Next season, Marc Márquez will once again be a factory rider in MotoGP, this time with Ducati. However, unlike his time at Repsol Honda up until 2023, he won’t be the most experienced or the main reference in the team, as he will be paired with Francesco Bagnaia.
He will be in a situation similar to that of Joan Mir, Jorge Lorenzo, and Pol Espargaró when they joined Honda between 2019 and 2023, which is unprecedented for the #93, as he acknowledged in a press conference: ‘Of course for me it will be a new experience, because usually I was in Repsol Honda Team and defending all the experience and being the best inside the garage. Lorenzo arrived, Joan Mir arrived, two world champions, and in the end it was a different situation because I knew better the bike’.
Márquez is open to learning from Bagnaia and is aware that he needs to: ‘This will be a new experience for me because Pecco is the reference inside Ducati, he has the number 1 in the fairing, he is super fast and of course I need to learn a lot from him, how he does, how he rides. Of course now I have the data, but inside the garage is always different’.
On the other hand, the Spaniard emphasized that he expects a collaborative environment with Bagnaia: ‘From that point, I hope that we can help each other, because at the end if he is competitive and I am competitive, this will be the biggest help inside the garage to increase our level’.