The legendary house from Borgo Panigale will enter a new world starting next season, when it will begin to engage in motocross races with its bikes, even if the visit of Ducati's current off-road manager, Paolo Ciabatti, to the Dakar has raised suspicions about a future entry into the toughest race in the world.
Together with partners at Audi, the Italian was discovering first-hand what it means to race in the desert and, speaking to a small group of media, including Motorsport.com, he assured that he had “no plan” at the moment to land on the legendary event: “At the moment we don't have a plan to come to the Dakar, but when you have a 450cc single-cylinder motorcycle, there is the possibility of thinking about it.”
“Even in the Rally-Raid, but it is not in the current plans of the factory, but why not in the future,” said the company's top manager in this area. “We'll start with motocross, then the project will move to supercross in the United States, and then we'll see. In Ducati's plan at the moment, and for the next few years, we're not thinking about the Dakar, but I want to understand a bit what the Dakar is like modern because it is interesting”.
“If you have to take something into consideration, you have to know it, and in these days here I will see David Castera (the race director), who will tell me how all this works to gain some experience, and if at some point we will have the 'idea of coming, it will be much easier to make a plan, but at the moment there is nothing”, underlined Paolo Ciabatti.
At 66 years old, the Turin manager is ready to make the leap out of MotoGP, where he had accumulated many successes, but with the move beyond the asphalt he realized he wanted something else: “You reach a point in your life where where you need something new to do with more enthusiasm”.
“I'm 66 years old, so I'm quite old, and I believe that although MotoGP has given me a lot, especially because winning two World Championships was a great success for my sporting career, I like to put my experience into a totally new project , in which Ducati will start in a world that has never existed in our history and in which we hope to also achieve the same successes as MotoGP”, said the Italian.
“I wanted to have a new motivation because I'm going to work for a few more years, and sometimes in life you like what you do, but you feel like you need something different to start something new,” said Paolo Ciabatti, who wants to add new voices to the his long list of victories on two wheels.
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