The Yamaha MotoGP team started the 2025 season off on the right foot as Fabio Quartararo headed the opening day of collective pre-season testing at Sepang.
But the biggest takeaway from the day was a savage accident for world champion Jorge Martin that ended his running early and may have further repercussions.
Though his and other Yamaha riders' pace was surely flattered by them riding in the shakedown before the test, Quartararo's laptimes still caught the eye.
He led the timesheets from very early on by a considerable margin, then once surpassed by Alex Marquez's 2024-spec Ducati swiftly reclaimed the top spot by around two tenths of a second.
LEADING POSITIONS
1 Quartararo (Yamaha)
2 M Marquez (Ducati)
3 A Marquez (Gresini Ducati)
4 Aldeguer (Gresini Ducati)
5 Morbidelli (VR46 Ducati)
Full times and order at bottom of page
Quartararo's 1m57.555s is well short of the track record, but is four tenths better than what Martin set to top the corresponding day of pre-season action from last year.
New Ducati factory rider Marc Marquez came close to leapfrogging Quartararo in the very final minutes, but came up 0.051s short in his first ride on the full-liveried red Ducati.
Though they were all behind the elder Marquez in the end, predictably the well-refined 2024-spec Ducatis shone as a whole.
The younger Marquez was followed close on the timing screens by his new Gresini team-mate Fermin Aldeguer - also benefitting from the shakedown mileage due to his rookie status - and VR46 Ducati rider Franco Morbidelli, completing the top five.
Honda, unlike Yamaha, opted not to use its race riders - save for rookie Somkiat Chantra - in the pre-test shakedown to ensure it doesn't use up too much of its tyre allowance for the season - but had a respectable day in terms of headline times anyway, headed by Joan Mir in sixth and Johann Zarco in ninth.
KTM, which as a manufacturer remains under self-administration, looks to have brought a considerable amount of developments to Sepang and was headed up on the day by star rider Pedro Acosta (11th), with new recruit Maverick Vinales just a tenth and a half back and Brad Binder between them.
APRILIA'S DISASTER
🫣 @89jorgemartin has been taken to local hospital as he suffers pain in his left foot and right hand
— MotoGP™🏁 (@MotoGP) February 5, 2025
Updates will follow and in the meantime, sending the best to the World Champ 💪#MotoGP pic.twitter.com/HnZXtKIYGJ
It was a flatly catastrophic first day of testing for Aprilia, which has lost at least one and potentially two riders for the test.
Trackhouse rider Raul Fernandez fractured a toe and a hand in his crash and has gone back to Spain already for surgical intervention - handled by MotoGP's favoured surgeon Dr Xavier Mir - on the latter injury.
"It's a little bit strange - he was calm, taking his time. He had a crash entering Turn 9 on braking,” team boss Davide Brivio told MotoGP's testing broadcast.
“He will try to get surgery as soon as possible, in his head he would like to be back in Thailand [for the second test], you know riders, but let's see.
"Of course we'll listen to what the doctors say. He wants to be there. Raul says he had a similar injury three-four years ago, and in less than a week he was back on a bike, and I think he won a race [Aragon Moto2]."
His crash came early in the day - but even earlier Aprilia had been shaken up by two highsides in quick succession for its new champion signing Martin.
Martin had done a single run on the 2025 Aprilia prototype he'd made his debut on at Barcelona in the pre-season last year, then switched to the newer version of the bike and crashed it immediately in a minor highside.
When he was able to resume his programme, he immediately had another, much bigger highside, hitting the ground hard at Turn 2 and quickly going to hospital for checks.
If Martin cannot continue, the expectation is that test rider Lorenzo Savadori will be drafted into track action in some capacity - but his absence would also put an extra emphasis on the work carried out by Martin's team-mate Marco Bezzecchi.
Bezzecchi was 1.652s off the pace, four tenths back from Trackhouse rookie Ai Ogura - who did have the three days of the shakedown to lean on.
Marquez's Ducati team-mate Pecco Bagnaia was only 17th, well off the headline pace, though the precedent from last year - when he was 16th on day one and ended up heading the test - shows this is of very limited relevance.
FULL TIMES
1 Fabio Quartararo (Yamaha) 1m57.555s
2 Marc Marquez (Ducati) 1m57.606s
3 Alex Marquez (Gresini Ducati) 1m57.738s
4 Fermin Aldeguer (Gresini Ducati) 1m58.035s
5 Franco Morbidelli (VR46 Ducati) 1m58.114s
6 Joan Mir (Honda) 1m58.115s
7 Fabio Di Giannantonio (VR46 Ducati) 1m58.265s
8 Jack Miller (Pramac Yamaha) 1m58.298s
9 Johann Zarco (LCR Honda) 1m58.332s
10 Miguel Oliveira (Pramac Yamaha) 1m58.371s
11 Pedro Acosta (KTM) 1m58.396s
12 Brad Binder (KTM) 1m58.507s
13 Maverick Vinales (Tech3 KTM) 1m58.552s
14 Alex Rins (Yamaha) 1m58.652s
15 Luca Marini (Honda) 1m58.704s
16 Ai Ogura (Trackhouse Aprilia) 1m58.763s
17 Pecco Bagnaia (Ducati) 1m58.947s
18 Marco Bezzecchi (Aprilia) 1m59.207s
19 Enea Bastianini (Tech3 KTM) 1m59.597s
20 Augusto Fernandez (Yamaha) 1m59.676s
21 Somkiat Chantra (LCR Honda) 2m00.299s
22 Raul Fernandez (Trackhouse Aprilia) 2m01.298s
23 Jorge Martin (Aprilia) 2m01.321s
