Jake Dixon sends “dangerous” warning to 2025 Moto2 rivals

Jake Dixon feels he is leaving the Aspar Team for Marc VDS in Moto2 while operating at “the peak of my riding”.

Dixon won two races in 2024, a season which began with him staying longer than intended in Qatar after a practice crash that kept him out of the Grand Prix, and took five podium finishes.

It was in the middle of Dixon’s mid-season podium run that he signed for Marc VDS for 2025, a team with title-winning pedigree and one that will switch from Kalex to Boscoscuro chassis for 2025 after the Italian brand won its first Moto2 title this season with MT Helmets MSI’s Ai Ogura.

“It’s obviously a chapter that’s coming to an end with Aspar, but the new one is starting with Marc VDS,” Dixon told TNT Sports in an interview conducted ahead of the final round of 2024 in Barcelona.

“I’m obviously thankful to them for giving me the opportunity, but I feel like I bring so much to them as well. So, I think as a combination, us as a team will be starting in a great position, moving to the Boscoscuro chassis as well.

“I’m a much more mature rider now than when I first entered into the paddock, and even [compared to] 2022. I think they’re getting the best version of me ever, I think I’m riding at the peak of my riding that I ever have.

“I’m not saying that I can’t improve from where I am, because I definitely can — I’ve got so much to improve on, that me and my electronics guy are going to work on this winter.

“If I can just figure all those pieces out that I haven’t done so far, then I think it’s going to be dangerous for everyone else next year.

2024 “hasn’t gone to plan” despite wins

Dixon’s 2024 season was in some ways an undulating mess of results, with no points in the first six races — thanks mostly to a practice crash in Qatar that kept him out of the first two races of the season entirely — and no podiums from San Marino onwards.

But in the middle lay a strong patch: four consecutive podiums, and five in seven between Catalunya and Aragon, the latter being a dominant second victory of the season, arriving a month after he won his home Grand Prix at Silverstone.

“It definitely didn’t start the way that we thought it was going to,” Dixon said in review of his 2024 season.

“I think we were thrown a bit of a curveball with changing to a different suspension manufacturer (WP), I don’t think that put us on the right trajectory straight away. Then, obviously, I had my crash in Qatar — that set us back quite a bit, because then I wasn’t able to develop the bike with the team.

“So then, when I came back, we had quite a lot of DNFs; we weren’t in the right direction of where we needed to be. We needed to understand suspension, tyres, how it all worked, and it just wasn’t the ideal situation.

“Then we started to go good, in the middle of the season when we’d figured it all out, but then we went to the overseas [races] and it really didn’t go the way I expected it to.

“I felt that when we lost my crew chief after Silverstone — we had that good spell, but then we started to feel the effects of not having him there.

“In the last five races, we brought in [the crew chief] I had in Petronas [SRT], and then I started to be on an upward trend again. In the last few races, we’ve had some really good pace, just things have not gone our way.”