Michael Scott | September 25, 2024
Cycle News In The Paddock
COLUMN
Ducati: An Embarrassment of Rivals?
The 2024 MotoGP season isn’t quite done yet. But approaching the two-thirds point, there are already some certainties. The champion will be a Ducati rider.
It’s like a glorified one-make series, with added humiliation for rivals.
But who will it be?
Ducati will lose three elite riders for next season, and those riders take with them not only potential victories but also inside knowledge. Photo Gold & Goose
Most bets favor the defender Bagnaia for a third in a row. Or possibly Jorge Martin, who is mounting a strong challenge for a second year. Or even (excitingly) ex-Honda multi-champion Marc Marquez, who appears to be starting a formerly unlikely late-season charge, as he shows just how completely he has adapted to the Italian bike—even if his is a year out of date.
Or possibly even Enea Bastianini, winner of the British GP, who is accomplished at coming through in the later stages.
They are three of Ducati’s embarrassment of riches—a panoply of eight riders, of whom all but two (Di Giannantonio and Bezzecchi) have won at least one World Championship and several more than that.
Next year, big changes. With three of the eight leaving to join rivals, which two current contenders will Ducati have an embarrassment of rivals instead?
The present situation gives the Bologna brand the sort of team-management and rider-management problems that their rivals can only dream about—which rider to favor and how to do it? Although the constructors’ title is a certainty, and the factory squad has one hand on the teams’ title as well, the riders’ title is the one that matters most.
Team orders offer a labyrinth of ill will and pitfalls. At the same time, a free-for-all has elements of danger.
Next year, big changes. With three of the eight leaving to join rivals, which two current contenders will Ducati have an embarrassment of rivals instead?
The renegades are led by strong 2023 and 2024 title candidate Jorge Martin, and if he does win, he will take the coveted number-one plate with him to Aprilia. Then there is fellow former Moto2 Champion Bastianini, bound for KTM’s second factory team. The third runaway is Bezzecchi, who is to join Martin at Aprilia.
Right now, they look like losers, abandoning the dominant mark. If that’s harsh, let’s put it another way. Let’s admire their courage in taking on a challenge. Risk-takers.
Both Aprilia and KTM serially lag behind Ducati, even though each has made significant improvements, especially this year. Just not as big as Ducati’s improvements.
And Ducati is likely to keep on with it, if recent history is reliable. They have continuously led the way in all areas. Rivals imitated every one of Ducati’s innovations, yet genius Ducati Corse boss Gigi Dall’Igna’s fertile imagination has kept them consistently one step ahead in finding clever ways around restrictive regs.
Ducati is also a loser in this reshuffle: Three excellent riders are gone. They take with them not only potential victories but also inside knowledge.
But Dall’Igna has found another clever way to counter that factor, shoving Marc Marquez into the factory team. It is another way of making the task of beating Ducati all the harder.
In the words (more or less) of the Polish National anthem, however, all is not yet completely lost.
Aprilia has had clever ideas, too, including the ground-effect fairing side-pods. And there are questions about just how much their current riders have been able to maximize the second Italian company’s results.
Vinales (himself off to KTM next year) is brilliant on his day but very erratic. One GP and two Sprint wins this year contrast with seven zeros and a string of low scores. He blames the bike, citing his reason for switching: he wants to be strong every weekend, not just sometimes. Yet it was the same when he rode for Yamaha, strong one weekend, absent the next.
Aleix Espargaro is an old campaigner and clearly a valuable development rider, widely experienced. But it took him almost 20 years and almost 300 starts in all GP classes before scoring his first win (in 2022) in any of them. Two more since then make him Aprilia’s most successful rider by far.
Martin clearly believes he has the extra talent to bring out Aprilia’s true potential. He may well be right.
As for KTM, for Bastianini and Vinales? The Austrian bike has been hovering on the brink of a breakthrough since arriving in 2017. This year’s version, though yet to win, is the best ever. The 2025 prototype has been promising in tests and in wild card outings with Pol Espargaro and Dani Pedrosa. But KTM’s win rate has dropped. There were three victories in 2020, two each for the following years, and none since 2022.
Moving to either of these rival teams means putting one’s faith in their designers and engineers. A policy that worked with Ducati.
Luckily for the chancers, things in racing can change unexpectedly. After all, five years ago who would have predicted that Honda and Yamaha would be at the bottom of the class?CN
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