The MotoGP championship has already seen several twists and turns after three rounds of the hotly anticipated 2025 season. While Ducati remains the dominant force, an unexpected rider has claimed the top spot in the riders’ standings after the last round at COTA.
Many surprise performances have already happened in the races in Thailand, Argentina and Austin, with some teams and riders on the up. In contrast, others find themselves with plenty to do before the championship gets to Europe. With rookie sensations and manufacturer resurgences, here are five things we have learned in the opening rounds of the 2025 MotoGP campaign.
1. Alex Marquez might be the real deal
If you had told any MotoGP fan before the start of the season that Marquez would be leading the championship after the first three rounds, most people would’ve nodded in agreement. However, the Marquez currently sitting at the top of the standings is not Marc, but Alex.
Finishing second in every Sprint and grand prix so far this season, the younger Marquez brother has made a virtually faultless start to 2025. While he is yet to break his duck and score his first MotoGP victory, the Spanish rider came close in both Thailand and Argentina, but both times was beaten to the line by his older brother Marc.
However, Marc Marquez was the first of the pair to make a mistake, and his crash from the lead in COTA allowed Alex to take control of the championship for the first time in his career. While we are yet to see if the Gresini rider will feel the pressures of being the leader of the riders’ standings, 2025 has introduced us to a more consistent and patient Marquez than what we have seen before.
Yet to make a mistake this season, the growth in confidence for a rider like Alex Marquez cannot be understated, as the potential has always been there. Marquez always had the pace in Sprints, winning at a wet Silverstone and a dry Sepang, but we hadn’t seen him close to challenging for a victory in full-race trim since those two second places aboard the Repsol Honda machine in his rookie campaign back in 2020.
Should the Gresini rider keep up his form, we could see a coming-of-age season for him, where he wins his first MotoGP race and becomes the closest challenger to his brother and Francesco Bagnaia on the factory Ducatis.
2. Honda is a legitimate challenger (for now)
In a similarly unexpected manner to Marquez’s form at the start of the campaign, not many MotoGP fans would have expected Honda to be lying in second place in the constructors’ standings after its woes of recent times. However, the development of the Japanese manufacturer seems to be working after it was awarded concessions, and Honda looks like it’s closer than ever to a return to the front of the grid.
It’s hard to describe the issues Honda has faced over the last five seasons. Losing Marc Marquez to a long injury lay-off in 2020 highlighted just how badly the bike had been developed over the previous few years. Coupled with the Spanish rider being unable to score a win on the RC213V when he returned to near-full fitness in 2023, as well as the relentless crashes from Joan Mir and harsh injuries suffered by Alex Rins and Takaaki Nakagami, it’s been a difficult few years for MotoGP’s most successful manufacturer.
Despite being far behind its counterparts in its development process, Honda had made moves towards the end of 2024 to secure its return to competitiveness, signing Romano Albesiano who had engineered Aprilia’s success, as well as other high-profile European engineers.
Preseason testing in February suggested there were signs that the manufacturer had gotten back on track, as its concessions took full swing. Johann Zarco said it was “hard to say” whether Albesiano had made an impact in the opening rounds as his work with Honda only commenced in January, but Mir left the Buriram test suggesting the bike was “the best Honda I’ve ever ridden.” However, the Spaniard still needed to see if the races would prove his statement to be true.
Mir backed up his claims by earning points in the Sprint race in Thailand, with Johann Zarco and Luca Marini gathering more in the main race. Zarco then stunned the field by qualifying on the front row in Argentina, finishing in fourth and sixth places in the races, with this promising weekend backed up by Marini’s outing in COTA. While crashes for Mir are still commonplace, and rookie Somkiat Chantra needs time to adapt to the premier class, Honda has been the surprise package of MotoGP so far this campaign.
3. Trackhouse chose right with Ogura
There was plenty of debate before the MotoGP season began as to whether Trackhouse made the right call signing Moto2 champion Ai Ogura. The expectations were that the team were looking for an American rider amid Joe Roberts’ best season to date in the intermediate class combined with the championship’s search for US interest in the sport. However, Trackhouse manager Davide Brivio “decided that Ai was a better choice for our project, regardless of the passport”.
So far, his decision is proving to be the right one.
Ogura was a sensation on his MotoGP debut in Buriram, scoring a fourth place in the Sprint, which he then followed up with a fifth place in the main race. While he was disqualified from eighth place in Argentina due to a non-homologated software being found on his bike, the Japanese rider bounced back in COTA with another double-points haul.
Despite the fanfare over the Ogura’s signing, there was never any doubt from the team over their choice, with Brivio admitting there were some early indicators that his riding style would make him suited for a step into the premier class.
“I hadn’t followed him closely in his earlier stages, but last year in Moto2, I was impressed by how he managed to get out of tough situations,” Brivio told Autosport about the Moto2 world champion.
“At the same time, I noticed his riding style, which seemed suited for MotoGP. I was convinced after speaking with Matteo Baiocco [Aprilia test rider]. With those indicators, we went after him. The fact that he was Japanese made him an interesting prospect, but we couldn’t test him beforehand, so there was some risk involved.”
When asked to describe Ogura, Brivio suggested: “He’s an atypical Japanese rider. We’ve found a diamond that now needs polishing. He’s very humble but also very sharp. He learns quickly and doesn’t stop. Once he masters one thing, he moves on to the next.”
The Tokyo native currently sits sixth in the standings as the highest non-Ducati rider as he will surely continue to prove the doubters wrong as the 2025 season progresses.
4. KTM’s time with Acosta is running out
Following a disappointing opening three rounds, there are already question marks over Pedro Acosta’s future at KTM. The Spanish rider is yet to score a win in MotoGP with the Austrian manufacturer, and his patience may be wearing thin as the team continues to struggle at the start of 2025.
Acosta has only scored points in one full-length race so far this season, and has already cited the Jerez test at the end of April as “maybe the most important day” of his season, as the team has to try a lot of things to ensure it can be competitive.
With KTM’s difficulties on and off-track, Acosta has been urged by several figures to leave the Austrian manufacturer, including 1993 World Champion and his motor-racing idol, Kevin Schwantz. “I think Pedro has a great career ahead of him,” Schwantz told the MotoGP world broadcast at COTA.
“Take your time and learn what you can on the KTM, and if the opportunity is there to get on one of the bikes that are running at the very front, then I think at his age, he should jump at that opportunity.
“Being the guy who was never brave enough to jump ship, I would recommend that now. I tried a couple of times; I tried to ride a Yamaha once; I tried to ride a Honda once but never managed to get either one pulled off.
“I think as young as Pedro is, and I know KTM has given him his chances all the way up to where he is now, but if he doesn’t feel like things are quite going in the direction that he needs to be, if contracts are up, and there is a possibility to go to one of those teams who are running at the front, I think he would jump at that opportunity because there isn’t always going to be that possibility.”
Pramac Yamaha, VR46 Ducati and Honda have all been cited as options for the Spaniard if KTM’s situation doesn’t improve, but Acosta insists the KTM dream is still alive.
“I came to KTM with a clear dream and the dream is still there,” Acosta said ahead of the MotoGP weekend in COTA, “At the end, we need to keep pushing. We know it’s not an easy target, but it’s part of the game. For this, we have to be calm, don’t listen to the guys out of the team, and that’s it.”
5. Marc Marquez is NOT unbeatable
Everyone was expecting Marc Marquez to dominate the 2025 championship the moment it was announced he would be joining the factory Ducati team, and a dominant start to the campaign may have proved them right. Five race victories in a row, with at least a second in hand in each, made it appear that the eight-time world champion was about to decimate the field as he did back in 2019. However, one mistake in the grand prix at COTA currently sees him second in the standings. While this may be a singular blip in an already-exceptional season, it just proves that Marquez is not unbeatable.
Many would have thought he would be leading the standings following a visit to one of his best tracks on the calendar, and while he is only one point behind his brother Alex, he hasn’t looked infallible this season. In many ways, the mistake in Austin wasn’t a surprise, given the amount he’d had to push to win the opening five races. Tyre pressures meant he had to spend a considerable amount of the ThaiGP behind his brother before he easily overtook him for the win. Argentina was more difficult, as he made several errors while trying to catch the Gresini rider. Even in the Sprint in COTA, the Spanish rider was forced into another save as he came head-to-head with team-mate Francesco Bagnaia for the first time this season. All of this preceded the unfortunate crash from the lead in the Grand Prix of the Americas and revealed the first chink in the Marquez armour in 2025.
While it’s likely this mistake won’t change the course of the championship, and it is still heavily favoured that Marquez will become a nine-time champion by the end of the season, the Spanish rider stressed that he still has “to learn from” some of the errors he is making as he adapts to the GP25.
“I accept the criticism, like the praise I received in the previous races,” Marquez said after his crash. “Before, it seemed that I already had the World Championship in my hands, now I lost it. Neither is true, these are things that can happen and are to learn from.”
Nonetheless, the MotoGP field can be confident that Marquez will still make mistakes, much like in his successful seasons with Repsol Honda. COTA proved this to Bagnaia and the rest of the grid, and it will be up to them whether or not they can punish these errors if, and when, they occur.
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