“What we saw today on the paper, Marc one step forward, I was waiting for that.” Thus spake Alex Márquez, referring to the pace of his brother Marc. “I saw him on Monday at the test in Jerez, he was super fast, and what he did here last year with the GP23 was amazing. So I was expecting that.”
On paper – the results of timed practice for the MotoGP class at Le Mans – Marc Márquez does indeed appear to have a step on the other riders. But his one-lap pace – a new outright lap record of 1’29.855, 0.064 under Jorge Martin’s pole record from 2024 – belies just how much quicker the Ducati Lenovo rider is than the rest.
Márquez set his best time on his first time attack run on new tires. So confident was he that he went out for a second run on a new medium rear, a tire he doesn’t expect to use in either qualifying or the race. He still did a 1’30.349. That would have made him eighth fastest, just behind Pedro Acosta.
But perhaps even more devastating is the fact that Márquez did a 1’30.762 on tires with 18 laps on them. That would have put him 13th, a few thousandths behind Johann Zarco. That’s the time the LCR Honda rider set on his first run on new soft rubber, though the Frenchman crashed on his second run. Márquez had previously done a 1’30.530 (tenth) on his eleventh lap on the same tires. And a 1’30.886 the lap before.
It is safe to say that Marc Márquez has some margin. The riders nearest to him on race pace are Fabio Quartararo, who did a 1’30.9 on used tires, as did Maverick Viñales. Behind them are a group of riders in the low 1’31s, including Alex Márquez and Pecco Bagnaia.
Márquez was not getting carried away, however. “It’s Friday,” the Ducati Lenovo rider cautioned. “So yeah, I feel good. I feel like in other race tracks. I feel comfortable, especially with the used tires I feel better again.” With new tires he needed to be more careful, as he could feel the bike start to move.
Another reason for Márquez’ caution was the fact that he has crashed out of two of the five Sunday GPs so far this year, throwing away a very large chunk of points. The problem, he explained once again, is that he crashed because he felt too comfortable with the bike, believing he could do whatever he liked with the bike.
He had learned that, “I need to have this extra caution. I feel super confident. I feel smooth. I feel like I cannot crash!” the Ducati Lenovo rider said. “But in the end I need to realize that we are riding very fast, but I feel smooth and then the lap times are coming in a good way. But.. it’s difficult to explain, but I didn’t feel the speed when I’m riding super fast, then sometimes I’m relaxing too much. But I need to be careful that we beat the lap record today. So yeah, I need to have this extra caution or especially on Sunday race where I did too many mistakes.”
These types of crash have two causes. The first, as Márquez explained, is that he feels so comfortable with the bike that he has an unshakeable faith that it will do exactly what he wants at all times. This can mean that he can end up asking it to break the laws of physics, and paying the price. Like cutting the kerb at COTA when he couldn’t. Or not taking into account he was behind a couple of other bikes at Jerez, and forgetting that he couldn’t brake where he wanted to and entering the corner too fast.
But the other reason is because despite the fact the Ducati GP25 is not that much of an update from the GP24, the way the bike works has changed. The way the bike feels on braking and corner entry is different, and this has made life very hard for both Pecco Bagnaia and Fabio Di Giannantonio.
It has been hardest on Bagnaia, because the concept behind the Ducati Desmosedici, the way it worked and the way to extract maximum performance out of it has remained basically unchanged since 2020. “It’s from 2020 that I’m riding in this way,” Bagnaia explained. “The bike was changing, but the feeling was very similar on braking and entry. And this season it is not. I can’t find this feeling back.”
After the race in Jerez, he had finally abandoned any attempt at trying to get the GP25 to behave exactly like the GP24, he told reporters. “I understood after six grand prix that what I want from the bike is not there any more, so I need to find performance in different ways. We tried everything to find back what I want, which is braking and entry in a more solid way. This season I feel much more movement from the front in this area, so today I just tried to adapt myself and do a step on my own. It worked, finally. I’m not confident to do it, but it’s the only way to be more competitive.”
That was frustrating for the Ducati Lenovo rider, he admitted. “I’m a bit, not upset, but I feel mad that my greatest point, that was braking and entry, is not any more a good thing. But it is what it is and I need to work on it. I need to find the performance with this bike in a different way. And today I did it and it worked quite well.”
It is here where Marc Márquez has an advantage. He spent last year on a Ducati GP23, rather than a GP24, so he has no real idea what the GP24 feels like. And he spent the previous eleven seasons on a Honda, a very different machine indeed. So he has no fixed conception of how a Ducati is supposed to feel. Unlike his Ducati Lenovo teammate.
All this raises the question of why Ducati have chosen to go down this path. If they are sacrificing braking feel and front end performance which is holding Pecco Bagnaia and Fabio Di Giannantonio back, why not ditch the whole project and go back to the GP24?
The first answer to that is it is possible they can’t. If the point at which the engine mounts are located have changed, it may not be physically possible to hang a GP25 engine (which has almost identical internals to the GP24) in a GP24 frame.
But the second answer is that there is a very good chance that the GP24 is at the limits of what that particular concept can achieve. The Ducati Desmosedici GP24 is unquestionably the best MotoGP bike every built, as witnessed by the fact that one is leading the MotoGP championship, and a second one is in fourth.
This also likely means that the GP24 concept is the pinnacle of what can be achieved in that development direction, a bike with outstanding drive, strong braking, assisted by the rear of the bike, and solid entry. If there is nothing to be gained there, according to the data (and Ducati have vast amounts of data and the expertise of a computing giant like Lenovo to analyze it using machine learning), then Ducati’s engineers will have to look elsewhere to try to go faster. Because if they don’t, then the others will first catch, and then pass them.
There are certainly some green shoots of hope with other manufacturers, most notably Yamaha and KTM. I’ll come to KTM in a moment, only noting here that Brad Binder, Pedro Acosta, and Maverick Viñales, who were all on three different packages and using different exhaust and tail sections, are now all on the same package for the rear of the bike. That is a sign that KTM have found a direction that works, and can finally start to make progress.
But the really impressive performance so far at Le Mans is by Fabio Quartararo and Yamaha. The Monster Energy Yamaha rider was second fastest, under two tenths slower than Marc Márquez. But his second best lap was 1’30.222, which is one thousandth of a second behind Fermín Aldeguer’s best time, and ahead of championship leader Alex Márquez.
The improvement for Yamaha has come from the new engine and chassis tested at Jerez, the new engine having a bit more speed without any downside. Quartararo arrived at his home GP knowing that he could be fast, fast enough to get close to the lap record, though just how fast in comparison to others he was less sure about.
“Being honest, yes,” he replied when asked if he had expected to challenge the lap record. “Because we improved 1.5 seconds in Qatar compared to last year, we improved I think 1.4 seconds in Jerez compared to last year, and I expected … I didn’t expect to make P2, but I expected that the lap record could be really close. Marc already beat the record, but we feel on one lap that we made a big step compared to last year.”
But Quartararo also warned that the performance of the Yamaha was being helped by the levels of grip at Le Mans. “The grip level on this track is really high, and this is why we are performing,” he explained, before cautioning that he didn’t expect this to be the same at other tracks. “We have to be realistic that the day we go to a track where there is low grip and tire degradation, we will not be in this position. We have to accept that we improved, but in tricky conditions we are struggling much more.”
With that in mind, it was important to strike while the iron was hot, the Monster Energy Yamaha rider said. “Like I said in Jerez, we have to take the opportunity when we have everything in the correct way, like the grip, no long straights, and no tire degradation, then we can really perform.”
The KTM is looking a lot stronger too, despite the fact that Brad Binder was caught down in 19th, thanks to a crash. “The speed was there, much better all day. Everything is working much better than it has been,” the South African said, ruing the fact he crashed out on the hard front.
Pedro Acosta was similarly upbeat, despite being hampered by his arm. “Good. Really good,” the Red Bull KTM Factory Racing rider said. “Also coming from a really tough situation with the arm, small things feel great. We’re not at 100%, we’re not at 90%, but it’s OK.” He was happy to have achieved his objective of getting straight through to Q2, despite not being able to string a lap together. It saves one session of pushing very hard on Saturday, had he found himself stuck in Q1.
But it is Maverick Viñales who is most impressive on the KTM at the moment. He is looking less and less mercurial every week, consistently putting himself among the front runners. And at Le Mans, he is right up with Fabio Quartararo on race pace, and not so far from Marc Márquez.
He was fast on a used soft tire in race trim as well. “It was nice! The second run was nice,” Viñales said. “The first run I was trying some things – then on the second I went back to the standard bike. At the moment the standard bike is the best we have, so we need to play the cards we have with this one and see what we can do. To be honest, I’m riding well. And every day I’m understanding more and more the bike.”
The Red Bull KTM Tech3 rider was unwilling to make any predictions about results. “It’s too early for me,” Viñales said. He was setting modest goals, one step at a time. “I need to understand more the bike. And I need to understand how to get the maximum, especially for one lap. I’m aiming for a good quali. And then in the race I will learn. I am learning every day.”
He had been struggling with oversteer on the brakes, Viñales told reporters, but was happy he had been able to be fast despite that problem. “Today the rhythm was to fight for second to be honest. We need to do a perfect lap to put the bike in front because the rhythm is there,” he said.
Though Viñales and Quartararo have the pace, it will still be important to qualify well to have any hope of a podium. “The further forward you start, the easier it will be to be in the front,” Viñales said. Saturday morning is going to be crucial, especially as it looks like Sunday could be wet.
Which could open up the door for a rider like Jack Miller. The Australian is comfortable the second best Yamaha rider at the moment, and was easily through to Q2. He has strong pace, and had taken advantage of the Jerez test to find a setup that worked at European tracks.
“The test in Jerez was really what we needed, just to shake down the bike and try a few different things in a different layout,” Miller said. “Testing the bike in Malaysia and Thailand, two particular circuits, once we get to the European tracks, load of grip, bit tighter, we needed to make some adjustments.” That had given him confidence in the front end, and that might end up making the difference for him at a track where he has always performed well.
Finally, it seems that MotoGP is to get a new support class. According to Motorsport.com, a new class backed and supplied by Harley-Davidson is set to alternate with MotoE at a number of tracks, including the US round at the Circuit Of The Americas in Austin, Texas.
That should come as no surprise, given Harley-Davidson turned up at the final round of 2024 in Barcelona to do a few demo laps with the Bagger bike, very loosely based on a Road Glide, which they race in the King of the Baggers class in MotoAmerica. That series is very fiercely contested, with both Harley-Davidson and Indian pouring surprisingly large amounts of money into factory efforts to win it.
But the proposed series will be a one-make spec series, along the lines of MotoE. Though nothing official has been announced yet, it will feature bikes based on the Baggers races in MotoAmerica. Presumably, Harley-Davidson is attempting to use MotoGP to break into a different, and most importantly, younger market segment. Whether bagger racing is the right channel to do that, who knows? Perhaps the kindest thing we can say about it is it will be a novelty.
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