MotoGP | For Ducati, limiting the highest performing bikes would be “unnatural”

No manufacturer could benefit from the old concession system, which offered technical and testing advantages to brands that had missed the podium for at least a year. In light of the difficulties encountered by Yamaha and Honda, the system has been radically revised for the 2024 season and the new concessions will give the two Japanese giants the advantages they would have enjoyed under the old system.

The brands are now divided into four categories based on the points obtained in the constructors' classification and the regulation also provides for restrictions if one of them has obtained more than 85% of the total points available, as in the case of Ducati after having dominated the championship in 2023.

As a result, the Italian brand will be limited in testing and deprived of wild cards, at least for the first part of the season, before a new calculation of the points obtained during the year during the summer break. Should this rule be seen as a new performance rebalancing policy and could MotoGP get closer to the Superbike World Championship, where the maximum engine speed of each bike is set by the regulation and reviewed regularly? Gigi Dall'Igna doesn't think so.

The General Director of Ducati Corse is happy to accept these measures in Superbike, where bikes can have different designs, but believes they have no place in MotoGP, a category where every prototype is designed within the same regulatory framework.

“I don't think this is the objective of the organizers of the World Championship and the Federation,” Dall'Igna reassured. “In Superbike we start with the production bikes and it is clear that this is done on purpose to highlight the speed and performance of the production bikes, but there may be differences between one manufacturer and another.”

“Here everyone has the same rules, the same opportunities, and if someone wants to race here they know very well that they have to work hard to do things as best as possible. I don't understand it, but I can accept it in Superbike; frankly, in MotoGP it would be really unnatural.”

With Léna Buffa