Eight-time MotoGP champion Marc Marquez revealed his first impressions after testing the factory Ducati for the first time at the Catalunya test on Tuesday.
The first MotoGP test for the upcoming 2025 season commenced as teams and riders trialled its respective 2025 machinery, with Marquez trying the latest spec Desmosedici.
The Spaniard finished the seven-hour session just 0.056s behind his new team-mate Francesco Bagnaia, but fourth overall.
He disclosed that he spent most of the session riding the GP25 and shared encouraging insight into his feelings on the bike.
“I tried the GP25 most of the day, 90% of the time I was riding with the 25,” Marquez confirmed. “So I was working a lot for the engineers,” he told Crash.net.
“Because when you jump to the official team, it means that you have a very strict plan with all the things you need to try and the rider is in the hands of the engineers. You are there working for the engineers.
“The engine is a bit better on the straight, so that also is important comparing with last year’s bike. And then it looks like the character of going in on the corner is a bit different. Still there I need to understand where is the limit.”
“The thing is that I tried the full package 25: Frame, engine and different things,” he added. “So we don’t know which [individual parts] feel different.
“Then Pecco was working a little bit in a different way. But the most important is that both of us had very similar comments. Same problems, same advantages. So this makes life easier for the engineers.”
“Still we need more time to understand because, with Pecco, we had similar comments. It’s true that it’s super good in some aspects, but a little bit more difficult in other aspects,” he said.
Marc Marquez: Riding the factory Ducati “a pleasure”
Marquez described the initial sensations of riding the factory Ducati for the first time when asked whether it was a strange experience given his decade-long affiliation with Honda.
He admitted that being a Ducati rider holds further expectations due to its superiority on the grid but had only flattery words to describe what it meant to him.
“No, it was a pleasure,” Marquez said. “Especially when you arrive in a team that performed in a better way these last years.
“You have the responsibility to be fast because you’re in the best team on the grid. So it was a pleasure to be inside that garage.
“But it’s true that seeing Tardozzi [in my garage was strange], after all my fights with Dovizioso!
“But we always had a very good and polite relationship. So this helps, also because we already know each other.”
