 12th / Grand Prix Ranking – 22nd / Sprint Ranking – 24th
It’s not even that Repsol Honda was the worst team in MotoGP. It’s that they weren’t even close. They had 35 points, but LCR had 86. Their customers outscored them by two and a half to one.
Joan Mir had a 50% DNF rate, with 10 crashes in races across the season. His pace was relatively fine compared to the other Hondas and his teammate in particular, but his races were so often cut short that it just didn’t matter. Luca Marini was largely upright but just slow. Sometimes significantly slower than everyone else in the field as he had to learn the difficult Honda.
He didn’t score his first point until the Sachsenring at the Summer Break. He strung together some solid points finishes at the back end of the year, but he was still the worst of the full-timers, and scoreless in Sprints. It’s how he ranked 24th in a list of 22 full-timers because Dani Pedrosa and Pol Espargaro scored sprint points and he didn’t.
Luca Marini has one more season on his current deal, and Joan Mir signed up for two more. I know the Honda is poor, but their sister team is proof that there’s more on the table. There needs to be better collaboration between the riders, LCR, and the test team because on any level, this is unacceptable. The best production Luca had in 2024, was making a f***ing baby.
Edit: As I finish this over the end of the test, Joan Mir revealed that Honda had no new parts to test for Barcelona. Motherfuc-
Joan Mir – 3/10 / Luca Marini – 2/10
LCR Honda
Johann Zarco – 17th in Points (55), Best Finish – 8th / Grand Prix Ranking – 17th / Sprint Ranking – 19th
Takaaki Nakagami – 19th in Points (31), Best Finish – 11th / Grand Prix Ranking – 19th / Sprint Ranking – 22nd
I suspected that Johann Zarco would be a difference-maker signing for Honda at the end of last season, so it doesn’t surprise me he was comfortably the best thing on their bike all season long. At times I said he was doing the lord’s work in making the occasional Q2 and even scoring a pair of Top 10’s in Thailand and Indonesia. Yes, they were attritional, but the value is in staying alive out there. The man now has experience with four different manufacturers and it showed here, and Honda needs to build around him, they’re not going to get any better as an overall project until they can prove there’s something worth investing in.
Taka Nakagami’s experience also prevailed here relative to the rest of Honda. Or at least it would have, had Honda given him a current spec bike before his last race in the top class. He didn’t have the ceiling that Zarco had, but he was in the points fairly consistently. But of course, we have to talk about his retirement, which was announced last month. Taka was a solid journeyman who gave all of his best seven years in MotoGP at Honda. Sometimes, given the damage to his tendons he had when riding through pain last season, I wonder if he was giving up too much for his role within Honda. We’ll always have 2020, and the season where he was ultra-consistent and had a genuine chance to win at Aragon until he tucked the front on the opening lap. Gutted he never got that GP podium, and missed so many years of a home race, but I will always commend his dedication and determination. Congrats to Taka on a great career.
Johann Zarco – 6/10 / Taka Nakagami – 4/10
Yamaha
Being 60 points worse as a manufacturer compared to last year is never good, but Yamaha is another team that feels like they’re in a big transitional period. I think there are genuine reasons to be more hopeful on this side of the Japanese Cup.
It’s the end of an era in many senses. Lin Jarvis, their legendary team boss of 26 years is hanging up the shirt after winning eight World Championships. And in his final year in charge, he made significant steps to help his team’s future. They made a huge offer to Pramac to get a satellite team back on the grid under their machinery, including rider salaries, seven years of commitment, a Moto2 development team and more. It was a huge, necessary step towards their development back up the grid. Snagging Miguel Oliviera and Jack Miller, two race-winning, experienced riders only help in the long run.
They got their star rider; Fabio Quartararo to buy in for two more years despite the pressure of potentially losing him to Aprilia. He’s still one of the best in the world and has put the entire factory on his back since their 2022 decline, and while he arguably isn’t the best developmental rider (TL:DR; asking for more power on a bike that has been plagued by rear-end chatter and poor electronics is a horrible mix), he’s still by a mile their best talent. Unlocking the potential of Alex Rins will remain a big step for 2025, more on that later.
And finally, they’ve started development on a V4 engine, meaning the Inline-4 engine is dead in GP. Yamaha was the final holdout, and while I think this is more of a move with 2027 and the new regulations in mind, Yamaha being in the lowest tier for concessions means they’re exempt from the engine development freeze coming next year, giving them a headstart to help close the gap to the big hitters.
This is still a Yamaha team in a bad place and a definitive fourth on the list of current manufacturers, and they still have big competitive problems. Their bike still has no one-lap pace (And this is with one of the sport’s best qualifiers on the bike), and adding more power to help their combative issues made their bike more difficult to ride over the season for little to no net benefit, and as mentioned, Alex Rins remains an enigma going forward for them. But at least compared to Honda, Yamaha has a clear plan for the future. That’s something.
Fabio Quartararo – 13th in Points (113), Best Finish – 6th / Grand Prix Ranking – 13th / Sprint Ranking – 13th
Alex Rins – 18th in Points (31), Best Finish – 8th / Grand Prix Ranking: 18th / Sprint Ranking: 23rd (17 Races)
As my American readers often say, Fabio Quartararo gave it the ol’ college try. Sometimes too much so, that home race at Le Mans is a classic example of overdoing it trying to please the 115k-strong legion of home fans. But overall, I have no concerns about Fabio’s riding, he’s constantly trying to harness everything he can out of a fundamentally slow package. Bad in dirty air, even with the extra grunt of the 2024 engine, difficult to ride quickly, and now without some of Yamaha’s signature cornering and apex speed to compensate. I still think Yamaha needs to listen to him a little less and their test setup of Cal Crutchlow and Andrea Dovizioso a little more, but we’ll see what happens when the V4’s up and running.
Alex Rins, I AM concerned about. This was meant to be a huge snag for Yamaha, ripping him out from under Honda’s nose after a horrible leg break in 2023 derailed his entire season. A healthy Rins in a competitive package is a genuine race winner, so I was excited to see what he could bring to the table with Yamaha, but sadly, so far the answer has been… not much.
The general pattern has been that Rins is lagging from between a quarter and a half second behind Fabio in qualifying and race trim and that’s just not an ideal place to be, as the back end of the field is surprisingly competitive and that can be the difference between 10th and no points at all. There were a few weekends where Alex could run Fabio close, but more often than not he was competing for fringe points, with some mild improvement towards the end of the season. Eighth in Malaysia was really solid. More weekends like that and he’s in good shape, but 2025 needs to be the season where Rins proves he’s still him, especially with Miguel Oliveira now in Yamaha colours and well-liked on the grid.
Fabio Quartararo – 7/10 / Alex Rins – 3/10
Aprilia
This was meant to be the no-excuses season for Aprilia. Multiple wins in 2023, both riders in the Top 7 of the Championship, a package that was very quick in low-grip conditions and arguably the best aerodynamics of anyone in the field. Trackhouse coming over and running factory equipment for extra development and support. This was meant to be the foothold year for Aprilia to mount a genuine challenge for Ducati. It lasted about five rounds.
The opening rounds were promising. Maverick Vinales won the Portimao Sprint and should have finished the GP in 2nd if it weren’t for his gearbox failing. Then he doubled up and dominated Austin, with that stunning ride through the field from 13th after a poor start. I had genuinely started to believe… but Aprilia was never able to replicate that kind of performance for the rest of 2024. It’s not dreadful by any stretch, but it’s hard not to be disappointed with the early promise. Hell, even KTM stole their lunch money at the end of the season by finishing 2nd as a manufacturer via stronger results to close out the year. By year’s end, the tech talk in the camp was over the riders burning themselves on an overheating bike.
Aprilia’s aims themselves were to be a strong second by the end of the year. They failed, and they’ve had to make sacrifices. Maverick Vinales had enough and has left for Tech3 KTM, and Aleix Espargaro was always rumoured to be retiring at the end of the year anyway. They lucked into Ducati being unable to juggle all of their talent and have now snagged the reigning World Champion in Jorge Martin, and 2023 3rd place finisher Marco Bezzecchi. Objectively, the best pair of riders they’ve ever had, with infinite upside. Just one problem… you don’t have a bike right now that can challenge for top honours.
It feels like the clock is ticking with Aprilia. They’ve likely got two good years to show to a World Champion rider in JM89 that this is a project worth sticking with, otherwise… they risk downgrading in rider quality, which they need if they want any chance of mounting a threat to Ducati’s fleet in the long term.
Maverick Vinales – 7th in Points (190), 1 Pole, 1 Win, 2 Sprint Wins / Grand Prix Ranking – 10th / Sprint Ranking – 7th
Aleix Espargaro – 11th in Points (163), 1 Sprint Win, 3 Sprint Podiums, Best Finish – 4th / Grand Prix Ranking – 12th / Sprint Ranking – 8th
Maverick Vinales was pretty solid this season, easily his best since his removal from Yamaha. The start of his season was electric with that dominant, perfect weekend in Austin, as well as a second Sprint win in Portimao. He was right with the early Championship leaders, but ultimately, Aprilia’s failure to cure its rear-end chatter led to results falling once they got to Europe. After Jerez, Bat-Mav made his mind up and decided to leave for KTM, out of sheer frustration that Austin couldn’t be replicated as Ducati put a vice grip on the Championship.
Aleix Espargaro wasn’t quite as stellar as in years past, but I think he wasn’t riding with 100% dedication or support given he’d announced his retirement early in the season, one that was being called as far back as last year. He still took Sprint glory in Catalunya when Bagnaia tucked the front as one last amazing home race moment and a fitting end to a great career for Il Capitano. I look forward to seeing what he can bring to the table at Honda.
Maverick Vinales – 7/10 / Aleix Espargaro – 5.5/10
Trackhouse Racing
Miguel Oliveira – 15th in Points (75), 1 Sprint Podium, Best Finish – 6th / Grand Prix Ranking – 16th / Sprint Ranking – 15th (15 Races)
Raul Fernandez – 16th in Points (66), Best Finish – 6th / Grand Prix Ranking – 15th / Sprint Ranking – 17th
This was the most interesting team in MotoGP going into the year because no one quite knew what they were going to be once we got going. Some had them down as podium chasers, others complete busts. Now the year is done my general stance has been… more bad than good.
Now, I don’t want to pin all of this on Justin Marks’ feet. This was already a poorly run team in legal and political turmoil before Dorna intervened, and a team that lost a lot of key personnel from the RNF days. It was always going to be a challenge for a first-time MotoGP team owner to come in and immediately turn things around, even if they proved they were prepared to spend big early on via factory Aprilias and the acquisition of Davide Brivio of Renault and Suzuki as team boss.
But the transition to Aprilia’s didn’t go well. They often failed to extract the same level of performance compared to the factory team (And they struggled with that at the best of times), and they didn’t get a second 2024 Aprilia for their chosen lead rider in Raul Fernandez until Silverstone, halfway through the season. An injury to Miguel Oliveira late on in the season derailed a lot of track time too, leading to them finishing ninth out of 11 teams overall, only ahead of the Honda teams by year’s end.
There was almost certainly some disconnect between Oliveira and Trackhouse because the rumours were strong from early doors that he was being pushed out, and people got very defensive about him on the bird apps. I still think he was the man to lead the team with his experience and upside (especially in the wet), but something was off about it.
Even more so when you consider the team was adamant that Raul Fernandez had the higher ceiling… which I just haven’t seen yet. We got one very quick flash when he led the Sprint race at Catalunya 1, but the rush of blood to the head he had from leading the race led to him missing his braking point by 100 feet and crashing out.
And the scoreboard doesn’t lie. Miguel missed a quarter of the season through injury and he still beat Fernandez by 9 points. And what’s concerning to me is, there wasn’t a noticeable uptick in results pre/post-2024 Aprilia. (43 of his 66 points were on last year’s bike). I suspect a lot of this is more down to KTM ruining what was an S-Tier prospect entering MotoGP, but we’re heading into Year 4 of his career and he needs to show something to validate his seat in my opinion.
Miguel Oliveira – 5/10 / Raul Fernandez – 4/10
See you in Part 2 for KTM, Ducati and some general thoughts heading into 2025…
