Ducati makes major signing ahead of MXGP debut season

Ducati has announced its first rider signing for the 2025 MXGP World Championship, with Jeremy Seewer joining the project on a two-year deal covering the 2025 and 2026 seasons.

30-year-old Seewer will join Ducati for what will be Ducati’s first season in the Motocross World Championship, while the Swiss rider will be contesting his eighth season in the premier MXGP category.

Seewer’s history in MXGP has largely been with Yamaha, with which he stepped up in 2018 and rode until the end of 2023.

The #91 then joined Kawasaki for 2024, but despite two overall podiums this season and a race win in the first moto at the MXGP of Turkiye, Seewer has, in general, struggled to find consistency with the KX450F.

13 times a Grand Prix winner (five times in the MX2 World Championship, eight times in MXGP), Seewer will be a good test of where Ducati’s Desmo450 MX really lies versus its competitors. 

Earlier this year, at the MXGP of the Netherlands at Arnhem, Ducati made its MXGP debut with nine-times World Champion Antonio Cairoli, who Ducati signed in late-2023 as a test rider for the Desmo450.

Cairoli, who last raced a Grand Prix in 2021, finished an encouraging seventh in the qualifying race, before going 15-DNF in Sunday’s two races to take 18th overall, the DNF down to a mechanical issue.

The Desmo450 MX has also appeared in this year’s Italian Motocross Prestige MX1 Championship, taking overall victories with former Grand Prix rider Alessandro Lupino at the two most recent rounds: Ponte a Egola, and Castliglione del Lago. Lupino leads the riders’ standings ahead of the final round at Faenza on 21-22 September.