And we’re back for Part 2 of The Hater’s Guide to 2025, and it’s time for the two-wheeled world to take center stage as it’s time to preview the 2025 MotoGP Season.
In this post, a review of all the 2024 off-season, the state of all the factories coming in – the changes to riders in the field, testing in Buriram and Sepang and more! Let’s get into it! CUE THE LIGHTBOX
The Calendar And Cleanup Stuff
1 – Thailand (March 2nd)
2 – Argentina (March 16th)
3 – Americas (March 30th)
4 – Qatar (April 13th)
5 – Le Mans (April 27th)
6 – Jerez (May 11th)
7 – Britain (May 25th)
8 – Aragon (June 8th)
9 – Italy (June 22nd)
10 – Netherlands (June 29th)
11 – Germany (July 13th)
12 – Brno (July 20th)
13 – Austria (August 17th)
14 – Hungary (August 24th)
15 – Catalunya (September 7th)
16 – San Marino (September 14th)
17 – Japan (September 28th)
18 – Indonesia (October 5th)
19 – Australia (October 19th)
20 – Malaysia (October 26th)
21 – Portugal (November 9th)
22 – Valencia (November 16th)
Reserve – India (Buddh)
BIG changes to the calendar for MotoGP this year. The biggest of them all is that the Triple Headers are dead. The teams complained about the crunch scheduling towards the back end of the year after the last few seasons have had six races in seven weeks to close out the year, so now, those days are over. Even the flyaways now have breaks in them. Thank God.
This is set to be MotoGP’s biggest-ever calendar with 22 races and some big movements. Thailand now opens the season on March 2nd with Qatar moved into April to avoid a clash with the religious festival of Ramadan likely taking up all of the month. Spain gets two races in less than a month with Aragon moving to the first week of June, and Britain also moving into May instead of its usual post-Summer break slot in August. India’s been demoted to a reserve over promotional cash.
Brno returns to MotoGP with new ownership and a race in July while Balaton Park makes its debut for Hungary on August 24th, with Catalunya moving back into September. Portimao also returns for another Portuguese GP but now in November as the penultimate race of the season on November 9th, making it five races in the Iberian Peninsula again. Catalunya now also keeps its place on the calendar until 2031, likely a goodwill gesture for stepping in to save the season finale last year.
Overall, I like the changes. If you’re going to expand to 22 races, at least do the teams a solid and don’t make them work three 100+ hour weeks in a row, that would break most people. Some of the changes are a little weird, like having 12 races in a row in Europe from April to September, Portugal feels a little forced there in November, but glad we’ve got some good tracks returning. With Argentina back and Baloton Park signed off, for the first time in six years, it’s looking like a MotoGP schedule will run as advertised. At least I hope.
Not a lot else to report in terms of regulations heading into 2025, with only minor changes ahead of the big 2027 regulation shift. The only significant change is barring Tier D concessioned Yamaha and Honda, KTM, Aprilia and Ducati are now under an engine development freeze until the end of the 2026 season. It should give Team Japan some more time to close the gap between now and the big regulation shift in 2027.
Former broadcaster Simon Crafar takes over from Freddie Spencer as Chief Steward, and Liberty Media isn’t in charge of the sport yet after all, with the European Competition Commission leading an investigation into the MotoGP/F1 tie-up potentially being a Monopoly. We’ll likely get the results of that in the Summer, rather than what we originally thought was going to be Christmas time.
There are also murmurs (Credit to Simon Patterson over at The Race), that Moto3 will be changed up again in 2027, with the possibility of bigger 500cc engines used instead of the current 250cc machines. I suspect this is the series covering itself in case KTM quits the sport beforehand, with one-make and even production bikes a possibility in an attempt to cut costs. For me, I’m all for it. I’ve been saying for years that we need more power in that class to break up the dangerous pack racing that Moto3 has Championed throughout the years. This might be a good way towards doing just that, even if it doesn’t feel like that’s the motivation behind the move.
Onto the factories, 2024 reverse order, a Motorsport101 tradition.
⭐ – One MotoGP Championship / 🔰 – Rookie
Honda
Honda HRC Castrol
#10 – Luca Marini (22nd in 2024 Standings)
#36 – Joan Mir ⭐ (21st)
Castrol/Idemitsu Honda LCR
#5 – Johann Zarco (17th)
#35 – Somkiat Chantra 🔰 (10th in 2024 Moto2 Championship)
It’s truly a new era for Honda in MotoGP. For the first time in 30 years, they’re without their partner in Repsol. It’s a largely unchanged line-up across the board for the Japanese factory, with the big hire being Romano Albesiano, joining the team as their new Technical Director after 11 years with Aprilia. He has over three decades of experience in biking engineering and was a key figure in Aprilia’s return to competitiveness. And Honda needs all the help it can get.
There was nothing good to take away from their 2024 season and where they’re at as a manufacturer. Only two Top 10’s as a factory in Grand Prix trim. Their problems are numerous, including but not limited to making a lot of its lap time on the front tyre, which just isn’t as powerful in the Michelin era. They’re still years behind their competitors in terms of aerodynamics. And while they weren’t one of the big sufferers of the infamous rear-end chatter of 2024… they were often too lacking in rear grip to be directly affected by it.
The factory team retains their line-up, which is strong on paper but under-performed. Joan Mir struggles with a Honda he can’t control after 10 crashes in GP’s last season, and fears growing that his Suzuki magic in 2020 and 2021 is vanishing. Luca Marini had the opposite problem, while he hardly ever crashed the Honda, he was the slowest rider on track on many occasions. Hopefully, a second year there can see him better utilise his talent.
Johann Zarco also sticks around across the garage with LCR, the talisman of the squad and the only real bright spot of last year, dragging that Honda into some respectable points finishes. With Taka Nakagami retiring and becoming a test rider for the brand, Somkiat Chantra takes the Idemitsu seat, with the brand always keen to promote another East Asian talent. Just a shame the #1 guy on the board for that, is at Trackhouse. I’m not expecting much from Chantra, who always seemed to underperform compared to the upside he’s sometimes shown (He is a Moto2 race winner), but I think he’s in the right team given expectations will be low from the start.
As mentioned before, Honda isn’t taking their struggles lying down. MotoGP success is infused into the company’s DNA, and it’s rolled every possible dice since the pandemic. Loaned out development of parts of the bike to places like Kalex? Check. Top-end talent? Check. Taking other team bosses like Ken Kawauchi and now Albesiano? Check. Bolstered the test side? Now you have Aleix Espargaro, an excellent feedback savant with Aprilia. Check. And remember, because they’re still on Tier D concessions, they’re unaffected by the engine freeze.
Testing was… genuinely promising. On raw times, Honda was in the top eight across both tests in Sepang and Buriram. With a new mass damper to aid grip, Mir was quicker than his qualifying runs at their respective tracks last season. They still look lacking on longer race runs and in top-end speed, but it’s a step in the right direction and on one-lap speed, they’re quick enough where Q2’s should be achievable.
Alberto Puig has told the media that Honda can’t afford to wait until 2027 to make a breakthrough. For the first time since taking over from Livio Suppo, I fully agree with him.
Yamaha
Monster Energy Yamaha
#20 – Fabio Quartararo ⭐ (13th)
#42 – Alex Rins (18th)
Prima Pramac Yamaha
#88 – Miguel Oliveira (15th)
#43 – Jack Miller (14th)
Across the Japanese pond, lies Yamaha, who have gone about things differently to combat their more recent struggles. Lin Jarvis laid out a solid plan for 2025 to keep the wheels turning in his final season in charge, now it needs to be executed.
Yamaha’s turn away from what made them strong in recent years is a huge reason they’re in the predicament they’re in now. Listening to Fabio Quartararo’s demands was a mistake. The Frenchman wanted more power, and while Yamaha made up part of the deficit to their rivals, it cost them all their “rideability” as a machine. What made legends of Valentino and Jorge was the smoothness of the Yamaha to ride, carrying phenomenal apex speed and corner approach. In recent years, they’ve struggled with the mandated electronic package, rear wheelspin and poor top-end grunt and it’s demoted them to midfielders at best, and outside of the points on bad days.
Their calling card, the inline-4 engine is finally being retired as they switch to a V4 engine that they can freely develop as they’re unaffected by the engine freeze. They were the last holdout after Suzuki bailed at the end of 2022, and have had to fend off calls to swap for years beforehand. But with a new regulation set looming just two years away; open development and everyone else on the grid on V4 engines, now is the time for Yamaha to take the pain and commit.
The good news is that the factory seems to have made a breakthrough. The 2025 M1 has a new engine, swingarm, frame, and aero package. And it’s working well. Quartararo was amongst the fastest in the Sepang test, fastest on Day 2, Top 3 on the final day, and faster than his Q2 time last Autumn. They struggled a little more with the Michelin tyres for the second test in Buriram, but Yamaha seemingly has their qualifying ace back. If the race pace holds up, it could be the best of the rest once the season starts.
Yamaha also has extra support now as Pramac made a return to the brand after 20 years as Ducati’s customer. Miguel Oliveira and Trackhouse never seemingly clicked and while the 30-year-old has never hit the dizzying hits some projected for him (It’s me, I’m the “some”), he has five MotoGP wins with KTM and is a very solid experienced pair of hands.
The same goes for Jack Miller, who never clicked with KTM either, but he gets a fresh start with his fourth different manufacturer, and low expectations as they have to get their hands dirty under the fairing. Miller is a superb locker room guy and with Augusto Fernandes in the back as a test rider, I like the crew they’ve assembled.
Fabio Quartararo has signed on for another two years after taking solace in how hard Yamaha is working to right the ship, but he can’t be happy at finishing thirteenth in the Championship last year. He worked miracles to crack the Top 8 at times but he needs to lean on his team as while I think he’s still incredible on the track, he doesn’t have that rider’s brain that other more experienced veterans have.
Alongside him, Alex Rins is in a contract year and needs to find something to earn a new contract. Rins right now feels like Franco Morbidelli when he was seeing out the last of his races with Yamaha. He needs to close that gap to a couple of tenths rather than half a second, or else I fear they may be going back to the Moto2 well, especially now Pramac has a Moto2 team they can scout from…
Yamaha is working as hard as Honda is to solve their problems, even if the approaches are very different. A clear plan is coming together and it may be even sooner than anticipated. And hey, if they have made immdiate gains, that could be a problem. If they get to within 40% of Ducati’s total, they move into Tier C for concessions and then they can’t debut their new V4 until 2027. Yamaha may be in a stickier situation than we think…
KTM
Red Bull Factory KTM
#33 – Brad Binder (5th)
#51 – Pedro Acosta (6th / 2024 Rookie of the Year)
Red Bull KTM Tech3
#12 – Maverick Vinales (7th)
#23 – Enea Bastianini (4th)
Oh boy. Talking about KTM has become tiring because so much of their future is up in the air. Austria’s courts are going to accept their restructuring proposals after being able to raise enough funds to pay off 30% of the 2.3 billion euros of debt they’re in to get the rest written off. Stefan Peirer, CEO of the mobility parent company that owns KTM, is stepping down, his painful prediction thought the post-pandemic boom of bike buying would never end, putting the company on the brink of collapse.
The bad news is that KTM is likely to cut 1,600 jobs. More bad news: The creditors want them to pull out of MotoGP at the end of the year. The good news is that’s only a suggestion and KTM will fight till the end to stick around. It helps that new money is coming in with a company that could have its debt written off by then. Neutral news, we still don’t lnow until next week whether the Austrian courts will approve their bailout plan (25th). Good news: Bajaj, who owns 49% of KTM as is, may be interested in taking a majority stake as they expand into Europe with their bike range.
Good news; They’re still selling bikes well under the surface, their adventure range in particular is market-leading. If you clear out the debt, there is a healthy business here and there’s genuine hope they can be saved. Bad news, the latest update has a US Hedge fund alledgely buying up their venture debt and putting pressure on the company to pay back a greater percentage than the 30% required by the Austrian courts. Not ideal.
But there’s also a knock-on effect on the here and now for KTM too. Development on their MotoGP bike has paused while the finances get sorted, so they’re already three months behind the field and there’s uncertainty about what development could be on the cards in 2025. Newly signed Enea Bastianini has dropped his agent over fears he missed out on money by signing too quickly and is already showing classic buyer’s remorse.
They were the biggest sufferers of the rear-end chatter problems that plagued the sport with Michelin’s super-grippy rear tyre last year, and the experimental carbon-fibre chassis they debuted in 2023 didn’t make a difference to their outright pace. This is still a painfully inconsistent factory, challenging Ducati legitimately on good days, but struggling in the minor points when off the boil.
And they have no excuses anymore now they have the best four-rider fleet in the business. If Pedro Acosta has become their best rider after being a Rookie last year, that’s a gem that they should be doing everything to keep. Brad Binder is still a fantastic floor rider at worst, and now they have Maverick Vinales and Enea Bastianini onboard. Former Championship contenders and regular race winners at their best.
Their Sepang test was…mute. Acosta has kicked on where 2024 left off, way ahead of the rest of his teammates and challenging the Top 5 on raw speed and Sprint sims. But the media reaction to basic questioning on their status felt like he and KTM as a whole were masking their seeming lack of progress. There was some promising raw speed with Maverick Vinales finding some form late in the testing window, but the uncertainty here isn’t instilling confidence in anyone.
Any goodwill with the media has been snuffed by certain journos as they were frozen out from talking to the riders in Thailand for the Buriram test, as the team is saving money by not having their PR team in the country, and they’re not taking any chances that a rider says something that puts the factory in legal disrepute. Unideal.
The biggest issue KTM had a year ago was proving they had the minerals. For them, 2025 already feels like a damage-limitation job, with big uncertainity over… just about everything that’s associated with the brand, let alone the peformance of the MotoGP team. And what about Pedro Acosta? He might look better in yellow and white…
Aprilia
Aprilia Racing
#1 – Jorge Martin ⭐(2024 World Champion)
#72 – Marco Bezzecchi (12th)
Trackhouse Racing
#25 – Raul Fernandez (16th)
#79 – Ai Ogura 🔰 (2024 Moto2 World Champion)
Do you know how wild it is that you had an objectively mediocre 2024 season and fell into landing a World Champion just for being the fall-back option? Welcome to Aprilia, where nothing is straight-forward.
2024 was… a bit of a mixed bag for the Noale team. The RS-GP24 wasn’t terrible, with strong aerodynamics, and a good ultimate pace, but the low-grip track “ace in the hole” they had in previous years just didn’t matter. Maverick Vinales was excellent early on, blowing the hinges off the doors in Austin, but once the European rounds started, they weren’t troubling the big-boy positions. They only managed podiums on Saturday for the rest of the season, and at times, were pegged back by KTM, who were a bit more peaky over a full race.
As a result, change blew over. Aleix Espargaro had long teased retirement and followed through with it at Catalunya as he heads to Honda’s test team, Maverick Vinales got fed up with Aprilia’s inconsistency and burned down another bridge as he heads to Tech3 (Seriously, his off-season comments were scorching, he’s running out of places to go), and one of their big aero heads in Romano Albesiano is also now at Honda. Miguel Oliveira, one of the more experienced runners in the field, is now supporting Yamaha’s development.
But somehow, they took advantage of being in the right place at the right time. As much as they lost Albesiano, they did also snag the big back office pull in Fabiano Sterlacchini, formerly of KTM, as their new technical director. And the small unimportant matter of SNAGGING THE WORLD CHAMPION. Ducati went back on their word to Jorge Martin, the Spaniard turned it into a revenge tour, and a day after the Marquez news became official, Martin had crossed enemy lines.
Martin channelled that rejection with the help of a sports psychologist and a renewed mentality into stuffing the box score. 17 second places or better after crashing from the lead in Germany led to Bagnaia folding under pressure in Sepang and Martin stole the #1 plate like when CM Punk ran out of Chicago with a WWE belt.
Alongside Marco Bezzecchi, somehow, Aprilia’s still managed to upgrade on one of the strongest lineups in the sport, if the Italian can adapt to their engine braking, an element he was the best in the world at in 2023.
Their partner team in Trackhouse is in an unsettling position. I had to re-write this section due to the breaking news last week that co-owner Pitbull has left the team, without either party giving a reason for the split. We don’t know if there’s going to be any repercussions, but there’s been little signs that make me nervous.
For the team that wrote a lot of checks about bringing the American legacy back into MotoGP and some exciting early social outreach, their 2025 launch felt tame. A bland new colour scheme, a launch combined with the main NASCAR team, and a startling lack of sponsors. I get it, Justin Marks is very hands off and from what I’ve been told – this is Davide Brivio’s team in all but name, so we’ll have to see the medium-term impact of his management and the ownership situation.
Brivio made the call last season that they were building around Raul Fernandez and he now headlines the team on a RS-GP25. But this is Year 4 for the Spaniard and he doesn’t have much to show for his top-flight run. Not all of that is on him given KTM’s internal mess in precious years, but he needs results. Sixteenth in the standings last year with just a handful of Top 10s isn’t going to cut it anymore and this is a man who came into GP after the greatest rookie Moto2 season ever and he just hasn’t lived up to the billing since. Ai Ogura won’t have that kind of pressure alongside, but I hope he’s keen to prove that taking him over the media’s campaign to take Joe Roberts was the right call.
The Sepang test was a disaster for Aprilia. On Day 1, Jorge Martin broke metatarsals and carpals in both his hand and his foot, in a bizarre highside in which the team firmly laid the blame at Michelin’s door. A strange 15-degree drop in internal rear tyre temperature was seemingly the culprit. What Aprilia wasn’t so keen to say, was that Martin had run into the gravel on the lap before, hence the loss of tyre temperature. Yep, it was a rider error. Welp.
As a result, Martin had to fly home immediately for surgery on his injuries and as a result, he’ll have barely any testing going into opening day. I’d be a bit more cynical about the state of the factory going in, but Bez did put down some very strong lap times in Buriram that’s given me a little more assurance about where they’re at.
Overall, it feels like we’ve had the same goals for Aprilia for three years now. You’ve overcome the dark days, now you need to be a strong established runner-up to Ducati as your next foothold. I think they could still win a GP and a Sprint or two with Jorge Martin at the helm, but I don’t think it’ll be any more than that. They need consistency, reliability and a greater proof of concept across the whole season. And now you have a World Champion and 18 months to convince him to stick around. The clock is ticking.
Ducati
Pertamina Enduro VR46 Racing Team
#49 – Fabio Di Giannantonio (10th)
#21 – Franco Morbidelli (9th)
Gresini Racing
#73 – Alex Marquez (8th)
#54 – Fermin Aldeguer 🔰 (5th in 2024 Moto2 World Championship)
Ducati Lenovo Team
#63 – Francesco Bagnaia ⭐⭐ (2nd)
#93 – Marc Marquez ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ (3rd)
Ducati is just hitting “Endless Mode” on a successful Balatro run. How do you improve upon borderline perfection after winning 19 out of 20 GPs and 96% of all avaliable points in 2024?
Addition by subtraction. In American Sports language, Ducati traded Enea Bastianini, Jorge Martin and Pramac for the right to sign Marc Marquez to the brand. Necessary? Probably not. Worth it? Absolutely, how else are you going to clear Ante 11?
It’s a thinned-down Ducati operation for 2025. With Pramac switching back to Yamaha, Bologna’s down to six bikes, and just three will be running the latest machinery, the third being Diggia’s half of the VR46 garage. But with Davide Tardozzi and Gigi Dall’Igna already playing down the GP25 as only a minor spec upgrade on the GP24, this could be a floor-raiser for everyone else on the brand. Given the current rest of the field got smoked by Marc Marquez on a GP23 last year, it doesn’t exactly give me hope for next year given the GP24 will be the base model, and carried by riders like Franco Morbidelli, who have already had a whole year on it.
VR46 swapped out one graduate of the academy for another by saving Franco Morbidelli from Pramac’s switch. I like it, his season wasn’t as bad as some within the media suggested, especially given he was recovering from a serious head injury to start the season and missing the critically important Sepang test. A fresh start with a team that loves him, and familiarity with the bike is exactly the floor guy the team needs. And I’ll be very curious to see how Fabio gets on with top-end machinery. Remember, at his very best he beat Bagnaia straight up in Qatar.
Gresini is also sporting a different look, trading out red for silver, and taking on Fermin Aldeguer as a result of Marquez’s ascension. Brother Alex is now headlining the team and well… I think with a GP24, he needs to be thinking about a Top 5 Championship spot. He’s had a little bit of underlying frustration as someone who’s never consistently hit his full potential, this might be the best chance to do so, fronting a Gresini team that loves him. Alongside him, Aldeguer was the eventual landing spot for Ducati taking a punt on what they think could be a Superstar.
I’m not fully convinced on that one. In Moto2 at times, he was virtually unstoppable in races he dominated and won. And to do that at 19 is impressive. Acosta-esque. But at times, he made sloppy mistakes and proved to be inconsistent. 2024 Moto2 was a very winnable championship for Fermin and his talent and he ended up 5th and 92 points off the top. He’s got two years of insurance to figure out the top flight and adapt before Ducati decides whether to keep him for the second two years of his contract, so at least the pressure’s off.
But you’re not here for any of that. You’re here for the factory team.
I refuse to call them the dream team. They’re the redeem team. Remember, they lost the biggest prize of them all to Aprilia, and you need to get that shit back.
Pecco Bagnaia and Marc Marquez are a formidable pairing. Probably the best since Rossi and Lorenzo in 2015. Eight top-flight World Championships. 91 wins. 90 pole positions. One of the greatest riders of all time, and someone who likely will be by the time his career is done. And by all accounts mentally, it’s a fascinating matchup.
Pecco’s been laid-back and relishing the opportunity. Marc Marquez has been, at least to me, playing mind games. Playing down his chances and role within the team, admitting it makes sense for the team to defer to Pecco, but there’s also been admittance that he used 2024 as a way of proving to himself that he could still compete at the highest level and that now in 2025, he’s here to try and win a title again. And there’s no reason to think he couldn’t, given how he was a game-changer on the GP23. He was over 200 points better than anyone else on the same machine and the only 23’ rider who regularly gave Martin and Bagnaia a headache.
I’m not going to be one of those pundits who’s going to rule out Bagnaia from Day 1. He’s been at the heart of the development of the fastest MotoGP bike we’ve ever seen, and he’s if in the right scenario, often at the front, he’s completely untouchable. There’s no one else in the field I have the same level of confidence about when leading a race than him, and when he’s on it, the race effectively shuts down. It’s like Lorenzo at his prime. If he’s got a one-second lead, you change the channel. But testing told a different story…
Ducati brought their new GP25 engine to the testing window and it turns out, the riders didn’t like it. The 25’ version had smoother power output and slightly better top-end speed, but it sacrificed engine braking and corner entry. Both riders, especially Pecco Bagnaia weren’t keen on the changes, so as a result, that engine has been shelved and they’re sticking with the 2024 engine, as the press have nicknamed this year’s creation the “GP24.9”, running the 2024 engine and chassis, with room for future updates for everything but the engine in the future.
In most circumstances, this would be a bad thing. But Ducati are so far ahead of the field, it simply doesn’t matter. As freelancer Mat Oxley put it: “It’s all very ominous for the opposition – Ducati engineers could probably spend the next three weeks drinking beer on Bali and still smoke the rest of the grid in the Thai GP.”
And if we needed any further exclamation point on that, Marc Marquez put down a thunderous final race sim at the end of the test that had an average lap time seven tenths faster than the field, and the fastest overall time in Thailand. There is no doubt about it, Marquez is the favourite going into the 2025 season and Bagnaia already feels under pressure to reclaim the title.
Now, I’m not going to be the guy to write-off Bagnaia without a second thought. You don’t dismiss a man coming off an 11-win season on a bike very similar to this one, and 29 with Ducati as a whole. This is his team and he’s been the galvanising force to lead Ducati to where they are now as a manufacturer. But, he’s always been beatable in his title endeavours, and Marc Marquez is the most naturally talented rider we’ve ever seen. Good luck.
The Junior Categories
Moto2 is in a very interesting place right now. All eyes will be on David Alonso after his record breaking 2024 Moto3 season with 14 victories, but expect a slow start after dislocating his shoulder in a training accident in the off-season. Of the current field, I don’t think there’s an obvious landslide favourite. If someone put a gun to my head right now, I’d be picking Aron Canet for the title. It’ll be his sixth year in the class and he seemed to make a genuine breakthrough at the end of last year, winning three times and finishing runner-up in three more in the final eight races en-route to finishing runner-up to Ai Ogura.
Beyond that, there’s eight or nine guys who I think could win the title if they clean their acts up. Manuel Gonzales is itching for a breakthrough and has looked excellent in testing. As has 2024 Rookie of the year Diogo Moreira, who again made big progress at the end of last year. The growing fleet of Boscoscuro riders are eye-watering too: Tony Arobolino and Izan Guevara at Yamaha Pramac, Jake Dixon at Marc VDS, Sergio Garcia at QJMotor MSI, with Celestino Vietti and Alonso Lopez at SpeedUp. Any one of those men could take the title with their best form. The rest of the outstanding 2024 Moto3 graduating class of Ivan Ortola, Colin Veijer and Dani Holgado could all get in the mix as well. And if you want a dark horse, keep an eye on Senna Agius. Big talent.
As for Moto3, it’s a blank canvas after their incredibly strong top-end of 2024 all moved up. Of who’s left, it’s hard not to circle David Muñoz as man who might, and to borrow an M101 classic: “finally put it altogether”. He has speed and aggression in spades, and was 5th in the Championship last year, but still hasn’t won a race at this level yet. Surely, it’s coming in 2025. Angel Piqueras was my M101 Awards pick for Rookie of the Year after winning despite a Long Lap Penalty in Misano and if he takes another step, will be in the mix with the superpower MT-Helmets MSi squad.
Other people likely to feature? Adrian Fernandez was very quick at times for Leopard last year, Jose Antonio Rueda won at Aragon in supreme fashion and could feature, and look out for a potential Japanese resurgence from Ryusei Yamanaka and Taiyo Furusato at MT-Helmets and Sic58 respectfully? Dark horse – Joel Kelso is the class veteran now and is looking better year-on-year.
Predictions
I’ll be charge of the predictions table for our Season Preview Podcast next week, so here’s the categories I’ve got in mind and my likely picks for them:
Championship Winner: Marc Marquez – It’s hard not to pick him here. He looked so much more comfortable in pre-season testing than Bagnaia has, even if the Italian is typically a slow-starter when a season gets going. But Marquez has been so good since joining Ducati and he’s only going to get better as he adapts and learns. He’s the man to beat and I’ll die on that hill.
Bronze Medalist: Alex Marquez – With the two factory Ducati’s likely to take the Top 2 spots in the Championship, who finishes third is a genuinely intriguing prospect. The factory Aprilia’s could be in the mix, as does Pedro Acosta with KTM, but I think the GP24 is still far ahead, and I think this is the year Alex Marquez finds his form again, and he’s been excellent in testing.
Second Best Factory: Aprilia – I’ve said for three years I’d like Aprilia to be a better second, and I think with Jorge Martin being a gamechanging weapon, with Marco Bezzecchi finding some confidence again, I have the least amount of question marks about the Italians than the Austrians. Leave the Japanese out of this for now, I think they lack strength in depth.
Over/Under 4.5 Different Winners: Under – The Factory Ducati’s will be two. I could see maybe one other win for an Aprilia or KTM on a really good day, and maybe one from a customer Duke. Top end estimate gives me 5 winners, so I’ll take the cynical route and say just under.
Over/Under 20.5 Ducati Wins: Over – Ducati won 19/20 last year and I still think they’re the class of the field given COTA was a massive outlier for Aprilia back then. If you’re going to give me one freebie, I still fancy Ducati on the over here.
Stick around on M101, the Podcast version of this Haters Guide will be out roughly at the end of next week, and the F1 version of this will be the week after! Thanks for reading and we’ll see you in Thailand on March 2nd. 🙂
