MotoMatters.com | Kropotkin Thinks

It is hard to overstate just how MotoGP has changed in the last five or so years. Where once bikes were short and high, to maximize turning and pitch under braking, now they are long and low, with a focus on acceleration and power. A lot of the change has been blamed on aerodynamics, as the most visible difference between, say, 2019 and 2024.

That is certainly how factories first saw the role of aerodynamics, but that too has changed since 2019. "Some years ago, if you looked at the telemetry, you can easily understand that one of the most important problems of the bike is wheelie," Ducati Corse CEO Gigi Dall'Igna told me in an interview in 2022. "You cannot accelerate as much as you think because of the wheelie. So you have to try to understand what you have to do in order to reduce this problem. So we started to develop the wings, we started to lower the center of gravity on the bike."

Lowering the center of mass raised new challenges and generated new ideas, Dall'Igna explained. "After that, you try to understand what we have to do, and you find some problems, because at the beginning, we thought that the bike has to do this alone. Then we thought, but why? Why can't the rider do something new riding the bike? Formula 1 drivers have to control a lot of systems during the lap, and why do the riders of the bike not do something like that? So we start to think, why not?"

Marc Marquez at Silverstone in 2018 without a ride-height device

Marc Marquez at Le Mans in 2024, with a ride-height device

That germ of an idea spawned the ride-height device, Ducati's ingenious system for dropping the rear of the bike on corner exit. The rider pushes a button on the handlebars, and the rear drops on corner exit, vastly increasing the amount of power the bikes can put down, creating drive and acceleration. The role of aerodynamics has morphed into improving turning and keeping the front wheel on the ground at high speed.

The black butterfly switch which Ducati use to engage the front holeshot device. In the foreground, next to the red button, the switch for the ride-height device

One rider has been in on the development of ride-height devices right from the beginning. Jack Miller was the first rider to use such a device in a race, in the Thai Grand Prix at Buriram in 2019. He spent the next three years at Ducati helping to develop the ride-height device, first with Pramac and then with the factory Ducati Lenovo team. And he has been instrumental at KTM, helping the Austrian factory understand the importance of the devices.

So who better to turn to for a complete history of ride-height devices in MotoGP? At Misano, Miller gave a detailed review of the role of the devices and how they have changed over the years.

Ride-height devices got off to an inauspicious start in MotoGP. Miller had qualified well in Thailand, but managed to switch off his engine on the grid, in search of the button to lower the rear of the bike.

"I turned the bike off on the grid," the Australian explained. "I think I was second row, was strong all weekend, but we moved stuff obviously to accommodate all of the what-have-you that came with the ride-height device, especially in the early stages. We moved all the buttons around essentially, and rolling up to the grid, I turned the bike off."

With the race approaching, like all racers Miller fell back on his automatic reflexes, practiced throughout the year. But with multiple buttons and controls relocated to make room for the ride-height device button, he got lost. "I don't know why, if it was like a panic moment or what, but the launch control had gone from being on the left hand to being up on the handlebar somewhere, like on the triple clamp somewhere. I don't know if it was from rolling into the pits or what, but I instantly went to the kill switch on the right-hand side, which was a rookie move on my behalf."

His reflexes had failed him. "Simply just because you have your routine of going to the grid. It must have just thrown a spanner in the works or something." Ducati took that as a lesson, Miller explained, and made changes to ensure it didn't happen again. "If you have a look now at all the Ducatis, they have like a red ring around the outside of the kill switch so that you’ve really got to put your finger inside the button to turn it off. That was my fault."

That first ride-height device was very different, and much simpler than the 2024 versions. "It was very analog, I want to say, the first one," Miller said. "It was essentially a switch that when the fork stroke came all the way out, it essentially just opened up and the back end dropped really fast. So, you had no real damping on it. It was a proper spring then, basically. You had no damping in it whatsoever."