World champion Ducati wants to reconfirm itself also in the 2023 MotoGP season. General Manager Gigi Dall’Igna dictates the coordinates.
The day after the official presentation of the MotoGP and SBK 2023 teams, Ducati closes the long phase of celebrating world titles and looks ahead, aiming for an encore. In Madonna di Campiglio there were useful days to recharge the batteries in view of the preseason, a prelude to the next World Cup that he will face with the intention of repeating himself. “It is the first presentation after last year’s wonderful season – explained Gigi Dall’Igna -. Both pilots (Pecco Bagnaia and Alvaro Bautista, ed) they decided to bring the number 1 on the fairing and for us it is a great honour“.
The new Ducati Desmosedici it will certainly not be very different from the previous edition, but the Borgo Panigale technicians have a duty to continue unceasingly with development. The risk is that the competition could fill the technical gap faster than expected. “We are trying to evolve our bike, standing still won’t go anywhere” underlined the general manager of Ducati Corse to Sky Sport. “Surely the others will bring innovations to the field, without doing anything we could have problems during the season“.
Ducati aims for an encore with Bagnaia and Bastianini
A trump card will be to reset the mistakes made in the preseason 2022 and in the first Grands Prix. The Ducati prototype wasn’t yet ready to give its best and they had to take a step back on the eve of the World Championship. “What we did wrong the most last year was the way we selected all the material, we thought we had already done a good selection job on test day in Valencia. But it was not so. When we met again in the Sepang test we had some problems and we no longer even had the chance to make another comparison with the previous season’s material“.
This time we change tactics, the Desmosedici GP23 will adopt more gradual changes without creating too many imbalances. “This year we will change our approach, we will bring a 2022 bike and the advanced edition to Malaysia and we will redo all the checks made in Valencia – he added Gigi Dall’Igna -. Only after the Sepang test will we decide how to develop the 2023 bike“. With an eye inevitably turned to the competition. Fabio Quartararo And Marc Marquez they will be the first rivals to beat: “Those who bothered us last year will continue to do so this year. I expect Quartararo and Yamaha will certainly be protagonists in this World Championship, Marc is certainly a rider who can be annoying and I put him among those who can hurt. Aprilia took a big step forward last year and if they make another similar one, they could be part of the match“.
In the box there will be two arrows ready to shoot towards the title MotoGP: the defending champion I’m sorry Bagnaia and the newcomer Enea Bastianini, back from an extraordinary 2022 and beyond all expectations (3rd place in the final standings). “I expect both of them will want to win and will certainly be very aggressive on track, as we saw last season. I also expect a collaboration in the box to try to have the best possible material available. It’s not just the two of them, there are the others too – concluded the Venetian engineer -. From this point of view, I hope they are intelligent enough to help each other find the best solutions that allow them to play for the final victory“.
