Spaniard Marc Marquez, six-time MotoGP world champion with Honda, will join Gresini, Ducati’s satellite team with whom he will compete in the 2024 season, his new Italian team announced on Thursday, where he will play alongside his brother Alex.
“The Gresini family is delighted to announce the arrival of Marc Marquez for the 2024 season,” it was written in a press release. The six-time world champion, aged 30, who currently rides a Honda, will form a “magic pair” at Ducati-Gresini with his younger brother, Alex, the text continues.
“It wasn’t an easy decision because it’s a big change in more than one way… But I’m enthusiastic about taking on this new challenge,” commented the pilot, quoted in the press release. “This is a historic moment for the Gresini family,” reacted the boss of her future team, Nadia Padovani Gresini.
Honda, Marc Marquez’s current team, announced a week ago the end of its collaboration with the Catalan at the end of the 2023 season, a year before the expiration of his contract. Rumors were already announcing Marc Marquez leaving for Ducati-Gresini. These have intensified since September, with the sporting director of the Ducati factory team Paolo Ciabatti assuring at the end of the same month that Gresini was awaiting the response from the person concerned.
Since his first season among the elite in 2013, crowned by his first MotoGP title – and until 2019 – Marc Marquez has often been close to the summits, until his fall during the first race of the 2020 season. A path of the cross followed for the Spaniard made up of operations and other physical problems. Recovered, it is on the handlebars of a struggling Honda motorcycle that the 2013, 2014, 2016, 2017, 2018 and 2019 world champion in the premier category currently has to contend.
Lacking performance against the other manufacturers on the grid, the factory team is currently in 11th and last place in the team championship. Its satellite team, Honda-LCR, is not doing much better since it is 9th. In the World Drivers’ Championship, Marc Marquez is currently 15th, with only 64 points on the clock, far behind Italian leader Francesco Bagnaia (319 pts). The next Grand Prix takes place this weekend on the island of Lombok, Indonesia.
