MotoGP testing: What to make of Bagnaia's bad day and Marquez's great one

In what has widely been tipped as a two-way battle for the 2025 MotoGP crown, Marc Marquez has found a very early edge over Ducati team-mate Pecco Bagnaia with a significant turn of pace at the start of pre-season testing in Buriram.

While individual testing laptimes are usually of limited value and relevance for the actual season of competition, the two-day test in Thailand can be regarded as something of an extension of the season-opening race weekend that will take place at the same track at the end of the month.

And while the new team-mates weren't meaningfully different in terms of performance in the earlier test at Sepang - Bagnaia quicker over one lap, Marquez managing a better sprint simulation - it's the latter who has been considerably more comfortable so far at the Thai Grand Prix venue.

The 0.844s gap between the two in the classification is not informative, as Marquez pushed for a laptime to close out the day and Bagnaia did not.

But the overall mass of laptimes also suggested Marquez was having a better go of it than Bagnaia, and this was corroborated by their comments after the day's work.

Number of laps

1m29s range
Marquez: 7
Bagnaia: 0

1m30s range
Marquez: 12
Bagnaia: 10

1m31s range
Marquez: 18
Bagnaia: 13

1m32s range
Marquez: 8
Bagnaia: 11

Bagnaia acknowledged he had endured a particularly messy day and described himself as "a bit far from being happy".

"We are lucky that today Marc didn't have any issues, because from my side of the garage today nothing worked," Bagnaia said.

"From the start of the day, we had many, many problems. Luckily my team did a fantastic job to give me a little possibility of riding - but today, from the start of the day, nothing was working."

Marquez, meanwhile, felt comfortable enough to "risk" a bit for a late-day benchmark - as mentioned above - and generally appeared to be in confident spirits.

It's certainly a good sign for him heading into the Thai GP opener, suggesting there is no time being lost to adaptation to a new team or a new spec of bike. After all, starting off weekends with a bit of laptime margin to close up made Marquez's life harder than it needed to be on many occasions in 2024.

Equally, though, Bagnaia still has all the time he needs and then some to contend at Buriram, as a rider who has shown a consistent knack for turning around a weekend after a not-so-strong start.

Often, Bagnaia would have a very dubious FP1 and then come out swinging. This time he's had what you could call a ropey 'FP-1', so chances are very good he'll catch up in no time.

Ducati spec dilemmas

All of this has gone on while Ducati continues to finalise its package for the start of the 2025 season, with the engine dilemma grabbing headlines.

It felt coming out of Sepang that, while both Bagnaia and Marquez have reservations about Ducati's newer 2025 engine relative to the race-proven 2024 unit, the former was more amenable than the latter to taking the prototype into battle anyway.

But as Ducati closes in on what is widely expected to be a decision to stick with last year's engine - team manager Davide Tardozzi said the final decision would come tonight but was among several Ducati figures to strongly hint the '24 would be given preference - both factory riders insisted they are aligned on this issue.

Bagnaia said "both [are] leaning - with the team also - in the same direction". The newer version of the engine is "not too bad", he emphasised (and he's been particularly complimentary of the power delivery), but the braking performance wasn't quite there yet and "we don't have enough time to set it".

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"It could be like a limbo, to start the season with an engine that we have not found any solution to solve this problem."

"It's a little bit more up and down," said Marquez of the new engine. "Very strong in some points, and very weak points."

He also indicated that there would still be an engine 'upgrade' of sorts, with the '24 unit used as a base but with minor bits still being evaluated before it is to be homologated for the season (and for next season as well under MotoGP's new engine freeze).

And of Bagnaia, Marquez said: "We are with very same comments about everything - not only the engine. We try a chassis, we try a swingarm, and we have similar comments.

"It makes it easier for the engineers. Because if one rider says 'right' and the other rider says 'left', which one do we follow? Ducati has the capacity to develop the bike in two different ways - but it wouldn't be the best solution. But at the moment we have the same comments."

Ducati also hasn't pivoted to a new chassis yet - a prototype '25 chassis debuted well in Barcelona last year, but wasn't as convincing at Sepang, according to Bagnaia, and should be reevaluated later. It isn't a high priority as it isn't covered by homologation rules.

Aero configurations are, however, and here Ducati's works riders have again been working overwhelmingly with an older specification in Buriram.

But Bagnaia did try out the newer aero.

"I wasn't that slow," he said. "Honestly, without doing a time attack with this [new] fairing I was just eight tenths off a time attack. That's not that bad.

"But we have to be more focused on it tomorrow, and we have to more or less start from zero again tomorrow, to have some more feedback."