Marc Marquez and Pecco Bagnaia still on top despite off-script Thailand practice

The opening day of the 2025 MotoGP season ended somewhat inversely to how pre-season testing at Buriram ended just two weeks ago. 

Then, it was Alex Marquez for Gresin Racing leading for most of the day until his elder brother Marc snatched top spot away from him late on. On Friday, the opposite was true.

Topping FP1, Marc Marquez looked to begin the first day of 2025 as a factory Ducati rider with a practice clean sweep sat perched on high at the summit of the timesheets in the closing stages of Practice. But his 1m29.072s would fall to a 1m29.020s from his younger brother, on virtually an identical bike after the factory team elected to begin the year on the 2024 engine, chassis and aero.

In testing so far, the Marquez brothers have exchanged middle finger gestures when one beats the other. At the end of testing, Marc branded his brother’s form as the biggest surprise of the pre-season. The gesture, and that sentiment, quickly vanished after Friday’s running.

Did yellow flags cost Marc Marquez?

“Of course, if somebody beats you, you are never happy,” Marc Marquez said. “But when it’s your brother, it’s ok…The biggest surprise of the pre-season was my brother, but it’s not a surprise anymore.”

It is worth noting, however, that the script would have been different had it not been for late yellow flags leading to a 1m28.891s for Marc Marquez being cancelled.

Much of the top 10 order reflected what we saw in testing two weeks ago, with Pedro Acosta flying the KTM flag in third; Marco Bezzecchi representing Aprilia in fourth despite a late tumble in Practice; Joan Mir ended pre-season sixth and started 2025 in the same spot, while Fabio Quartararo on the Yamaha aped his eighth-place result.

The big exception is double world champion Francesco Bagnaia, who had an almost laughably luckless Friday at Buriram. After a low-key start to the day - as is typical for the Italian - he looked better in the afternoon session.

When time came to put in his best laps to bag a direct place in Q2, he took a one-two punch in the ribs from the racing gods. A 1m29.492s set with around three minutes left would have been good enough to keep him in the top 10, but it was incorrectly cancelled as race direction wrongly deemed he’s set the lap under yellow flag conditions triggered by a Turn 3 crash for Bezzecchi.

With time enough for one lap, Bagnaia then stumbled across a friendly fire scenario as fellow VR46 Academy member Franco Morbidelli backed off on the racing line at Turn 5 in reaction to others doing the same and baulked the former’s lap. As a result, Bagnaia ended the day a frustrating 13th.

2025 Thai MotoGP Friday practice - outright fastest lap per manufacturer 

With everyone so dialled into the Buriram circuit (with the exception of Fabio Di Giannantonio, who is gritting his teeth having missed four of five days of testing due to injury) Marc Marquez admits his own margin for improvement is “small”.

So, it’s likely things will remain tight come qualifying on Saturday morning. But that’s not to say the racing will be an all-out free-for-all, if long run pace during Practice is anything to go by.

Below is the average lap pace for riders in the top 10, as well as Bagnaia, over the lifespan of a single rear tyre. All unrepresentative laps and cancelled times have not been included in the sample to find the below averages. While several notable things stand out from this data, the key thing is the pace Marc Marquez has in hand over the rest.

2025 Thai MotoGP Friday practice - long run averages 

Marc Marquez turned heads on the final day of testing with a 23-lap long run at an average of 1m30.378s. On Friday at Buriram ahead of the 2025 Thai GP, he managed 1m30.017s with a soft tyre that had 11 laps on it by the time he discarded it. Not that there was any doubt, but this does give Marquez’s testing run a bit more legitimacy given how similar his Friday run is on a circuit with grip conditions - according to a few riders - not as good as those seen a few weeks ago.

Since MotoGP turned up in Thailand, Bagnaia has been somewhat anonymous compared to his team-mate. This will be something that will not go unnoticed throughout this season, given the intense scrutiny he is now under as Marquez’s team-mate. The headline time at the end of Friday for Bagnaia does belie the genuinely strong pace he has underneath him, though.

Bagnaia, on average, is around 0.170s adrift of his team-mate’s pace after Friday practice. But given where he came from in testing, admitting he had to “start from zero” on the final day, and the misfortune of practice, Bagnaia doesn’t go into Saturday looking to close a massive deficit in pace.

“Yeah, today we closed a bit the gap, with the same tyre,” he told the media, including Crash.net, on Friday. “He [Marquez] just changed the front, he used the hard but the performance was very close and he was just one tenth faster in that moment - one tenth and a half faster at that moment of the session. So, happy with it. Also I think Bez and Alex Marquez are quite strong but I’m happy with my performance.”

The big hurdle Bagnaia faces, of course, is escaping the jungle that is Q1. And Q1s in 2025 look like they’ll be harder than ever to get out of given how much more competitive Ducati’s rivals look compared to last year.

While race pace is looking good, if needing just a small step to get on terms with Marquez, one-lap speed is something of a question mark. Bagnaia looked a step behind Marquez in this regard throughout the pre-season. His 1m29.492s that was cancelled was a reasonable effort, but that would still have been 0.472s slower than Alex Marquez’s practice-topping effort.

Where does the rest of the MotoGP field fit into the picture?

Assuming Marquez and Bagnaia are in fact the best on race pace right now, based on Friday data, the fight behind looks like it could be tight.

The ever-present internal threat at Ducati is certainly stronger at the start of 2025 given how good the full GP24 package is. And while Alex Marquez has been good all winter, his average pace on a soft rear tyre with a similar age to Marc Marquez’s and Bagnaia’s currently puts him firmly third. Morbidelli, who will serve a three-place grid penalty on Sunday, needs something more to at least get on terms with satellite counterpart Alex Marquez. 

In fact, current form suggests that a good qualifying could really help propel Honda into the top six fight. Joan Mir has been solid all winter and was genuinely impressive again on Friday. At one stage of Practice, Honda sat 1-3-5, with Mir ultimately sixth overall as LCR’s Johann Zarco squeaked into 10th.

Looking like he could really push the RC213V, the rider that won the 2020 world title is coming more prominently to the fore. What remains to be seen with this Honda is what the ceiling is during a weekend. In the last few years, Honda riders have complained of the fact that the bike feels good from FP1 but then never really progresses like their rivals do. And of course, it’s one thing to be fast at a track you’ve already ridden at - it’s another thing to hit the ground running on unfamiliar territory.

Mir branded his Friday result as “light at the end of the tunnel”. Yamaha looks not far behind with Fabio Quartararo, whose pace on the medium tyre was in the ball park of Mir’s on soft rubber. Acosta has the one-lap speed, but tyre wear looks like it will be a big issue for KTM, especially with near-40-degree Celsius temperatures expected all weekend.

Acosta also noted that the 2025 RC16 isn’t a natural fit for him right now, though insists it is a better package overall compared to the 2024 bike.

Aprilia looks well-placed for a decent start to what has been a difficult year so far, with the ongoing injury woes for reigning world champion Jorge Martin. Bezzecchi continues to impress, with one-lap speed matching well with good race pace, while both Trackhouse rider’s made it through to Q2 - though they are both firmly a step behind Bezzecchi right now.

A competitive start to the new campaign is definitely in the offing, but Ducati’s superteam looks poised to begin the year as everyone expected providing Bagnaia can find some more one-lap pace and even more luck…