TAKEN FROM SLICK #18 – EDITORIAL
Immediately a clarification: the final World Drivers’ Championship standings would not serve as support for the main narrative of this Volume#18, however, we wanted to wait until the conclusion of the championship before sending it to print. Because the SLICK project (being in fact a book) is a tool for reflection and consultation, and this 2022 season marks a momentous change.
Francesco Bagnaia goes down in history as the first Italian rider to win a MotoGP title with Ducati – 50 years after the last triumph of an Italian duo in the premier class, namely Agostini-MV Agusta – but this time the focus goes to the company, because Ducati is now really the new reference: it has imposed a new way of approaching MotoGP, and rivals find themselves chasing it. In fact, copying it. Honda and Yamaha included. So the real news is this: Ducati’s leadership comes not from its riders, but from its technology and its organization, thus from its vision.
In short, triumph does not depend on a rider in a state of grace, as Casey Stoner was in 2007, but on the solidity of a group. This is why we made some unconventional choices. First, we decided to observe events by studying mainly the companies and not so much the riders. And then we chose as an observation point the other side of the ring, that is, the point of view of those who were swept away after dominating for fifty years (the Japanese industry), and not that of those who upset the balance (Ducati), humiliating the Army of the Rising Sun. True, this is not the first time that Italian industry has been dominant in the premier class, but those were the pioneer years: in today’s world, where everything is so extreme and leveled, to move the boundaries so far that Moto- GP is pushed to a turning point is a great feat.
We therefore went in search of the origins of a transformation that concerns not just a championship-that of 2022-but a period. That is, the scenario of the coming years.
The journey that characterizes Volume#18 starts with this consideration: the growth of Italian industry is not the side effect of Japanese difficulties, yet Italy is experiencing its best time ever in MotoGP while Japan faces the heaviest crisis in its history.
So Ducati is repositioning itself among the speed powers, so it is no longer the quasi-craft company fighting against the Japanese multinationals. Maybe it was valid in 2003 and 2007, but not anymore. In fact, the Japanese may not need only one winter to reach the level set by the Italians.
Yes, the Italians, because Aprilia has also grown. Indeed, the Europeans: even KTM has gotten more aggressive.
We can talk about a new Ducati method, thanks to the Dall’Igna method. Which is this: always seek an advantage in the Technical Regulations, advance without leaving a single department behind, coordinate all the teams so as to make development every time a bike and a rider of the company go on the track, whatever it is.
In the Dall’Igna era, there is no one project that matters more than the other-between MotoGP and SBK-because the company reasons and works to build a globally dominant project. That’s why the Desmosedici and Panigale are developed together, and engineers in the racing department work on both at the same time. So every opportunity is taken advantage of: from wild cards, to private training. Ducati’s MotoGP riders regularly train on the track with the Panigale V4, so every day becomes an opportunity for testing and verification, since in this Ducati Corse a novelty developed on the SBK can be transferred to the MotoGP. And vice versa.
There is no longer a fable of David versus Goliath, because Ducati has become an industry that draws strength from being part of a large Automotive industry group. Say Ducati, and you can think of Audi and Porsche (which are preparing to enter Formula 1) and Lamborghini (which collaborates a lot with Ducati). In fact, the automotive world brings us inside another interesting story that we tell in this Volume#18. Ducati follows the concept dear to motor racing-the racing department matters more than the driver-and the Ducati drivers who set various records in 2022 must get over it, too. But by now it also applies to other companies, as Marc Marquez and Fabio Quartararo (representatives of the outclassed teams) tell in these pages: they explain this new situation well. The concept of “functional rider to the project” is Formula 1 stuff, and it means that in design and development the rider is considered a part of the bike. And because in these circles nothing happens by accident, in this Volume#18 we tell how all the manufacturers involved in MotoGP-all of them, without exception-have asked F1 engineers for help. And this new relationship was born to last. It is one of the discoveries made during this strange end-of-year journey, in which we also return to the unbelievable Suzuki affair: how can the best of the Japanese Houses retire, winning! Well, even this seemingly nonsensical story confirms that we are at the dawn of a new era, and our point of observation comes from curiosity to see how the surviving Japanese will react. After all, the first country to see the new day dawn is the Land of the Rising Sun.
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