Who can stop the Ducati juggernaut?

In the MotoGP era, since Ducati started competing in 2002, Honda have 157 wins, and Yamaha 125. Ducati claimed their 101^st win just a week later in Indonesia, and are far and away favourites to take the remaining four races in 2024, so they will probably overtake Yamaha in 2025.

That is on current form. Which for the Ferrari-red Bologna brand is a matter of almost total domination. Their first win was in 2003 – just one, and then a pair in 2005. But over the past four seasons the rate has climbed exponentially. Last year there was a record 17, the other three shared between Aprilia (2) and Honda. This year they should improve on that; so far Aprilia have managed the only single disruption at the Grand Prix of the Americas.

The question is: can Ducati be stopped?

Well, it doesn’t look like it at present. Race department boss and innovative engineer Luigi Dall’Igna has stayed consistently one step ahead of the rest. Every time they imitate his innovations, he does something even cleverer. This, in spite of new multi-tier regulations freezing engine development and limiting Ducati’s testing while allowing less successful rivals (mainly Honda and Yamaha) freedom for both.

It’s possible these restrictions, along with the banning of ride-height adjustment devices (pioneered of course by Dall’Igna) might bite a little harder in 2025. But Ducati have another trick: slotting Marc Márquez into the factory team, alongside current defending champion Pecco Bagnaia.

And yet, the factory team’s swoop on the most illustrious rider was not without a cost. In so doing, they alienated two of 2024’s other top riders.

Satellite-team rider Jorge Martín has led this year’s points table almost all season, bar a couple of interruptions by Bagnaia, albeit never by enough to destroy the defender’s chances. The Spaniard is devastatingly fast in time-attack mode, with six poles for ten front rows in the first 15 rounds. Bagnaia, by comparison, just three poles.

And while the Italian has more main-race wins at seven to three, the visibly maturing Martín has six half-point Sprint wins to Bagnaia’s three, and has been generally (albeit marginally) more consistent overall. In other words, he’s a worthy competitor for Bagnaia. And for Márquez, come to that.

Denied the factory Ducati seat for a second time, Martín is leaving … for Aprilia, the next-best bike on the grid. The other leaver is Enea Bastianini, Bagnaia’s factory team-mate, and rather an enigmatic performer, whose superpower is to be much the fastest in the closing stages, when the tyres have gone away. Too often this has been undermined by sub-prime qualifying, but with after two wins he is third overall, and with five races left is still (at least mathematically) a title candidate.

Overlooked to retain his factory seat, Bastianini is off to join KTM, the third-best alternative. Are these riders sacrificing their title chances to a fit of pique, or will either turn out to be a well-timed, even inspired move?

Martín and Aprilia is the more interesting combination. The other Italian V4 has been knocking on the door for a couple of seasons now, ever since Aleix Espargaró’s first win (for both bike and rider) in Argentina in 2022. He’s added a couple more, and team-mate Maverick Viñales his own first for Aprilia in the USA this year.

Martín is banking on his superior talent. Espargaró is a redoubtable old soldier, but had almost 300 starts in all classes before that win; Viñales – a former Moto3 champion – is definitely a higher level of natural talent. But his results have long been marred by moodiness. On a good day, now and then, he’s unbeatable. More often though he is puzzlingly out of the frame.

It was like that when he rode for Yamaha, so that in the end they dumped him mid-season. Aprilia rescued his career. But he is now leaving Aprilia for KTM, hoping to become the first in history to win on four different makes (after Suzuki, Yamaha and Aprilia).

Will he – and Bastianini – find a 2025 KTM capable of serial success? The Austrian brand has been on the brink for a couple of years, but keeps falling just short, in spite of spending plenty of money on lots of engineering. Currently, they are in the middle of major senior personnel changes, having changed pretty much everything else several times.

Can either prove the immovable force to block Ducati’s hitherto irresistible juggernaut? A question that is exactly why MotoGP is compellingly interesting.

Images courtesy of Motorsport Images.