Why Ducati leans in direction of 2024 engine for 2025 MotoGP bike

Ducati has all however determined to include the 2024 engine on its 2025 MotoGP bike for plenty of causes forward of this week’s Thailand take a look at.

Throughout the three days of testing on the Sepang Circuit in Malaysia, each Marquez and Bagnaia refused to disclose the engine specification Ducati plans on utilizing within the GP25 this 12 months.

Nonetheless, the riders had made the place for engineers very clear – it was obligatory to depart Sepang with the engine determination already made. And making an allowance for what was stated on the final day, Ducati might have opted for essentially the most conservative answer of the 2 accessible – to make use of the identical engine that introduced it a lot success in 2024 (16 victories out of 20 potential).

No producer is pleased to confess that the earlier 12 months’s engine is working higher than the brand new one, as a result of that might be admitting that the work it has accomplished in latest months has not borne fruit. This time nevertheless, Ducati is doing so – albeit quietly – due to the outcomes it achieved with the earlier model.

Other than efficiency, two different components have contributed to the choice.

Firstly, pre-season testing in 2025 has been far more condensed than lately, when there was normally a two-week hole between the 2 assessments. This time, bikes will take to the monitor at Buriram simply 4 days after the top of the Sepang take a look at. That leaves no room for the producers to return to their factories to work and have the brand new elements prepared for the following take a look at.

Motorsport.com understands that the producers have been polled and selected this format, though Ducati voted for the normal schedule with two weeks splitting the Sepang and Thailand assessments.

As well as, the brand new rules stipulate that the manufacturers with out concession advantages should homologate their engines in Thailand, the primary spherical of the 12 months, and that their specification should be frozen till the top of the 2026 season.

“We’ll evolve the 2024 bike, and we won’t use the whole 2025 one,” admitted Ducati group supervisor Davide Tardozzi on Friday. “The engine is without doubt one of the issues we nonetheless must resolve.

“We need to be conservative as a result of, this time, the engine freeze lasts two years. We nonetheless must re-test issues, small developments, however the indications we now have lead us to that 2024 engine. That’s the downside of getting made a motorbike that provides such excessive efficiency.”

In 2025, solely three Ducati riders could have entry to the brand new GP25 – manufacturing unit group riders Bagnaia and Marquez, plus VR46’s Fabio di Giannantonio. In the meantime, Alex Marquez, Fermin Aldeguer and Franco Morbidelli will compete on final 12 months’s title-winning GP24.