Cycle News In The Paddock
COLUMN
Ducati’s Risky Leap Back to the Future
Something old, something new; something borrowed, something blue… or just something old? Ducati’s back-track dilemma has been both enviable, and indicative. While rival factories scrabble to catch up, the Italians have put their stallions into reverse.
All the work over the winter to improve their 2024 title-winning bike was for nothing. They might as well have gone to Barbados instead and got themselves a decent suntan and some sex on the beach (the cocktail, of course). Because the old bike has turned out to be so much better than the new one that they’ll carry on using it for the next two years. GP25 goes straight in the bin—chassis, engine and all.
This is a complete denial of a racing principle articulated to me many years ago by a famed tuner/crew chief of the two-stroke era, a time when bike development went on race by race and even day by day. It was as much in the back of the van as back at the factory: gifted engineers with rats-tail files. Or something rather like that.
“What succeeds in racing,” said Kel Carruthers, Kenny Roberts’s pit-box guru and himself the last-ever four-stroke 250 champion, “is what won last year, plus a couple of percent.”
Well, not this time, apparently. The GP24 outranked the GP25, without any percentage points required.
It took just five days of testing to convince Ducati bigwigs.
Instead of sneering at Ducati for making a U-turn, we should rather admire their adventure in trying new things, and their courage for admitting they’re wrong.
It all started at Sepang, where Alex Marquez was the surprise of the three days of testing. Riding last year’s Ducati GP24 in the Gresini satellite team, and still supposedly getting used to it, after a not especially impressive run to eighth overall on a GP23 last year, he topped the times. He had ridden the new bike just once before, in the single post-season test day in Catalunya last year.
Where did that come from? Among those wondering was his much-decorated older brother.
By then, factory riders Marc and Pecco Bagnaia had already been politely expressing doubts about the new engine. Trying last year’s version in the new chassis, they found that on-paper improvements to the new unit didn’t translate to better performance. Neither acceleration nor braking, nor even top speed, were improved by a nominal power boost, and the crucial feel was worse.
So, when they got to Thailand the next week, they were already considering binning the 2025 engine. And over two more days testing, they canned the new chassis as well.
Riders and team sought a positive spin for public consumption. Rather than dwelling on an obvious failure to improve, they focused on just how good the GP24—title and multi-race winner last year—already was. Indeed, at least according to Bagnaia, “we are still improving it.” (As if it were possible to improve on perfection.)
All the same, the backward step must encourage rivals. Especially Aprilia, whose latest bike was well up the time sheets with new rider Bezzecchi, in spite of the absence of Jorge Martin, and also KTM, both of whom have upgraded from last year.
Yet there are many precedents of riders and factories going backward to go forward, all the way back to Norton’s failed kneeler-streamliner of the 1950s (it showed great promise at prolonging the competitive life of the booming old singles but was abandoned for several wrong reasons).
Off the top of my head, more recent examples include Freddie Spencer unceremoniously dumped the troublesome first V4 NSR Honda mid-1984, to go back to the three-cylinder NS on which he had won the 1983 title. Famously upside down, with the fuel tank under its belly and the exhausts looping over the top, roasting the rider’s chest as he ducked behind the screen, the NSR was fast but awkward in the extreme.
Wayne Rainey ditched the latest Yamaha chassis in 1992 for the previous version, actually a replica built in Britain by Harris. The super-stiff new one had such bad chatter as to be almost unrideable, and Kevin Schwantz swapped the latest Suzuki chassis for the previous version in 1994.
In truth, false starts, blind alleys and steps-too-far are a normal part of technical development out there on the cutting edge. After all, the person who never made a mistake never made anything.
Instead of sneering at Ducati for making a U-turn, we should rather admire their adventure in trying new things, and their courage for admitting they’re wrong. And accept that they are already in such a strong position that they can afford to rest on their technical laurels.
The reverse development might be encouraging for the other factories. It will give them hope especially for the forthcoming 2017 850cc era, until when engine development is frozen for all except Honda and Yamaha, with their slow-coach concessions.
But for now, they’ll still all be going for the “best of the rest.”CN
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