Ducati Corse

Bagnaia vs Marquez: Can Ducati Make Their Dream Team Work?

By David Emmett |

In the second half of the Ducati Lenovo MotoGP team presentation, the host, Barbara Pedrotti, asked Ducati test rider Michele Pirro how he would sum up the Bologna factory's 2025 MotoGP project in a single word. Pirro chose the phrase "Dream Team", which prompted Pedrotti to give him a pass for ignoring the set criteria as, she said, he had said the phrase quickly enough for it to be a single word.

In the context of MotoGP in 2025, the pairing of Pecco Bagnaia and Marc Márquez certainly qualifies as a dream team. The rider who finally brought the riders championship back to Ducati after 15 years, then followed it up with another and came close to making it three in a row, paired with the greatest rider of his generation, and possibly of all time. As team manager Davide Tardozzi pointed out, they have 11 titles between them.

What We Learned From Ducati's 2024 Campioni In Pista Launch, Part 1: Bikes And Riders

By David Emmett |

In 2023, Ducati won the MotoGP riders title, the MotoGP manufacturers title, and the Pramac Ducati squad – a private team with full factory bikes, full factory support, and riders with factory contracts – won the team title. The top three places in the championship were occupied by Ducati riders – Pecco Bagnaia, Jorge Martin, and Marco Bezzecchi – and there were six Ducati riders in the top ten. Oh, and Alvaro Bautista won the World Superbike title for Ducati, and Nicolo Bulega dominated World Supersport on a Panigale V2.

How do you improve on that? The risk is that you have more to lose by changing than to gain. But change you must, for your rivals spend every waking hour working on trying to dethrone you. And so Gigi Dall'Igna, Technical Director Davide Barana, and the team of Ducati Corse engineers have found ways to give the Ducati Desmosedici GP24 more power without compromising power delivery, and new aero to help with acceleration.

The Human Engine - Luigi Dall'Igna

By Tammy Gorali |

The CEO of Ducati Corse, the racing division of the manufacturer that won the jackpot in the 2022 racing season, sat in the snow during the launch of Ducati's 2023 season, with a glass of prosecco in hand, for a personal conversation and ... engineered

Luigi, or Gigi as everyone calls him, Dall'Igna always dreamed of working in racing. He graduated in mechanical engineering at the University of Padua with a thesis on carbon monocoque chassis. Almost straight out of university he moved to the Aprilia factory in Noale, Italy. Over more than two decades, he led Aprilia to championship titles in World Superbikes and the 125 and 250 cc categories in MotoGP, with riders such as Valentino Rossi, Jorge Lorenzo, Alvaro Bautista, Marco Melandri, Manuel Poggiali, and Max Biaggi of course.

Then Dall'Igna surprised the world of motorsport when he accepted an offer from rival manufacturer Ducati. Since graduating, he has only worked for Aprilia, except for a very short time in 2005 when he worked for Derbi. For the 2014 season, Dall'Igna was on his way to try to make the difference, as he did in Aprilia, only this time for the factory in Bologna.

Gigi is considered a legend, a magician, a brain, and Ducati was very excited by the arrival of someone who later made radical changes in the racing department. Ducati were in a crisis, after a long decline which had started shortly after winning their first title with Casey Stoner in 2007. The culmination of the crisis was the failure with one of the greatest riders ever, Valentino Rossi. Ducati knew that in order to come back and win, replacing riders would not be enough this time.

Akira Nishimura On What Ken Kawauchi Leaving Suzuki For HRC Means For Honda

By Akira Nishimura |

The rumors of former Suzuki boss Ken Kawauchi moving to Honda raised many eyebrows in the MotoGP paddock. Engineers switching factories may be commonplace for European manufacturers, but it is almost unheard of, and unthinkable for Japanese factories. As Japan's leading MotoGP journalist, Akira Nishimura his his insight into what the news that Kawauchi is moving to HRC for the 2023 season means.

Ken Kawauchi, Suzuki's long-time technical boss, will become HRC's new technical manager for the 2023 season following the Hamamatsu company's withdrawal from MotoGP. Below is my brief insight into this bombshell news.

It was January 10 when I first heard about Kawauchi-san’ joining HRC. I was chatting with a fellow European journalist by text when the subject came up. I understood it was likely to happen, because I remembered a casual exchange with Kawauchi-san during our season review interview last December.

After the interview, I stopped the recorder, and we left the interview room. Then, I joked to him, “why don’t you move to, say, KTM, after your company’s withdrawal from MotoGP? I believe they will hire you with a very high salary.”

Ducati R&D Boss Vincenzo De Silvio On Technology Transfer From Ducati's MotoE Project Into Production Bikes

By David Emmett |

At the presentation of Ducati's MotoE bike, it was immediately clear that this was a very different project. Energica had put MotoE on a solid footing, creating an exciting racing series with their Ego Corsa bike, and producing a machine that was both reliable and had an acceptable performance window. But the Ego Corsa was a modified version of Energica's road-going sport bike Ego. And Energica itself is a small engineering company specializing in electric bikes.

Ducati's V21L MotoE bike is a very different kettle of fish. Ducati is a major motorcycle manufacturer with a storied history of producing high-performance motorcycles and racing success. They have a long tradition of building a particular kind of internal combustion engine, and no experience with electric vehicles. So what Ducati have done is take the decision to build an electric racing bike, to learn valuable lessons needed to make the switch to production.

The V21L is a pure prototype, perhaps the purest prototype on the grid, in terms of distance from the technology used in Ducati's street bikes. And it is being built with the explicit aim of developing technology and gaining the experience necessary to eventually build an electric bike which consumers – or rather, Ducatisti, some of the most demanding consumers in the world – will cherish and buy.

Ducati's MotoE Launch - The Role Of Racing As A Tool Of R&D, And Why The V21L Is A Real Race Bike

By David Emmett |

In many ways, Ducati's MotoE project is the opposite of all the electric motorcycle projects which have gone before. Up until very recently, conventional motorcycle manufacturers have mostly stayed well away from electric motorcycles, preferring to wait and see how the technology, and the political and legislative framework in which this all takes place, will play out. Exceptions have been few and far between: beyond electric scooters, KTM have the Freeride, an electric enduro machine, and Honda worked with Mugen on their bike which dominated the TT Zero race on the Isle of Man.

That has left the field open for a host of new companies, which have operated with varying success. Silicon Valley produced a large swathe of start ups, mostly run by motorcycle enthusiasts from the area's electric vehicle and technology industries, and funded with VC money. A few others, such as Energica, are engineering start ups producing electric vehicles and based in areas with strong automotive industry links. Small companies with limited manufacturing and engineering facilities which relied on widely available components and techniques for a large part of their bikes.

Paolo Ciabatti Interview: ‘It’s always difficult to improve an almost perfect bike’

By Neil Morrison |

The first five races of 2022 have been far from straightforward for Ducati. The factory that could claim it had the best bike on the MotoGP grid in the autumn of last year with some justification has struggled to get up and running since March, with fancied runners Francesco Bagnaia and Jorge Martin scoring just 31 and 28 points from a possible 125.

There has been much to ponder for Paolo Ciabatti, its MotoGP Project Director, in that time, be it rider performance, engine choices for the five riders running GP22s, or the decision to place a ban on front ride height devices, the most recent innovation from the Bologna factory that was in partly to blame for a disastrous first race of the season.

During the Friday of the Argentine Grand Prix, while the paddock waited anxiously for missing freight to be delivered, Ciabatti spoke to Motomatters on a range of issues, including a mixed start to the year for Ducati’s eight riders, the development of the front ride height device, his reaction to its ban, and how the MotoE project is being managed ahead of 2023.

Q: The start of 2022 has been a bit of a mixed bag, in that Enea has been exceptional but fancied names have struggled. How would you assess the start of Ducati’s season?

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