Motorcycling-Pramac to make switch from Ducati to Yamaha from 2025

FILE PHOTO: MotoGP - Italian Grand Prix - Mugello Circuit, Scarperia e San Piero, Italy - June 2, 2024 Prima Pramac Racing's Jorge Martin with Ducati Lenovo Team's Enea Bastianini and Gresini Racing MotoGP's Marc Marquez in action during the race REUTERS/Jennifer Lorenzini/File Photo

(Reuters) - Pramac Racing will end their 20-year partnership with Italian bike manufacturer Ducati and become a second Yamaha factory team from the 2025 season in a multi-year partnership, the teams announced on Friday.

Pramac Racing have been using Ducati's Desmosedici bikes since the 2004 season but will now receive factory spec YZR-M1 bikes from Yamaha, with the riders set to be directly contracted by the Japanese manufacturer.

Tuscany-based Pramac will continue to be an independent team but have not confirmed their rider lineup for 2025, with MotoGP championship leader Jorge Martin making the switch to Aprilia next year having been snubbed by the factory Ducati team.

"We now enter the next phase, one that we have been looking forward to for a long time: the arrival of a second Yamaha team," Lin Jarvis, the managing director of Yamaha Motor Racing, said in a statement.

"The new partnership with Prima Pramac Racing will take a different form than we have used in the past.

"Rather than a satellite team, with this new agreement Yamaha have put their trust in Pramac Racing, and we will be providing them with factory bikes of the same specification used by the Yamaha MotoGP team."

Pramac had been receiving the same bikes as the factory Ducati teams since the 2020 season. When Pramac entered MotoGP in 2002, they originally started with Yamaha.

(Reporting by Rohith Nair in Bengaluru; Editing by Toby Chopra)