Sorpresa News (surprise news in Italian)

[Randy]

https://roadracingworld.com/news/article/?article=41730

 

[NCVIPER]

Wow... I knew Rossi would cost Ducati a ton of money in Moto GP, but damn! :dribble:

 

[Randy]

Wow... I knew Rossi would cost Ducati a ton of money in Moto GP, but damn! :dribble:

Factory Ducati MotoGP riders salaries are paid by Marlboro.

 

[MotorToad]

Yeah, I'm not getting this. They freaking live on their WSB reputation. I can only guess that it's a protest of some behind-the-scenes stuff that we don't know about. Maybe Tardozzi was worth more than they realized and they're just giving up before the BMW Behemoth destroys the landscape of superbike racing.

(Or maybe there's more money in selling the same bike as four different models than it seems.)

But htf is Nori going to get that championship the gods owe him?

 

[Randy]

Here's the way I see it. Ducati makes just about every (if not every) part available in their parts catalog that they run on their bikes. Granted - it's up to the customer to test and tune, but, they make the parts available. The customer bikes are doing fine. Carlos Checa is 4th in points and would be 3rd had it not been for the gremlins that attacked him at Miller - he had both races in the bag. The amount of money they spend funding the actual race effort could be spread much wider resulting in more capable Ducs on the grid.

 

[Auburn]

Here's the way I see it. Ducati makes just about every (if not every) part available in their parts catalog that they run on their bikes. Granted - it's up to the customer to test and tune, but, they make the parts available. The customer bikes are doing fine. Carlos Checa is 4th in points and would be 3rd had it not been for the gremlins that attacked him at Miller - he had both races in the bag. The amount of money they spend funding the actual race effort could be spread much wider resulting in more capable Ducs on the grid.

Or maybe, they see that they need to spend a lot more engineering hours towards MotoGP to support Rossi. His salary is covered by Marlbaro (or whatever their parent company is).

I think Rossi made sure Ducati is willing to make changes requested to the bike to make it more rideable. Plus they have the change to 1000 cc coming in 2012. So they probably have a lot of development work to do to support that effort.

In WSBK, Ducati has been very vocal about the advantage (they say) that the other factories have and the wieght and displacement differences are not enough to over come the advantage that the in line fours have. Ducait has said very publically that they are at the limits of the 1198 as far as rpm and piston size/stroke.

Who knows how much of their claims are true in WSBK. I think it has more to do with the riders and spec tires then anything else. The spec tires work well with the in line fours and not so well with the Ducati.