Marc Marquez doesn’t think the 2025 MotoGP season will be a duopoly between him and Ducati team-mate Francesco Bagnaia, despite the popular belief.
Ducati is expected to dominate MotoGP until the end of the current rules cycle on the back of its stellar 2024 season in which it won 19 out of the 20 grands prix.
But while its victories were split between four riders this year, the departures of Jorge Martin and Enea Bastianini have left new signing Marquez and two-time champion Bagnaia as the only A-listers in its line-up.
This has led to speculation that the two will be engaged in their own battle for the championship next year, with a challenge unlikely to materialise from within Ducati or elsewhere on the grid.
However, six-time MotoGP champion Marquez has refuted those suggestions, saying there is a strong chance that other riders will also feature in the 2025 title fight.
"It won't just be a championship between Pecco and me," he said. "It's not just Ducati that is racing, but we have to see the evolution of the other brands, there's also Jorge Martin with Aprilia, who has won races, and Pedro Acosta with KTM who has also been close.
"We will try to give 100%, but I am aware that it will be very difficult, and that everything has to be perfect to win a world championship."
Former Honda rider Marquez has signed a multi-year contract with Ducati from 2025 that will see him get access to the best bike on the grid for the first time in over five years.
Given his dominant streak in mid-to-late 2010s that earned him a spot among MotoGP’s greatest, many expect him to walk away with the title next year.
But the Spaniard, who has made it clear he won’t ever be able to return to his pre-2020 form after his career-altering arm injury, said it wouldn’t be so simple to outperform Bagnaia in the same team in 2025.
"They say that with the official Ducati I'm going to sweep [the title]," he said. "We're in MotoGP, the best championship, where the best riders are, where my team-mate has won 11 races this year, which is a lot.
"The tendency is to look at how much I've won, but in sport, you live in the present. Every year young people join in."
In 2025, Marquez will arrive at a team built around Bagnaia, who helped Ducati clinch its first title in MotoGP since Casey Stoner’s success in 2007.
This would be a big change for him from the environment he enjoyed at Honda, where he was the top dog and received favourable treatment in terms of the direction the Japanese manufacturer took with the development of the bike.
Asked about his thoughts on joining Bagnaia, he said: "It's a situation I've never experienced before, arriving at a box where there is a status, and the one who has the leading voice is Pecco.
"He is the one who has won two titles [for Ducati] and he must be the one who sets the tone at the beginning of the season and in pre-season. We will work to get closer to him, but he is the reference.
"Now, I feel that it is time to keep a low profile. We will try to work to fight for the title. But I always try to be realistic. You have to understand the philosophy of the official Ducati team, and arrive at the box of a rider who is winning a lot. And if the title can be stolen from him, it will be stolen."
