Marquez Highlights Four-Second Gap Between Ducati GP23 and GP24 in Battle for Factory Seat

‘Four-second’ gap between Ducati GP23 and GP24?

Marc Marquez assesses the performance disparity between his GP23 and the top-tier GP24 models.

Marc Marquez thinks that his quick improvement on the year-old GP23 was the reason he secured the highly desired factory Ducati position, beating out MotoGP world championship leader Jorge Martin.

Based on his performance, Martin was the clear favorite, having ended last season just behind Francesco Bagnaia and now holding an 18-point lead over the Italian in this year’s rankings for the satellite Pramac team.

Marquez's last MotoGP win was at Misano in 2021 with Repsol Honda, whereas Martin has secured six grand prix triumphs and 12 Sprint victories over the past year and three months.

Nevertheless, although Martin is riding a GP24 with specifications matching Bagnaia’s, Marquez's bike is from the previous year and has even fewer advanced features compared to Bagnaia and Martin's bikes from the end of last season (for instance, Marquez's bike lacks the latest ride-height device).

During an interview with AS.com, Marquez was questioned about the performance gap between the GP24 and GP23. He approximated the difference to be about “two-tenths of a second per lap, which translates to four seconds over the course of a race.”

To provide some perspective, in the five out of seven (Sunday) Grands Prix that Marquez has completed this season without crashing, his distance from the win has been:

To put it differently, under four seconds across four Grand Prix races…

Gigi Dall'Igna, the general manager of Ducati Corse, along with his team of engineers, have an unparalleled understanding of the performance variations between the 2023 and 2024 Desmosedici models. They are also able to assess rider abilities by analyzing data from eight different sources.

"You need to use every resource at your disposal," Marquez commented about landing the highly sought-after factory position.

"The most important factor is the track, and the Ducati engineers have mentioned that they are closely monitoring how I am performing with the 2023 bike, which has been a significant consideration for them."

The disparity in bike specifications compared to Martin was a key factor in Marquez's opinion that the factory Ducati seat shouldn't just be given to the rider who places higher in this year's world championship.

"In order to achieve that, you need to possess the same tools, and currently, I lack them," he stated. "However, that's not an excuse, and I'm demonstrating that I can still remain competitive."

"Additionally, I made it very clear that I had no intention of switching from one satellite team to another, specifically [Pramac]."

"The third point is that athletes have sponsorship agreements and cannot afford to wait until the season concludes. It simply wasn't practical."

This season, the new GP24 motorcycles have secured six wins, with Maverick Vinales from Aprilia being the sole other rider to achieve a victory.

Following the first seven races of the previous season, the year-old GP22 models had secured two victories (thanks to Marco Bezzecchi), while the GP23 models had achieved four wins.

At this stage last season, Bezzecchi was in third place and 34 points behind the leader, a situation that is nearly the same as Marquez's current third place and 35-point deficit.

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