Bologna hosted the “Campioni in Festa” event last night, which celebrated Ducati's great successes in motorsport this year. 2023 was in fact a year of great domination, with Pecco Bagnaia winner in MotoGP and Alvar Bautista champion in Superbike. Both managed to confirm themselves after the championships won last year, but they are only the tip of the iceberg of Ducati hegemony.
Celebrating the great triumphs of this season were the world champions, but also the other Ducati riders who achieved a historic hat-trick in MotoGP (Jorge Martin, vice-world champion, and Marco Bezzecchi, third in the championship), as well as Nicolò Bulega, Supersport champion with the Aruba team. The Ducati top management could not be missing, from where everything starts, including Claudio Domenicali.
The Ducati CEO summed up a glorious season, also trying to reflect on the objectives for next year, in which it will be difficult to repeat himself for the third time: “This has been an extraordinary year, winning is always complicated. We knew it would be difficult to repeat ourselves and being the first manufacturer to win in Superbike and MotoGP and repeating ourselves the following year in both championships, with the highlight of Supersport, represents an incredible result. It's difficult to think of doing better next year, but we have some long-term thoughts.”
Photo by: Ducati Corse
Ducati riders with the Panigale V4 2023 Racing Replica
Fundamental help also comes from the birthplace of Ducati: Borgo Panigale is immersed in the Motor Valley, the area of Emilia Romagna where the largest companies in world motorsport were born and developed: “This is a place called Motor Valley, this region blessed by this extraordinary passion for motors, capable of giving birth to extraordinary riders, and hosting circuits where MotoGP and Superbike race. There are companies such as Lamborghini, Maserati, Pagani, Ducati within a 100 km radius.”
“There is a connection with the land and with the Universities, together with those of Bologna, Modena, Reggio Emilia and Parma we have created the MUNER, Motorvehicle University of Emilia-Romagna, a connection where engineers who are completing their three-year degree can do specific automotive studies, such as Advanced Motorcycle or Racing Car Desing. This bond helps us a lot. We, as the Ducati foundation, sponsor a team from Bologna that we presented a few weeks ago. The kids build the electric motorbike in their course of study and for two years they won the student world title, I think this is an important representation of the link between racing, science and incentive for the kids”, says Domenicali.
Being born in the Motor Valley helps, but then you have to work hard to achieve what Ducati has achieved this year. So, what is so special about the Rossa di Borgo Panigale? “I will never tell the magic recipe, but we often talk to Gigi. With him there is precisely this idea of having an engineering approach to things, with great attention to physics, mathematics, simulation models. But also having a strongly humanistic approach, guided by passion, if you can transfer it to the kids while ensuring that they think with their heads and think with a scientific method, I think that's a bit of what's behind motorbikes.”
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