The five hurdles Marc Marquez will face at Ducati in MotoGP 2025

Marc Marquez will join the factory Ducati MotoGP squad for the 2025 season, with expectations for this move high as he takes the next steps in his career rebuild.

It’s been five years since Marquez was last world champion, at the end of his most dominant season ever in the premier class in 2019.

The major career setback dealt to him by the crash at the 2020 Spanish Grand Prix in which he suffered a badly broken arm was followed by Honda’s form declining rapidly.

Marquez elected to take a year-old Ducati at Gresini Racing for 2024 to see if he could still be competitive. Almost instantly that point was proven true, with Ducati electing to promote him to its factory squad in 2025.

The powerplay Marquez pulled to get what he wanted has weakened Ducati. It has lost the 2024 world champion Jorge Martin to Aprilia, sent Pramac to Yamaha, while Marco Bezzecchi and Enea Bastianini have departed its stable for Aprilia and KTM.

There is also the intra-team tensions to consider. Both Marquez and Francesco Bagnaia have been civil up to now, but it is known that the VR46 camp wasn’t happy with Ducati’s U-turn last summer.

As 2025 blooms, Crash looks at the five key hurdles Marquez will face at the factory Ducati team this year.

The best version of Francesco Bagnaia

“The best version” was how Martin described Bagnaia at the end of the 2024 campaign. And for good reason. The double world champion won 11 grands prix and only missed out on the title by 10 points despite registering eight non-scores.

Only the likes of Valentino Rossi, Marquez, Jorge Lorenzo and Casey Stoner have won as many grands prix in a single season in the modern era.

Bagnaia acknowledges the mistakes he made and how costly they were. Assume he does iron those out in 2025, the speed is not in question. Marquez and Bagnaia have only had one proper battle for victory so far as Ducati stablemates.

That was at the Spanish GP last year, which Bagnaia came out of on top. They’ve already collided, at round two in Portugal. It’s fair to assume, then, that the race between the pair will be hard in 2025.

Given what he achieved on an ageing GP23, many - including former crew chief Frankie Carchedi, in conversation with the Crash MotoGP Podcast - believe Marquez will clean up in 2025.

But the challenge that Bagnaia poses will be arguably the stiffest Marquez has had in a team-mate.

Everyone is expecting something we haven’t seen since 2019

Whatever Marc Marquez does, it always garners a lot of attention. When he jumped on the Gresini Ducati in post-season testing in 2023, he was expected to start winning again straight away.

Marquez tempered those expectations, and he was right to. While he felt by the Spanish GP that his adaptation to the Desmosedici from the Honda was done, there was one major change for 2024, the impact of which nobody could have predicted: Michelin’s new rear tyre.

That won’t be a problem in 2025, given the factory Ducati was able to adapt to that rear tyre quickly.

But it’s proof that there are still a lot of unknowns from year to year. And Marquez hasn’t successfully fought for a championship since 2019. Faced with this situation again, will he be able to handle the pressure in the same way Bagnaia will be able to do having been through it more recently?

Marquez isn’t exactly old, but his career is closer to its end that its beginning. And, as 2020 proved, nothing is guaranteed. The opportunities for him to win more championships diminish even more now with each passing season - something Marquez hasn’t had to deal with before.

A new crew chief

For the third year in a row, Marquez will be working with a different crew chief. He left Santi Hernandez behind at Honda when he moved to Ducati, linking up with former Joan Mir crew chief Frankie Carchedi.

This relationship proved to be a good one and one, from the outside, that looked to gel quickly as both rider and crew chief continually seemed to surmount every problem that came their way over a race weekend.

Ducati clearly thinks its for the best, but some questions do need to be asked as to why it didn’t simply bring Carchedi along with Marquez.

That’s not to say that Marco Rigamonti is a downgrade. Rigamonti previously worked with Enea Bastianini, as well as Johann Zarco and Andrea Iannone over the years.

But rider/crew chief relationships aren’t always straightforward. More goes into them than the engineer simply being good. This will be an adaptation process for Marquez, as will returning to having a full factory crew around him.

The rider he beat to the seat

Now, this one many seem a little bit like a no-brainer. But Marquez was vaulted ahead of Jorge Martin for the factory seat and that is something he is going to have to work hard now to justify.

Ducati hasn’t shied away from the fact that it knew Martin could be world champion in 2024 when it made its decisions for 2025. But the fact he will line up on an Aprilia most likely decked out in the number one plate will still sting.

There’s little doubt in most people’s minds that Martin isn’t going to be an issue for Marquez this year. The Aprilia faded away from the front of the field quite dramatically in the second half of the season, and it’s a manufacturer facing 2025 with an almost completely new rider line-up as well as a new technical boss.

But should Aprilia hit the ground running in 2025 and Martin is able to adapt quickly, the onus will be even more on Marquez to defend Ducati’s decision.

In 2024, Martin and Bagnaia became a cut above the rest of the field on the factory Ducati, especially in the latter stages of the campaign. Martin will be a pest if he is in a position to do so, and that will only up the pressure on Marquez.

The reigniting of an old rivalry

Marquez stepping into the factory Ducati squad brings him firmly back into the orbit of old foe Valentino Rossi. And the MotoGP legend has not exactly been quiet in the wake of Ducati’s decision.

In a L’Equipe interview in 2024, Rossi said he didn’t understand Ducati’s decision. And on Andrea Migno’s podcast, he brought up his 2015 title defeat conspiracy theories again.

Marquez took all of this in his stride, while Bagnaia did a commendable job in staying out of the whole affair.

Rossi has already made it clear that he will be scaling back his car racing commitments in 2025. He’s signed up again as a works BMW driver, though his calendar is yet to be defined. One of the reasons he has cited for his reduced car racing exploits is so he can spend more time at MotoGP races.

He says he wants to work more with his Academy riders, but it’s a funny coincidence that he wants to do this when his arch enemy essentially steps into his backyard.

Marquez is likely going to have to put up with some psychological warfare from the Rossi camp, especially if there are any on-track tensions between himself and Bagnaia, in 2025.