Hello and welcome on BIKERS HQ This episode is a little different as for once, I'm not going to do it alone I'll do it with Julien So Julien is a student at the University of Lausanne Your study Sport there and you contacted me about your bachelor work which you wanted to make about the evolution of technologies in MotoGP As I was not qualified to answer your questions, I told you OK I have a proposition for you : I take you with me in Bologna and we go to the Ducati Factory So it's exactly what we have done ! we are in Bologna, in the Ducati Museum, just next to the factory and with us, we have Edoardo, who is a former journalist and who is a specialist who will a explain this evolution He works now at the Ducati Press Office So, I'll speak in english from now on so yes it's better for you so Eduardo thanks a lot for welcoming us in the museum and explaining everything about the the GP bikes so can you please introduce yourself ? okay well first thank you for coming here and welcome in bologna um as you said before I've been a journalist for 20 years for motorcycle in general and starting I think the first of June I'm actually a communication specialist for Ducati so I'm here to answer all your questions as much as I can no problem uh you know there is MotoGP has some very deep trade secrets so I won't go into that much details but I think I can give you a good overview of the the evolution of the technology from the first Ducati MotoGP here you see the GP03 to all the latest ones and the one that won the World Championship a few weeks ago. I just have one question before before letting Julien ask his questions for his Bachelor work, I know it's a big secret and most of the people here could never pass these doors. Could you once go inside the Ducati Corse office ? Yes but I could not really look into that much details as I wanted some areas were still restricted let's say that my badge doesn't open the doors so it's a big secret here so uh yes yeah it's uh it's like a fortress yes there are two forbidden places in here in Ducati for the general employees : one is Ducati Corse and the other is the Centro Stile so where all the bikes are designed from sketch so it's uh it's you have to have a good reason to get there. I hope
we have one but I think they would not have something not good enough okay so um so I think we can start with the questions and uh maybe uh Julian can start um So, Ducati enters the MotoGP Championship in 2002 Some competitors were taking part for 20 or 30 years already What was the trigger for Ducati ? um the the main driver, the main reason why Ducati actually decided to race in MotoGP was the switch from Two Strokes to four strokes actually Ducati wasn't interested in competing in the old as we call it in Italian "Moto Mondiale" The old name of MotoGP because as you know two strokes had no production actually or any development reason for production so when the new regulation, at the turn of the Millennium, actually came out let's say the premier category the premier class of motorcycling was to be four strokes Ducati actually found very interesting racing there both for promoting the image and for developing new Solutions Ducati Corse was founded in 1999 The first Ducati GP Bike is presented in 2003 What is the link between the creation of Ducati Corse and Ducati starting to race in the MotoGP class ? As you correctly said, Ducati corse was founded actually as a separate company within the company in 1999 and a little fun fact the CEO of Ducati Corse at that time was Claudio Domenicali so now he is the CEO of Ducati yeah exactly and it was created basically to prepare to build the factory the world Ducati Superbikes to compete in the world championship and also to provide assistance to all the teams in the world championship and in all national championships uh the decision to compete in MotoGP was taken in 2001 so actually Ducati Corse as you said was already there um what basically Ducati did was to create a small structure inside Ducati (not so small structure) inside Ducati Corse that was led by Engineer (Fillipo) Preziosi that designed the first MotoGP and had a you know a separate unit that was let's say a self-standing unit led by Preziosi and the other key figures in that were of course Claudio Domenicali and Livio Suppo that later become the team manager of the first adventure of Ducati MotoGP um What is the interest for a manufacturer to race in MotoGP Is it for prestige or is it a real technological laboratory ? it's a bit of both because the MotoGP is the the Pinnacle of motorcycle racing so it's the greatest test bench, stress test bench, that you can have in the world for every kind of motorcycle all the solutions that you develop in MotoGP can have a development into production motorcycles so maybe we'll talk about that later in detail but most of the bikes that Ducati produces, many bikes in the Ducati lineup have something that has been developed in MotoGP. At the same time it's a great promotional vehicle. Mostly in emerging countries, in countries that don't know the name Ducati but love MotoGP they see a Ducati racing they see Ducati winning hopefully and they actually grow fond of the brand and so it's also a great way of promoting your brand so we hope that you'll get even more clients next year as you won 2 titles so if somebody didn't know about Ducati now he does so yeah yeah it should be next year should be a good year yeah How has technology evolved on the Ducati GP bikes between 2003 and 2022 ? The evolution of the Ducati bikes, but of all MotoGP bikes was basically driven by the regulations for example the the first MotoGP the first Desmoseidici was built in a place that you have to keep in mind that for almost let's say at least 30 years there was no prototype category of racing motorcycling so everything was new for all the constructors and there you see three cylinders four cylinders five cylinders everything was new and all the, not all but most of the development efforts were concentrated on the engine the first engines were built on the let's say on the experience of Super Bike Racing so with Concepts uh prototypal Concepts but still with a pretty close tie to production we had many let's say room to to experiment to develop and so on so if you look at the this Loris Capirossi first GP03 and you compare it to a modern MotoGP there are two Eras, at least in the first year as I said we Ducati concentrated on the engine the balance between horsepower and tractability was all to be explored, Tyre was completely new the chassis were completely new and the engines were a bit of an unknown quantity so there was many much improvement to be found in developing the the engine plus it was exactly the period in which Electronics were starting to make their appearances into the motorcycle World they actually came out a bit into in the two sorry into the two-stroke Era but they were pretty basic compared to what we have nowadays for example 2005 was the year in which the ride by wire was introduced and that gave the way to the introduction of real Traction controls, wheelie controls and things like that the first systems were pretty rudimentary it was around 2010 I think with the 800's (cc) where we could have tri-dimensional mappings for the throttle and many sophisticated systems so at that time was um pretty rough but the biggest impulse to the development of electronics came actually with the 800s here because as you might recall the regulation called for a substantial reduction in the fuel that was available to the motorcycle so from 24 liters of the old 990s the 800 started with 22 that became 21 and then 20. efficiency and low consumption was the
the key to success and the this is the 2007 bike the one with Casey Stoner and you might remember the superiority of the engine in Long straights Ducati was extremely successful in implementing software strategies to control the consumption of the of the bike uh if with 800s the team was and the development was mostly concentrated on electronics when the regulation changed again in 2012 as I remember they introduced sorry 2011 and they introduced back the 1000cc MotoGPs um they also introduced many control elements the tyre were controlled they were Bridgestone first and then Michelin and for example the electronics later in 2016 were introduced as the single maker control ECU and then a Control software um that meant that the development of the bikes could control, could concentrate sorry, in the strategies but not in the real development of the software itself so the attention moved to the areas that were really grey areas not really regulated not blocked so aerodynamics and Chassis efficiency for example you started to see the what were initially meant as holeshot devices so devices that could lower the bike as to gain an advantage at the start of the race and then become Dynamic so the the lowering devices for the back for example are um under control of the of the pilot that can use it whenever a strong acceleration is needed and can invoke it so nowadays the development is mostly on aerodynamics and Chassis. Electronics in the 800 era and at the beginning it was mostly engine mechanic development So in 2005 the Ride by Wire system appears What is it and how does it help the pilot ? so the ride by wire basically is um the the evolution the transformation of the mechanical system where you have on the accelerator on the throttle you have a pulley basically that opens the throttle bodies just the and it's just mechanical has no in interjection of any electronic control into a much more complex system where basically the accelerator isn't really connected to anything it just, how can I say let's say a "potenciometro" in Italian you just basically have a sensor that you know knows the position the accelerator is in, sends the signal to an ECU to an electronic a computer basically that decides how much to open the throttle bodies and everything that surrounds it um that allows the engineers the technicians to control all the aspects of the engine behavior and performance and as I said before in the beginning it was just you know a very basic system that actually allowed us to shut the throttles the the shuttle bodies or reduce the um the timing of the ignition and with those two systems combined you actually manage to modulate the power that was transmitted to the rear wheel from the engine that was produced from the engine nowadays the systems are much more sophisticated actually you have 3D maps that means that you have many the the throttle opening the regime of the um of the engine and also the gear you're in many many parameters so you can have a different degree of power and of torque delivered by the engine calibrated specifically for every gear for every regime for every um basically for everything and that allowed the the engineers the technicians to develop systems such as the uh the the traction control the slide control also the wheelie control the engine brake control uh everything that's related to the everything let's say in the engine that influences the stability and the behavior of the vehicle, of the motorcycle the end result to try to simplify that is that the the bike is easier to ride we can actually make um huge levels of power manageable from the rider we can have bikes that are easier on the um on the tires they actually wear less of the tires and in cases like we we said before when we had the 800 they had very they had to run with very lean mixtures that have to be very very efficient you could actually avoid wasting fuel because if you have to correct a behavior of the bike like you know changing the ignition you act have actually wasted some fuel in producing power that you don't really use so the whole system is so efficient that um when the the pilot the racer the rider actually tries to accelerate the system knows how much power can actually can be transferred to the rear tire so it's very efficient it's easy to ride it's less tiring from a physical point of view and it can simplify the uh the rider's work let's say and also at the same time being safer because when we didn't have Electronics on the bikes the probably the the most common Dynamic you saw in accidents in racing where the so-called high side you know when the rear tires skipped out arrived at the end of traction and actually through the Riders up the high side of the bike if you see racing now that phenomenon is very reduced because the the system is so efficient that actually it can't be um but really really safe as a um how can you say um a production vehicle where you can have systems that are very very safe in maintaining stability of the vehicle because that would slow the pilots down it's not like that they can just wipe the throttle open nothing happens they get thrown to high heaven anyway so if they do like that but uh globally the motorcycle is safer even a racing motorcycle So, as you just explained, there are a lot of different technologies involved You talked about these "maps" The question is : are the maps programmed beforehand Is there one for each section of the track, are they activated by the rider, or by the engineers ? how does this work ? first there has been a change in regulations in 2016 as I remember correctly that basically um prohibited using GPS systems and so-called adaptive systems so um automatic systems that adapted to the condition of the race to the progress of the race so we can say that roughly um everything or almost everything is under control of the rider um let's make a step back every MotoGP and mostly every production bike nowadays have so-called ECU (correction : IMU) so basically a six axis accelerometer that controls the let's say the the status the position the stato we could say in in Italian but you know actually the status of the bike but also um it was developed actually for planes to know their position you know it actually detected the status of the plane but if you calculated all the movement the plane had you actually could Implement a basic rough autopilot and it's more or less the same thing with bikes because if you know where you start in the circuit you actually know by calculating all the acceleration that the bike has lateral and longitudinal and things like that you actually can know where the bike is at the circuit that means that the bike knows this place in space and so it can Implement different strategies for traction control for wheelie control um on different parts of the circuit so corners and sections of the circuit the thing is every time that the bike passes uh again to the the Start / Finish Line the system resets knows that it's there and it starts a new lap that means that the bike doesn't know what lap it is in but it does know where in the circuit it is so it can't auto adapt its strategies to the consumption of the tires or the tank like it was possible back in the past but he can have can facilitate the the life of the rider of the racer because he doesn't have to constantly switch the mappings for all the the corners he wants to to do it with um everything as I said is operated by the rider in that way uh all the um lowering devices are mechanical not electronical that is forbidden by the the rule book to have electronic systems like that so it's actually Pecco Bagnaia actually you see him activating some things on the on the handlebar and that's probably some devices that lowers the front or the back of the bike and the only communication that's allowed between the pit Lane and the Motorcycle is a message that can show up on the dashboard it's not like in Formula One they you have radio and also that the team knows how the bike is behaving and potential faults there's no communication from the bike to the Box okay so there's okay that's really interesting because in Formula One they have the whole car under control that means as soon as the rider leaves the box it's like blackout they just have the the screens to uh to see what the Riders (the timing) there's no connection but they they don't have anything on the screen you see the the technicians when the pilot enters the pit Lane they're connecting the laptops that's the only communication they have with the bike they have no Wireless Systems okay so that's very interesting so the rider is left alone for the whole race exactly it's not like in Formula One that the teams knows before the rider when a part is at a risk to break or something like that okay so now we are going to talk about one of the most visible aspects of these technologies that evolve on the the GP bikes and the most visible is winglets um so we are going to talk about aerodynamics and I think you have somebody with uh with us most definitely um let me introduce you Marco Nicotra his job title actually CFD coordinator so basically he knows everything about aerodynamics and the translation from the GP bikes to the production motorcycles because as you know aerodynamics are a big thing into production motorcycles now um I'll just start with a little bit of context because you said correctly that in 2010 the first winglets appeared on a GP bikes you can see here on the Nicky Hayden's bike the GP10 was Nicky Hayden and Casey Stoner at that time but they actually disappeared for a short while the reason where uh two or many fold because actually the thing is the rule book was on the verge of switching from 800 to full-blown 1000 cc GP bikes so the the development process concentrated on many other aspects at that time plus as you might remember Valentino Rossi suffered from an injury to the shoulder the year before so he didn't have his full strength and at that time the winglets were pretty rudimentary compared to what we have today Marco will go into detail required a little bit of effort to turn the bike in so they preferred to remove it to concentrate to into other aspects they the winglets came back in 2015 I think and I just let Marco talk because it's really his matter his subject yeah so the winglets were then introduced back in 2015 and then we worked a lot to develop them here we can see the GP16 bike when the winglet reached the peak of evolution before limitation were introduced between the season 2016 and 2017. These Wings here inspired the aerodynamics of the superleggera bikes and as I just said um a new set of rules were introduced between 2016 and 2017 season with the declared aim of increasing safety on track and at the same time keep Costs under control so we obviously faced a decrease in aerodynamic efficiency due to those new C-shaped scipod that we are forced to to introduce but then in the following years uh we worked hard to recover and now I can say we we got back to a level of performance which is uh comparable to what we had before the limitation were introduced In 2022, this year, we have seen some new aerodynamic elements appear on the tail of the bikes Can you please tell us more about these ? yeah um nowadays all bikes are pretty refined aerodynamically so we really need to focus on detail to try and get some more performance so for instance this year we focused on an area of the bike which is uh often considered not so aerodynamically efficient I'm talking about the tail of the bike because you know it's in the wake of the rider but we introduced those fins that helped us um adding some more rear downforce on the bike which is particularly particularly useful during braking and help the rider a little bit in that phase Could we see, in a near future some new technologies at the level of these aerodynamic appendices, in particular, as in Formula 1 where we can see this system of electronic wings Do you think one day, in the future, we could see this on a race bike ? active aerodynamics is explicitly prohibited by current technical regulation in MotoGP as an aerodynamic engineer I would love to exploit the potential of active Wings on sport bikes even if I doubt we could reach a considerable amount of drag reduction as it is for example in Formula One with the DRS because of the limited size of the Wings currently mounted on bikes competition In the last years we have seen, on production bikes elements derived from the racing world, in particular these wings could you please explain the transition from the race bike to the production bike ? well uh one reason uh for us as a racing Department to exist in a company like Ducati is to try and develop new technologies and then transfer them to production for road bikes and this is especially important for aerodynamics Ducati Corse is pretty much a R&D laboratory for Ducati and the transfer of knowledge is is constant and profitable for both um to give you an example we developed the aerodynamics of the Panigale V4 taking advantage of years of aerodynamic studies applied to racing and using the same simulation and data analysis tool that we developed over the years for the MotoGP application this doesn't only apply to sport bike like the panigale but also to bikes that are not conceived for a truck usage like for example the Multistrada V4 for which we used our Cutting Edge simulation tools to guarantee the best possible thermal and aerodynamic comfort for the rider As Marco said many technologies everything that we develop with Ducati Corse actually can find some reflection on our production bikes for example our V4s are strictly derived in many solutions like the counter rotating crankshaft but for example even the the bore measure is the same as the Moto GP as is the same as in the panigale the the engine of the Multistrada is still a V4 with a counter rotating crankshaft uh all the electronic systems actually benefit from all the studies from the strategies and the application we have in MotoGP so um it's uh as Marco said it's uh actually more an R&D than a racing Department it actually serves both purposes so everything in Ducati actually is born in racing and transferred to uh to production so um thank you both of you Marco thanks a lot we let you go back to work and I think with you Edoardo we are going to talk a little bit about the future of motorcycle We just talked about electronic and aerodynamic now, what are the other evolutions and innovations brought during the last years to the MotoGP Bikes ? during the 2003-20 almost 20 years Ducati participated in MotoGP it has introduced many uh Innovations most of them as I said before I know I sound like a broken record but it is like that um the development everything they do on Moto GP is mostly driven by regulations so you actually try to exploit the best that you can within those regulations for example um we tried on the on the 800s we um Ducati also experimented a lot with chassis Solutions we tried to do things differently from all the others um for example the um Casey Stoner winning, World Championship winning bike was still with the steel frame that became aluminum monocoque and then carbon monocoque and it's been Ducati has been the first to introduce that kind of solution it's been the same with the carbon swing arm those Solutions did did work at that time mostly because there was no um control tire rule because the thing is you can go a different way from all the others if you have in that case for example the tire manufacturer that follows you and he can actually help you develop those solutions by providing a tire that works with your solution if you have a controlled Tire the tires has it it's going to be some something like one size fits all so you probably have to be more conventional in that solution and you have to explore other areas for example apart from those Ducati also introduced for a brief period of time and electronically controlled clutch for example there's no need of that anymore the the engines has evolved we have seamless shifts so there is no need for that anymore I don't know aerodynamics for example the the rear scoop actually deviates the the flow of air towards the rear tire to keep it a bit fresher and performs everything it's been produced by Ducati and most of those Solutions are let's say Ducati introduced it or somebody has introduced it and in the paddock everybody tries to to do the same thing that the winning bike do so for example the scoop has been you know uh has been copied by everybody almost everybody um it's been the same with the carbon swing arms it's been the same with aerodynamics you see the solutions once they become effective everybody moves towards mostly the same road so um basically it's like that I have a complementary question um sometimes you have a new innovation that comes is it for example Ducati who asks the suppliers uh for for example for the ECU for the uh fork for the brakes to uh adapt to some new ideas that they that you could have or are the suppliers sometimes creating something new and come see you and say hey we have a new technology that you could use for the race uh how does it work um I'd say it's a bit of both for example the the braking components and the suspension is mostly the same for everybody because there's I think I don't know if all the grid this year but roughly all the read is uh uses Brembo brakes and Öhlins suspension so basically the kit is the same it's available to everybody when they bring an innovation it's almost available to everybody and we might develop our bike around the the new technology the new solution the new for example if we have more braking power for example with the new brake components and things like that all the bike has to be developed as to exploit the best they can or that solution so engine braking so the geometry of the bike and everything else for other developments it might have Ducati Corse might find the need an area of improvement and it requires for example uh the terminate solution of I don't know structure of carbo fiber so it works with the supplier to have that kind of product to implement in the in the MotoGP so sometimes it's a state-of-the-art driven sometimes it's Ducati courses driven okay and when you you have a new uh Innovation created by Ducati you have to give it to the others so the level can be the same or you can you keep it or how it is you know like you create something really really Innovative like you said the scoop and I think with the scoop everybody was uh not happy with that at the beginning because they thought it would be one more aerodynamic elements. No in the MotoGP everything that you cannot see is kept as secret as this possible okay you never see a MotoGP without the fairings for example yeah okay you see so everything that goes on under the fairings is strictly secrets so we try our best Ducati tries its best to keep their secret their competitive Advantage for the competitors sometimes even aerodynamics is clearly visible so you cannot really keep it that / it's obvious you have a small Advantage for maybe a few races uh up until the the competitors uh homologate the same fairing profiles for for their bike and then you lose that advantage so you create a new fairing or anything or aerodynamic element, who needs to homologate that so you need to go to the FIM ? you know the the thing is regulation is uh I think that currently you can have two different profiles per year so uh there's the bike that you start the year with and you can have another a different profile for fairings and aerodynamic appendices winglets or anything like that that you can homologate and you have basically you have to declare to the Dorna, to the FIM to the Federation that you have a new profile their technical advisors analyze the profile and if it complies with the rule then it's it's that okay over We see Factory riders, and satellite teams riders do they get the new technologies at the same time or not ? um okay there's no straight answer to that question the thing is um it's all a matter of agreements between the factory and the single teams I can tell you for example that the situation this year has been that the uh Ducati Lenovo team was the the factory team had the uh obviously the official bikes the factory bikes and also the right to let's say um to guide the development so just uh Jack (Miller) and Pecco (Bagnaia) uh were listened when the technician when Ducati Corse had to choose in which direction which components work and which didn't um Pramac for example is a satellite team they have the same material at the start of the year and they most of the times get the same technology the same developments of the factory Riders but not at the same time you know because the the Ducati concentrates on the factory Pilots the the factory team and then roughly after I don't know that there's no um there's no real rule but after two three four races the same material can become available to the other some of the pilots, like Marco Bezzecchi for example that was rookie didn't, never had the the 2022 bike he had the 2021 basically last year bikes with sometimes some of the evolution if they fit because basically you have to keep in mind that the MotoGP is a full prototype it's not the the same bike every year sometimes they change totally so sometimes I most of the times the particulars that fit on the GP22 for example don't really fit it on the 21 the fairing, tank, seat area, components in the engine and things like that so basically the the difference between a satellite team like the Pramac team or a satellite Rider and the factory riders is that the factory Rider decides what works and what doesn't so the development is Guided by the factory Riders the um the satellite team has the same material but they don't have at the same time and they have no most of the time they have no voice in in deciding what's the uh what's the development direction also there's that might be for example Ducati has a test team led by Michele Pirro that the guy who works the most things so they they pre-test the the components that go to towards the factory bikes and sometimes when you have a very close relation with the team like with Pramac if you really really need to collect as much deta as you can on a particular you actually give them at the same time as a factory team because you collect more data as you can so as I said there's basically no rule it depends on every on situation so you said that for example this uh Pecco and Jack were the only one that the factory would listen to um to what extent they are part of the the development of the bikes uh they are fundamental um this is interesting this is not just somebody who's talented that you put on a bike which is ready to ride like uh no the thing is basically uh the engineers decide what they need analyzing the data from the season Ducati engineers and Ducati Corse decide we have to go in that direction then there's Michele Pirro and the test team it actually works through the most of the solution to find out what works or what doesn't uh Michele is a very fast and talented rider but the tiny Gap that there is between Michele Pirro and Pecco and Jack this year is um is decisive in a race you see that in MotoGP racers are very very close so even if Michele Pirro says this this let's say these three frames work they have to be selected by uh Pecco and Jack it might be this works this doesn't or let's go back to the drawing board and things like that um I don't really like to say it's not it's not that you said anything wrong but I don't really like to say that Ducati doesn't listen to others the thing is you can't listen to everybody because the bikes you can't really develop eight different bikes on the grid so the guys have the privilege to um to decide in which direction the development effort goes and you have to follow that but for as I said before if you really need to collect data from all eight riders you give the same bike to all eight rider and you give the same details to all of them and you listen to all of them because all input is precious In a near future, could we see new rules appear, in particular with this ecology topic in the racing world ? What do you think ? um let's say we're we're not scared we don't know what the future will be but as you might know uh regulations in MotoGP are always thinking um that way MotoGP will have will use like clean fuel like biofuel from I think 2024 for the 50% of the whole mass of the fuel and from 2026 it only will have so-called synthetic fuels so no more gasoline as we know now on the other hand as you know Ducati from next year will be the sole supplier for the Moto E World Cup with our prototype that's been built through zero emission clean electrical vehicle so we're ready for whatever the future will bring to us basically the the position of Ducati right now is to be prepared for everything to collect experience collect expertise and you know develop all the solution at the best of our possibilities to be ready to uh let's say confront with whatever the future will bring us we still don't know if we will be biofuels or electric or any other Solutions so we'll try to be ready so Eduardo thanks a lot for all this informations, that was really super interesting and uh yeah I think we have everything uh you've answered all his questions thanks a lot yes thank you and see you at the party tonight definitely thank you no thank you and you're welcome Ladies and Gentlemen The world Champion 2022 in the queen class The Desmoseidici GP With the number 63 the Moto GP World Champion : Francesco "Pecco" Bagnaia
2023-02-04