Last week The Race MotoGP Podcast's Simon Patterson, Val Khorounzhiy, Megan White, Ollie Card and Matt Beer predicting the 2025 riders' championship top 10 ahead of the Thai Grand Prix season-opener.
Then Jorge Martin - who we'd predicted would be third in that championship - got on a supermoto bike and everything went painfully wrong for the defending champion for the second time in a month.
As more details of Martin's situation and likely recovery period became clear, we all revisited our predictions with that in mind.
Here's where we ended up - including our prediction for where Martin will be even after his injury.
10 Franco Morbidelli
VR46 Ducati
2024 actual championship position: 9th
Missing all of pre-season testing to a head injury was the biggest factor in Franco Morbidelli's underwhelming 2024 campaign on the second Pramac Ducati alongside Martin.
With a fully-fit pre-season and still being on the same bike but now in mentor Valentino Rossi's VR46 team, you'd expect Morbidelli to have a much stronger 2025.
But we just haven't seen compelling evidence of that being on the horizon during testing - we all predicted he'd be between eighth and 10th and that leaves him 10th in our combined list.
"He's still not the Morbidelli of 2020 when he was winning races and fighting for the championship," said Simon. "What we've been left with is a guy who's been a fairly average MotoGP rider so far but happens to be riding a really good motorbike."
9 Brad Binder
KTM
Actual 2024 championship position: 5th
Big variation in our predictions for Binder. Simon and Ollie thought he'd be 10th, Megan and Matt didn't go much higher but Val put him right up in what would be a MotoGP career-best fourth.
"That's on the assumption that KTM and its development will be in decent health and it will be much like the previous seasons and maybe even marginally better," said Val.
"It was fourth by a process of elimination because I wasn't massively impressed by Binder's pre-season and I don't think he was either.
"But we've seen this trick before: a bad Binder pre-season turn into a good start to the season and bad Binder weekends still yield 10 or 11 points.
"If there's a rider who's going to maximise their championship position, it's this guy. And I assume KTM will be the second-best bike."
Ollie underlined his admiration for Binder, but felt with the arrival of Pedro Acosta in the works KTM team and the year-old Ducatis set to be back at the front this year, there were just too many bikes that would going to be ahead of Binder in the standings.
"I just think he's going to get a little bogged down dealing with all these competitive Ducatis," said Ollie. "And the situation at KTM is just not the bedrock for a harmonious year - either financially or with wonder kid Pedro Acosta coming in."
8 Fabio Di Giannantonio
VR46 Ducati
Actual 2024 championship position: 8th
Fabio Di Giannantonio will be the only other rider on the same bike as works Ducati team-mates Pecco Bagnaia and Marc Marquez.
The strength of that package means Simon places 'Diggia' up in fourth but everyone else went lower - right back in 10th for Megan.
"I haven't seen him ride that bike very much because he broke his collarbone doing a wheelie..." she pointed out - and she's also not convinced he's actually a better rider than new team-mate Morbidelli.
"He's hurt and the Ducati GP25 doesn't actually exist," agrees Val, who rates Di Giannantonio on a similar level to Alex Marquez.
7 Fabio Quartararo
Yamaha
Actual 2024 championship position: 13th
Yamaha has had a good winter, but is it good enough? Matt thinks so - he put Fabio Quartararo right up in fourth.
"There's just so much more to be unlocking in Quartararo when that bike is remotely close to letting him do something," he argued.
But Val only sees Quartararo in 10th - in large part because even with Yamaha making progress, its lead rider was three places and a hefty 52 points from the championship top 10 last year, and this season even an improved Yamaha is up against a group of improved year-old Ducatis.
"It's just a question of pure mathematics," is Val's point. "And I don't think Yamaha is ready to take on KTM and Aprilia yet.
"Podiums and some really good weekends are probably on the table but with potentially the introduction of a whole new engine concept mid-season in the V4, 10th feels sensible."
6 Alex Marquez
Gresini Ducati
Actual 2024 championship position: 8th
Ultra-fast in testing, but will that actually translate to season-long performance for Alex Marquez on Gresini's 2024-spec Ducati?
Megan and Ollie think so - he's in the top five for both of them.
"There is just something about the way he immediately clicked with the GP24 in testing that made me think he's in a great position to build an impressive 2025 season. He looks comfortable and hungry at Gresini and can be a clear team leader," said Ollie.
Simon and Matt are at the other end of the scale - they both put him ninth.
"I agree with everything that Ollie said: Alex Marquez will consistently be fighting for the top three and even battling for wins on Sundays, not just in sprints. I'd be surprised if he finished this year without a grand prix victory," Simon began.
"However, on the weekends he's not doing that, he's going to be picking gravel out of his teeth.
"He's super-super fast but he's a bit lairy, he has weekends where he disappears and days when he throws it down the road and takes other people with him."
5 Jorge Martin
Aprilia
Actual 2024 championship position: 1st
The reigning champion will definitely miss the first two rounds of the season, maybe more and will surely be compromised beyond that.
Even considering all that, we still think he will be fast enough when he appears to still salvage fifth in the world championship.
That's partly because we're not sufficiently convinced that the rest of the bottom half of the top 10 will have enough highs or enough consistency to outscore him (fifth to ninth in this list were very, very, very, very close).
Megan, Matt and Simon all keep Martin as high as fifth for a combination of that reason and sheer faith in what this rider can achieve against seemingly impossible odds. Val pulls him down to eighth.
4 Marco Bezzecchi
Aprilia
Actual 2024 championship position: 12th
Another panel split over the fit works Aprilia rider.
Third and fourth from Simon and Ollie, based on the transformation we saw for Marco Bezzecchi in testing, but only seventh from Megan - who wants to see more proof of the Bezz recovery over a longer period given how bad his 2024 slump was.
But Simon has a theory that consistency coupled with high peaks will be enough.
"I think he's going to do it the same way he got to third in 2023 - by being very, very good at a handful of circuits (which is very Aprilia) and alright the rest of the time," he explained.
3 Pedro Acosta
KTM
Actual 2024 championship position: 6th
Rising superstar Acosta jumped from fifth in our original ranking to third in the new one, partly because several of us saw Acosta is the likely big gainer from Martin dropping down the championship rider and also because some of our fears for KTM's season were allayed by the latest developments in its financial crisis and rescue plan.
"The money thing is obviously very key to how things go in the future and later in the year it might start to have an impact," said Megan. "But to start with I think Acosta can push through that."
Simon's not so sure.
"I can't see a world in which there isn't some form of significant belt-tightening at KTM and even if it doesn't apply until 2026, it will have a morale effect in 2025," he said.
"I still think Acosta will be the best of the KTMs but I just don't think he's going to be able to be as fast as he was in 2024 - even though he'll be faster as a rider now."
2 Pecco Bagnaia
Ducati
Actual 2024 championship position: 2nd
A unanimous second place for Pecco Bagnaia in our rankings but with none of us implying anything negative towards him in suggesting that.
It's just who he's now up against as a team-mate...
1 Marc Marquez
Ducati
Actual 2024 championship position: 3rd
Ollie: "It's hard to imagine Marc Marquez being anywhere else."
Megan: "This was one of the easiest decisions I've made. There was no question about it."
Simon: "I just don't see a way it goes any other way."
But Val summed our expectations for this surely intra-Ducati title battle up best.
"If you fast forwarded 12 months and told me Bagnaia was champion I would not be shocked," he said.
"We know both riders will be quick and have race-winning pace for most of the season.
"But... when the weekend goes a little weird, when there's slight rain, when one of them has a bad start to the weekend, when the bike suddenly doesn't work as well - nobody is as robust in MotoGP in overcoming things as Marc Marquez.
"No one else starts 17th and you blink and they're third. That's a Marc thing. Taking pole by 1.5s when the track is slightly damp. That's a Marc thing.
"Bagnaia is exceptional at 85% of what MotoGP needs. But it's the small things that will decide it and it's so hard to bet against Marquez - even at the age he is now - in those circumstances."
