The 2023 MotoGP season boasted one of the tightest title fights in recent memory. Throughout the campaign, momentum swung back and forth, like a pendulum, between Pecco Bagnaia and Jorge Martín.
The series reached its crescendo at the final round in Valencia over the weekend. Prima Pramac Ducati’s Martín ate into Bagnaia’s advantage during Saturday’s Sprint race, but the factory Ducati Lenovo rider clinched his second straight world championship in Sunday’s grand prix.
Bagnaia was able to enjoy the spotlight that shines on a double world champion for all of 48 hours before the two-wheeled world turned its attention elsewhere.
You see, not only does Valencia serve as each season’s finale, it also marks the beginning of the next campaign. The curtain fell on 2023 on Sunday night at the Circuit Ricardo Tormo, but on Tuesday morning, the track hosted the first preseason test of 2024.
It just so happened to be the most highly anticipated preseason test in more than a dozen years.
In October, it was announced that six-time MotoGP world champion Marc Márquez would be leaving Repsol Honda, the only team he’s known in his 11-year premier-class career. A week later, Gresini Racing confirmed that the 30-year-old Spaniard would join them in 2024, riding the same Ducati Desmosedici GP23 that won 13 races in 2023 — with the year-old GP22 making it 17 from 20 for the Italian manufacturer.
While Márquez has a reputation as one of the greatest riders in the sport’s history, it’s been four years since his last championship and he’s tasted victory just three times since.
In the opening race of the 2020 season, he suffered a career-threatening humorous fracture, an injury that took him nearly three full years to recover from. In that time, his once-mighty Honda RC213V had become the slowest and most unruly bike on the grid, preventing him from truly competing with the likes of Bagnaia, Martín, 2021 world champion Fabio Quartararo and the rest of the new wave of riders who’ve emerged in his absence.
Tuesday’s Valencia test marked the first time Márquez would ride a truly capable motorcycle in at least four years. This would be an event. MotoMatters’ David Emmett noted that the grandstands open to the public to the event were full, traffic to the circuit backed up to the motorway, as…
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