Gresini rider Alex Marquez set the pace in the post-season MotoGP test in Barcelona on Tuesday, as his elder brother Marc Marquez completed his first outing with the factory Ducati team.
Alex Marquez led the times for the majority of the seven-hour session at Circuit de Barcelona-Catalunya after jumping to the top of the leaderboard early on with a 1m40.006s flier.
New factory KTM rider Pedro Acosta enjoyed a brief stint at the front in the morning, before two-time MotoGP champion Francesco Bagnaia moved to the top with a 1m39.398s in the third hour.
Yamaha rider Fabio Quartararo then dispatched Bagnaia from the lead, before the younger Marquez clocked the circuit in 1m38.803s in the fourth hour to wrest back control.
Although the Spaniard damaged his new GP24 bike with a crash at Turn 7 in the penultimate hour, his previous time remained unbeaten as the track rapidly cooled up in the evening.
Quartararo was also able to hold on to second place on his Yamaha M1 courtesy of his earlier effort of 1m39.199s, which put him 0.396s down on Marquez’s time.
Bagnaia finished a further two-tenths adrift in third, as he tried three different Desmosedici bikes over the course of the day. The Italian not only had his race-winning GP24 bike and the 2025-spec GP25 at its disposal, but also a hybrid of the two machines available to test in Barcelona.
Francesco Bagnaia, Ducati Team
Photo by: Gold and Goose / Motorsport Images
He took part in the test with his old bike number, 63, having ceded the right to use the #1 plate after losing the 2024 title to Jorge Martin last weekend.
One of the biggest headliners of the day was Marc Marquez, who made his debut with Ducati’s factory squad as Bagnaia’s team-mate after a year racing for the satellite Gresini team.
The six-time MotoGP champion tallied up a total of 49 laps on Tuesday, jumping to fourth on the leaderboard with 15 minutes left on the clock with a late effort of 1m39.454s.
Like new team-mate Bagnaia, Marquez also had different specifications of the Desmosedici available to test, but hit the track for the first time with the new GP25 that he will be racing in 2025.
His bike was painted in a bright shade of red and carried little sponsorship branding, much like his race suit.
Behind, Trackhouse rider Raul Fernandez was the top Aprilia runner in fifth, while Brad Binder leapt up to sixth with a late improvement on his factory KTM.
Franco Morbidelli finished seventh on his…
Click Here to Read the Full Original Article at Autosport.com – MotoGP – Stories…