Ducati “GP24 a great bike, GP25 will be a weapon!”

The Pertamina VR46 team will have a split garage in terms of bike specification in MotoGP this season.

As part of its new official Ducati satellite team status, Fabio di Giannantonio has been upgraded to a factory spec GP25 while Franco Morbidelli will stay on the GP24 he raced at Pramac last season.

But might familiarity with the GP24, and a season's worth of race data, prove an advantage for Morbidelli this year?

“The GP24 is a great bike,” Morbidelli replied at VR46’s Jakarta team launch. “It was born great, was unbelievably fast from the first tests in Malaysia and won its first race.

“So I believe a lot in the GP24 package. It’s a great machine, one of the greatest packages we’ve seen.”

Morbidelli’s debut Ducati season was rocked by a winter head injury, robbing him of pre-season testing, before reaching ninth in the standings.

Meanwhile the other GP24 riders - of Jorge Martin, Francesco Bagnaia and Enea Bastianini - were ranked first, second and fourth in the world championship.

“The dominance the GP24 had last year was impressive,” Morbidelli continued.

“There were four GP24s in the top four quite often, especially when I caught up in the second half of the season. So that bike can do amazing things and be very quick on track.

“Let’s see if it’s an advantage or not [to stay on a GP24], I believe that everybody has their own advantages and disadvantages. Let’s see what we can do with our package, which is really good.”

Gresini’s Alex Marquez underlined the potential of the GP24 by outpacing the prototype GP25s at last November’s Barcelona test.

Watching from the sidelines was di Giannantonio, who withdrew from the final rounds of last season to undergo shoulder surgery.

Only Marc Marquez was able to enjoy regular podiums and race wins on the GP23 last year.

Most others, including Diggia and then team-mate Marco Bezzecchi, battled with a bike designed for the previous generation of Michelin rear tyre.

The young Italian will now leap two-years forward as the only rider other than factory stars Francesco Bagnaia and Marc Marquez with a GP25.

“For me it’s a kind of big step coming from the GP23 because it’s two years forward in the development of the bike,” di Giannantonio said.

“It will be a new challenge for sure, it will be quite different at the beginning because we have to focus a lot on development of the [GP25] and try to understand what works, what not.

“Anyway, I think that the [GP25] bike Ducati is bringing will be a weapon, coming from such a great bike as the GP24. It will be a new challenge for sure, we just have to be focussed and enjoy this kind of responsibility to develop this bike.”

No changes in tyre specification are planned for this season, after the debut of a new front was postponed.

Most therefore expect the performance difference between the GP24 and GP25s to be comparable with the GP22 vs GP23s in 2023, when all four riders on year-old bikes at VR46/Gresini claimed podiums (including four GP wins).

di Giannantonio will debut on the GP25, and first MotoGP laps since last year's Thai Grand Prix, during the official Sepang test from February 5-7.