It’s the number one story in the MotoGP paddock – just who of Enea Bastianini, Jorge Martin or Marc Marquez will be chosen to partner two-time reigning world champion Francesco Bagnaia at the factory Ducati team for next season.
It’s a no-lose, yet weighty decision for the Italian manufacturer to make – and one that, until that particular piece of the rider market jigsaw is put into place, has the rest of the grid in a state of limbo, the majority of the sport’s premier-class riders in a high-profile holding pattern.
With MotoGP’s current rule set in stasis until the long-awaited 2027 revolution to the regulations, and riders typically signing deals in two-year cycles, there’s plenty riding on the decision of who to hitch your wagon to, and for how long.
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Ink a deal with a manufacturer who is strong now, but isn’t guaranteed to maintain that advantage come 2027? Or take a flyer on a factory on its back foot, but with potential for upside when the reset button is pressed?
Ducati’s predicament – indications are that it will decide which of Bastianini, Martin or Marquez will be in factory red at or around the Italian Grand Prix at Mugello in early June – means that for now, they’re the cork in the rider market bottle.
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Trackhouse Racing team principal Davide Brivio intimated as much at the most recent race in France, telling motogp.com that “everybody talks to everybody, but nothing moves.”
“[There is] A lot going on but everything is stuck until the factory teams make their move, starting from Ducati,” Brivio, who runs the team which employs Miguel Oliveira and Raul Fernandez as Aprilia’s customer outfit, said.
“Then there will be some disappointed riders that will maybe try to go to another factory team. Once the factory teams are set, there will then be some other disappointed riders …
“At this moment, we have to wait.”
THE STATE OF PLAY
One-quarter of the way through the 2024 season, less than 25 per cent of the riders on the grid have a confirmed deal for next year. It’s a remarkably volatile situation that, once Ducati make their big call, could send the MotoGP rumour mill spinning off its axis.
What we do know: of the 22 full-time riders on this year’s grid, just four know what they’ll be riding and where in 2025. Brad Binder (KTM, signed until the end of 2026), Fabio Quartararo (Yamaha, end of 2026), Luca Marini (Honda, end of 2025) and Johann Zarco (Honda, end of 2025) can sit out the silly season.
The only other rider with a MotoGP contract for 2025 isn’t even on this year’s grid – Moto2 Spanish starlet Fermin Aldeguer, who inked a deal with the Ducati group for 2025 in March this year.
Which of Ducati’s three satellite squads – Pramac Racing, VR46 or Gresini – the 19-year-old will ride for is yet to be determined, with the potential for Pramac to dump Ducati to run Yamaha machinery as a customer team for next season another curveball to add to the mix.
All of which means 18 of the current grid don’t know who – and what – they’ll be racing in 2025. Some have more obvious destinations than others, and it’s impossible to imagine Aprilia not extending with Americas GP race-winner Maverick Vinales, KTM letting Pedro Acosta out of its sights, and Marco Bezzecchi riding anything other than a Ducati, to name three.
The most intriguing (and available) free agents outside the Ducati trio? This quick quintet of Grand Prix winners.
JACK MILLER
Australian, 29 years old
Current team: Red Bull KTM Factory Racing
MotoGP career: 10 seasons (Honda, Ducati, KTM), four wins, best championship position 4th (2021)
2024 to date: 24 points, 13th in world championship
State of play: With Pedro Acosta rising faster than even the most optimistic observers imagined possible as a rookie on the KTM-owned GasGas-branded machines this year, the Spanish teenager demands a seat at KTM’s main squad. With Miller’s teammate Binder already locked away to the end of 2026 and the Australian mired in his worst start to a season since he was a rookie in 2015, it seems inevitable that the Townsville tearaway will be elsewhere in 2025 – where that elsewhere is and when that announcement is made are, surely, the only points of conjecture.
Options: A return to Ducati – given they already have more riders than bikes with Aldeguer waiting in the wings, not to mention that he’s been there and done that, is a no despite Miller leaving on good terms when he departed in 2022. Yamaha and Aprilia look like non-starters. A return to Honda, should a vacancy arise, can’t be ruled out but looks improbable.
Prediction: A straight swap with Acosta to ride a red KTM with GasGas stickers and stay in the Austrian family looks to be his most likely – and undoubtedly his best – MotoGP option.
JOAN MIR
Spanish, 26 years old
Current team: Repsol Honda
MotoGP career: 6 seasons (Suzuki, Honda), one win, 2020 world champion
2024 to date: 12 points, 18th in world championship
State of play: Mir’s career is one of MotoGP’s strangest tales. The 2017 Moto3 champion with Honda, the Spaniard stepped up to MotoGP in 2019 with Suzuki and then won the 2020 title in a bizarre 14-round season played out in front of no fans because of Covid-19, by winning just one race and never taking a pole position … but by being an almost permanent fixture inside the top five as Marc Marquez missed the entire season with injury after winning six of the previous seven titles. Suzuki’s 11th-hour withdrawal from the sport in 2022 saw Mir scramble to find a seat at Honda, where he had one top-five race finish and crashed an eye-watering 24 times across the 2023 season.
Options: Mir’s broken body and battered psyche was so fragile last year that he admitted to contemplating retirement, three years after he was the top of the MotoGP pile. His crash count is down this year and his results are better – if moving from 22nd to 18th in the championship counts as progress. Renewing ties with Brivio – his team boss at Suzuki in his 2020 heyday – has to be the priority for a rider who needs some breaks of different kind to the ones he’s become painfully accustomed to.
Prediction: Trackhouse Racing on an Aprilia, or nothing.
ALEIX ESPARGARO
Spanish, 34 years old
Current team: Aprilia Factory Racing
MotoGP career: 14 seasons (Ducati, ART, Forward Yamaha, Suzuki, Aprilia), three wins, best championship position 4th (2022)
2024 to date: 51 points, 8th in world championship
State of play: Espargaro’s MotoGP career was so slow to come to the boil that he took just two podium finishes in his first 11 years – but it did eventually bubble up into something to savour, Aprilia’s ‘Captain’ winning his first Grand Prix in any class in Argentina in 2022, Aprilia’s maiden premier-class victory.
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Espargaro’s best three seasons have been his past three, but the veteran has been on the grid since 2004, when he made a 125cc appearance at Valencia as a 15-year-old. He’s publicly vacillated between retiring or riding on over the past 12 months, which is understandable given the Aprilia project he’s toiled so hard to make a respectable MotoGP force has come good. The decision will be his.
Options: An extension to his Aprilia deal, or becoming the factory’s test rider – the latter a very attractive option as the 2027 regulation change looms large on the horizon, and he can have his fingerprints all over the factory’s next phase.
Prediction: A step away from full-time racing – with Bastianini, should Ducati not re-sign him as Bagnaia’s teammate, taking Espargaro’s place as the Italian spearhead of an Italian team.
MIGUEL OLIVEIRA
Portuguese, 29 years old
Current team: Trackhouse Racing
MotoGP career: 6 seasons (KTM, Aprilia), five wins, best championship position 9th (2020)
2024 to date: 23 points, 14th in world championship
State of play: Oliveira’s body of work across six MotoGP campaigns – two top-10 championship finishes and an excess of anonymity – makes him come across as a career journeyman who’s merely making up the numbers. But when he’s good, he’s very good – of his seven podiums, five of them are wins, and often in dominating style. It’s a peak that keeps him employed, a ceiling that always leaves you wanting more … and one that has him in the front row of the line-up for any manufacturer running a second-tier squad who needs a sniper who can occasionally spring a surprise.
Options: Oliveira’s boss Brivio will certainly look hard at Mir, given their history, and it’s hard to imagine both the Portuguese and Spanish teammate Fernandez both staying on for 2025 with so much market movement elsewhere. If Pramac spurns Ducati to run a second Yamaha squad, Oliveira’s experience and intelligence would be ideal for a new project, if the price is right.
Prediction: If Yamaha expand to four bikes from two in 2025, Oliveira could very well be on one of them.
FRANCO MORBIDELLI
Italian, 29 years old
Current team: Pramac Racing
MotoGP career: 7 seasons (Honda, Yamaha, Ducati), three wins, best championship position 2nd (2020)
2024 to date: 15 points, 16th in world championship
State of play: Morbidelli deserves an asterisk for this season, after he came into it with no pre-campaign running at all after a horrendous superbike accident in Portugal in January that left him unconscious and with a small blood clot in his head – and no recollection of what happened. The stats since he’s been back, though – Jorge Martin, his teammate, has scored 114 points more in five rounds and leads the championship, 15 places ahead of the Italian – is a continuation of the precipitous drop-off since Morbidelli finished second to Mir in that aforementioned strange 2020 season.
Morbidelli has managed one podium finish since, yet managed to land on his feet when he traded a seat with struggling Yamaha after being replaced by Alex Rins into a ride on the best brand in the business in Ducati. Morbidelli is getting there, slowly – seventh in the most recent round in France was his best 2024 showing yet – but with teams making decisions for 2025 sooner rather than later, the sand in the hourglass is shifting fast.
Options: Perhaps a Ducati switch to Valentino Rossi’s VR46 squad could be an option, although ousting younger compatriot Fabio De Giannantonio would be for reasons of pedigree, not pace.
Prediction: It’s 50-50 that he’s on the grid at all in 2025.