EXCL: Cairoli and Maddii discuss Ducati’s signing of Seewer

It’s an exciting time for Ducati as they are preparing for their first full season taking on the MXGP World Championship in 2025. Antonio Cairoli and Alessandro Lupino who have been heavily involved in the testing and development on the bike did one MXGP round each in 2024 but Ducati will contest the full twenty rounds of MXGP in 2025.

Jeremy Seewer was the first signing to be announced and it’s a historic signing as he was the first ever signing for the brand in MXGP. The Swiss rider will wear Fox gear in 2025. Italian talent, Mattia Guadagnini will complete Ducati’s rider line up and he’ll wear Alpinestars gear.

We recently caught up with Antonio Cairoli to discuss the project and the signing of Jeremy Seewer.

“The first impression was good I mean he always says that he’s happy with the bike let’s say. Of course it’s a completely different bike than he was used to ride with also with the desmodromic system, maybe he’ll need time to get used to it and these kind of things”. Cairoli stated.

This article continues below

Cairoli also confirmed that not much will change for Seewer in terms of location as he’ll be mainly based in the Netherlands/Belgium during the season. Despite being Swiss that’s where he spent most of his time with his previous teams.

“I think he is staying more in Belgium as they always do. Also during the season I mean maybe in the winter time a little bit closer to the Maldives racing team of course but I think anyway the best preparation is always to stay in Belgium. I think this is what he’s going to do”, added Cairoli.

Marco Maddii who is the team manager of the Ducati setup in MXGP, also discussed the signing of Seewer with GateDrop.com.

“Yeah we speak with a lot of riders but there is a lot of interest around Ducati and so a lot of the top riders, they also came to talk to us and then in the end we decided for Jeremy. But yeah we are very happy with the riders we have because it was our goal from the beginning to have these two riders. We are happy that we made it happen, you know. So, we can’t ask more for the moment and I think the two riders are really the right people to make our debut season in MXGP”, Maddii stated.

“Jeremy’s first impression was really positive, he really liked the bike. I mean we have and Jeremy told us that we have a lot of strong points of the bike that makes the bike really easy to ride in terms of handling, in terms of engine. But yes, the impression of him was really positive… Of course we have somethings to fix and we are working on it from now to March when the championship starts but overall his first impression was really positive and at the moment we are all very pumped”, added Maddii.

The good news is we won’t have to wait until Argentina to see the new riders race the bike as they should be contesting the International Italian Championship kicking off in February at Mantova.

“The plan is to race the International Italian Championship, yes. There will be two rounds but yes we’re going to race the series because we need more races and more starts with our bike. We will definitely be behind the gate before the MXGP World Championship starts”, Maddii confirmed.