Ducati won the MotoGP World Championship for the first time in 2007 with Casey Stoner. However, there followed a long dry spell until returning to victories from 2020, and only in 2022 did one of its riders become champion. Now, it stands as the reference constructor, but the bike’s development journey has been long and has lasted almost ten years.
Team manager Davide Tardozzi had no doubts about pointing out the importance of the arrival of General Manager Gigi Dall’Igna: ‘I believe there’s a story after the arrival of Gigi Dall’Igna. Everything changed after 2014; we started a new story in MotoGP with the new bike that we’ve been developing year after year. This bike isn’t a revolution, it’s the evolution from 2015. We’ve reached a point where everyone is very competitive’ he told the British Autosport.
The Italian also recalled the less positive moments: ‘We were in trouble when everyone said, «only Casey Stoner can ride the bike». And now, we’ve reached a point where we have eight riders, and all eight riders are very competitive, which makes us proud of the work we’ve done’.
According to Tardozzi, the evolution never stopped, nor can it stop, but he admitted some concern about their opponents: ‘I think at this point, we’ve reached a stage where we can manage the results knowing that we never stopped evolving the bike. Our competitors are, honestly, very tough, and we’re afraid they might find something that could make them faster than us. But we’re happy with this situation’.
Besides Francesco Bagnaia becoming champion, Ducati had two riders from its satellite teams on the championship podium in 2023: Jorge Martín (Prima Pramac) and Marco Bezzecchi (Mooney VR46 Racing Team). All eight riders with Ducati bikes reached the podium at least once, and only three times in 20 rounds was a rider outside Ducati the race winner.