If there is one manufacturer that goes into next week’s start of MotoGP pre-season testing able to breathe a little easier than anyone else, it’s reigning constructors champions Ducati.
Already with a truly excellent bike in its garages, Ducati needs the least amount of improvement from the five days on track in Sepang and Mandalika – but that might mean we’re going to see some weird and wonderful stuff.
For the past years, since technical guru Gigi Dall’Igna joined from Aprilia in 2014, Ducati’s engineering strategy has been simple: stop trying to hold back the raw power its bike had become known for and instead embrace it, even if that meant relying on technical tricks and techniques that the rest of the grid hadn’t even thought about.
That opened up the door to all sorts of innovation, most prominently the increasingly complicated aerodynamics that sometimes leave the Desmosedici looking more like a WWI fighter plane than the smooth and streamlined 500cc two-strokes of old.
Beyond that, of course, Ducati has also experimented with devices to adjust the rear ride height on the fly and to compress the suspension for the start, tried new ways of mounting components, and installed a still-to-be-fully-explained mass dampening device that sits inside the oversized rear subframe.
The end result of all that is a bike that is arguably the best on the grid, and which dominated the second half of the 2021 season. A race winner in the hands of Pecco Bagnaia, Jack Miller and Jorge Martin (with the rookie picking up Ducati’s (first satellite win), it had just one of six riders – Luca Marini, a front-row starter – fail to finish on the podium last year.
And the worrying news for Ducati’s rivals is that, with minimal updates made from last year to this year, it sounds like the 2022 spec of bike will be just as fast. Already tested a the end of 2021 at Jerez by the factory riders, the new machine is another step forward and another move towards being a more refined and rider friendly package, according to Bagnaia at the time.
“I’m happy,” said the Italian after the conclusion of testing. “We’ve still got work to do but I’m feeling great, and Ducati have already developed a perfect bike. The good thing is that with a medium tyre and in the wind, I managed to do a faster laptime than my qualifying, which is an incredible thing. We’re working in a good direction for sure.”
In fact, so strong was the team at the end of the season that even newly-crowned champion Fabio Quartararto admitted he’s already worried about the task of defending his title, given the strength of the red machines on the 2022 grid as its presence expands from six to eight with the addition of the Gresini team.
“They made a massive step, so I’m more worried about next year,” Quartararo admitted, “but this is something I have too much on my mind right now. I need to leave it to Yamaha, they know what they have to do to improve for next year.”
So, if the bike is already in such good shape, what does that mean for the upcoming tests? Well, if things are as sorted as it sounds like they are, then we could be in for more interesting updates from the Bologna factory.
Expect to see another evolution of the Desmosedici’s cutting-edge aerodynamics, for example, as more and more money is pumped into that particular bottomless pit.
But in reality, it’s likely that the majority of work will be done beneath the skin of the bike, regardless of what is being researched for potential future use.
Having finally built a bike that can fight for the title, the name of the game now should be perfection, not left-field. Get that right, and 2022 might finally be the year that someone else adds to Casey Stoner’s record as Ducati’s sole title winner.
