The 2025 Moto3™ World Championship has been declared open! Red Bull KTM Tech3 kicked off on Friday an exciting campaign of 22 rounds all over the globe, at the Chang International Circuit, host to the 6th edition of the Grand Prix of Thailand. Rookie Valentin Perrone officially made his debuts in the lightweight class, alongside Joel Esteban, replacing Jacob Roulstone.
Grand Prix of Thailand
Valentin Perrone was all excited to make his debuts after an intense winter preparation to arrive at the opening round as ready as possible. Every Friday this year will be about learning a new track, so the main goal of day 1 for the young rider was to discover the 4.554 km layout and its 12 corners. In the opening session of the Thai GP, Moto3™’s new 73 completed 14 laps in Free Practice 1 with a fastest in 1'43.539. The learning continued in the afternoon’s session, now called Practice, after the category has adopted the same format as the main class starting from 2025. That means, the first 14 riders of Fridays’ Practices will now qualify directly to Q2. Perrone improved to a 1’42.395, to finish his first day in Moto3™ in P22.
His provisional teammate, Joel Esteban, was also looking forward to getting the season started after joining the Red Bull KTM Tech3 squad during the winter tests, and put all the work done into application. Esteban already knew the layout from last season, so the adaptation was logically faster this morning. After a best lap in 1'42.290 in the opening session, the young Spaniard slightly improved to a 1’42.113 in the afternoon’s Practice. The feeling with used tyres appeared good, but as soon as he changed to new tyres to try some fast laps, the feeling was not quite the same. He finished 18th, and will try to improve a bit more to qualify for Q2. The Moto3™ class will be back on track on Saturday morning with Free Practice 2 at 8:40 LT (UTC+7), before the first qualifying sessions kick off at 12:50.
VALENTIN PERRONE: "It was a good first day! I enjoyed the track, the bike, we had a good set up and the tyres don’t seem to drop too much here, which is good. We have improved lap after lap today, so I look forward to continuing the work on day 2, and hopefully we can have a good qualifying for our first one."
JOEL ESTEBAN: "It was a good first day overall. We tried some things from the Jerez Test in the morning’s practice, and it worked quite well so I was pretty happy after FP1. In the afternoon, we could not do a proper lap when we changed to new tyres, I struggled a bit more, so we will have to try improving tomorrow, to go to Q2!"
DAY 1 PRACTICE SESSION
1. Matteo Bertelle (ITA), LevelUp-MTA, 1'40.931
2. Stefano Nepa (ITA), SIC58 Squadra Corse, + 0.235
3. Jose Antonio Rueda (SPA), Red Bull KTM Ajo, + 0.260
18. Joel Esteban (SPA), Red Bull KTM Tech3, + 1.182
22. Valentin Perrone (ARG), Red Bull KTM Tech3, + 1.464
TRACK RECORDS
All Time Record: 2024 - D. Alonso (SPA) - 1'40.544, 163 km/h
Best Race Lap: 2024 - L. Lunetta (ITA) - 1'41.231, 161.9 km/h
Best Pole: 2024 - L. Kelso (AUS) - 1'40.603, 162.9 km/h
Top Speed: 2024 - T. Suzuki (JAP) - 240.0 km/h
