Intrigue for Sepang test over Marc Marquez’s Ducati aero
The team preview this week’s 2025 Sepang pre-season test on the Crash MotoGP Podcast
MotoGP track action bursts back into life for 2025 as the first official pre-season test of the year takes place in Malaysia on 5-7 March.
While a few test riders, rookies and concession riders have already been on track at Sepang for the shakedown, the entire 2025 grid will assemble in Malaysia this week for their first collective running since 19 November.
There is a lot to look out for this pre-season, with high-profile rider swaps, the arrival of three new faces and the grid’s quest to close down Ducati’s deficit.
On this week’s Crash MotoGP Podcast - hosted by Jordan Moreland - the team previews what we can expect to see at the test.
However, there are also some notable things not to get your hopes up about.
Ducati has turned heads with some subtle aero tweaks at the shakedown, but Crash Senior Journalist Lewis Duncan doesn’t expect there to be a radical aero overhaul for the Italian brand just yet.
“Gigi [Dall’Igna] always has a thing up his sleeve and I would have thought it will be Buriram before we see any radical change to the fairing,” he said.
“What we’ve seen in the past is in that final test is when Gigi rolls out something because by that point it’s too late for the teams to go back and say ‘oh, we need to quickly make something’.
“There will be a lot of focus on that Ducati garage, to see what they’ve done. We know the new chassis they tried [last year] was a positive step already.
“So, assume you throw that onto the package that they had and then bits of refining. Ducati is going to be a hard one to beat.
“It’s always intriguing to see what Ducati does. I think the aero tweaks spotted were just a taster. I don’t think that will be the new aero package that Dall’Igna has teased.
“We know Ducati has been quite radical over the years with their changes with various items, because in theory this is the last time they can do it.
“This will probably be the last major aero update because from next year it’s hard to imagine they’re going to pour so much development budget into something that will be stripped back dramatically for 2027.
“I’d have thought for the last update of the aero era, if you like, Gigi has cooked up something quite special.”
Yamaha V4 in Sepang?
Yamaha’s progress will be something closely monitored this winter, but Crash MotoGP Editor Peter McLaren says there won’t be any sightings of its V4 this week.
“We’ve heard they’re developing it, so we want to know when it’s going to be on the race track,” McLaren adds.
“This was a potential date, we were all thinking perhaps it would be at this test. The Yamaha launch was the evening of day one of the shakedown.
“It was only [Andrea] Dovizioso who actually rode the two Yamaha test bikes on day one, but they looked very much like the current inline-four-powered bike.
“You’d be able to see visibly, as well as the sound, it would be different for a V4. Also for that reason it’s why Yamaha has also been pretty transparent about it.
“When I got the chance to speak to Paolo Pavesio, who is the new Lin Jarvis, he was pretty open about it that the V4 exists but it’s not ready to hit the track yet.”
