How Ducati has formed its 2022 MotoGP super team

As the 2022 MotoGP season begins in Qatar on 6 March, it will be 15 years since Ducati ascended to the top of the world with Casey Stoner. The Australian’s signing to Ducati in just his second year – having had a fast, but crash-strewn debut with LCR Honda in 2006 – was a bold step.

But it marked the perfect alignment, as the Australian stormed to 10 wins to take the 2007 title and mark the first premier class championship for a rider on a European motorcycle since Phil Read’s second 500cc crown for MV Agusta in 1974.

Since then, Ducati has been forever chasing that elusive follow-up. The notoriously difficult Desmosedici got even harder to ride as the decade drew to a close and the 2010s dawned, with only Stoner – who grew disillusioned with the marque and fled to Honda in 2011 – able to ride the bike anywhere close to its potential.

The Valentino Rossi nadir of 2011/2012 marked Ducati’s rock bottom and prompted a rethink. In came former Aprilia head Gigi Dall’Igna as general manager to get the race department to work smarter and steadily Ducati began to return to the front of the field, with Andrea Dovizioso taking the marque to three-successive runner-up spots in the standings.

But each of Dovizioso’s runner-up placements got progressively further away from world champion Marc Marquez. As the relationship between 15-time race winner Dovizioso and Dall’Igna soured irreparably across 2019 and 2020, Ducati began a rethink of its rider approach and favoured youth for 2021.

Out went Dovizioso and Danilo Petrucci at the factory squad, and in came Pramac runners Jack Miller and Francesco Bagnaia. At the fully factory-supported Pramac, Jorge Martin was stolen from the KTM stable and Johann Zarco partnered him, while Avintia took onboard two rookies in 2020 Moto2 world champion Enea Bastianini and Rossi’s brother Luca Marini.

Dovizioso was dropped by Ducati at the end of 2020, a move that was not without risk

Photo by: Gold and Goose / Motorsport Images

Part of this motivation was financial. The COVID pandemic hit Italy hard and the era of big-money salaries was gone as far as Ducati was concerned. And while this – as Ducati sporting director Paolo Ciabatti tells Autosport – was not the main driving force, the pandemic did open up the Italian marque’s eyes.

“We had to rethink a lot of things,” Ciabatti says of the aftershock that came from the first COVID lockdown. “And for sure, that concern on the budget was bigger because, as you can imagine, the sponsors obviously with no championship, we didn't know if there would be a championship at all. And then it was a championship, but a very unusual format, like 14 races, most of them triples, racing the same circuit twice in two consecutive weekends.

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“So, very different, no spectators. No people allowed in the paddock, so for sure, we had to renegotiate most of our sponsorship contracts. And then it is one of the reasons - not to the main reason - but it's also one of the reasons we decided, ‘Okay, it's time probably also to bring fresh blood into the factory team to change the strategy’. 

"The pandemic forced us also to change a little bit the way we were thinking, and to realise that the world was changing and maybe it was also time for Ducati to change" Paolo Ciabatti

“I don't say because we didn't want to spend so much for the riders, this is not the main reason. But for sure, we came to a point when we said, 'Let's try to change a little bit again, give credit to the young riders that were so promising'. I would say that the pandemic forced us also to change a little bit the way we were thinking, and to realise that the world was changing and maybe it was also time for Ducati to change.”

This wasn’t without its risks. Ducati’s decision to dump Dovizioso came under scrutiny from the outside – including from Stoner – when it was announced in the August of 2020. After all, he’d helped develop Ducati to championship challengers again, offered Marc Marquez a genuine fight in 2017 for the title and beat him in all of their on-track head-to-head duels.

At the same time, Bagnaia had yet to score a podium in MotoGP as he struggled to get his head around the bike; Miller hadn’t added to his 2016 Assen victory when he was a Marc VDS Honda rider; Zarco was in the process of rebuilding himself after his KTM exit midway through 2019; and the three rookies were unproven.

This was juxtaposed to Honda having Marc Marquez, a proven podium contender in Pol Espargaro and Alex Marquez - who had a couple of podiums to his name - while Yamaha had multiple race winners in Fabio Quartararo, Maverick Vinales and Franco Morbidelli.

Former Pramac riders Bagnaia and Miller were both promoted to the factory team for 2021 and Ducati reaped great rewards

Photo by: Gold and Goose / Motorsport Images

The risks of Ducati’s change of philosophy were not lost on it, but the move was vindicated. Ducati won seven races between Bagnaia (4), Miller (2) and Martin, more than any other marque. It took the constructors’ crown for a second year in a row, while Bagnaia was runner-up to Quartararo in the riders’ title chase by just 26 points. That was closer than Dovizioso ever managed to get to the title by 11 points, and there’s absolutely nothing to suggest this will be the peak of Bagnaia’s powers. Quite the opposite, in fact.

“I think for him it was a combination of experience on a bike that was not so easy like the Ducati he rode in 2019, combined with more confidence in his capability on a better bike and finally achieving a dream to become a factory rider for Ducati combined, obviously, with the development we did on the GP21,” Ciabatti says when asked where Bagnaia’s growth came from in 2021.

“I think it was a combination where he thought he had everything he needed to try to show his talent. I think Pecco needs all the ingredients to be in the right place in order to be able to express his full talent and eventually, and luckily, we've managed to give him what he needed.”

Bagnaia has been a long-term project for Ducati, who signed the Rossi protege at the start of 2018 before he’d won that year's Moto2 crown. And Ducati clearly feels this partnership has much more to offer, as it announced a new two-year deal for Bagnaia on Monday.

That foresight also extended to two of its rookies in 2021, with Martin’s Pramac move first revealed by Autosport early in 2020. Bastianini, who scored two podiums on a two-year-old Ducati, is another that has been on Ducati’s radar for a long time.

“We followed Enea, Davide Tardozzi [team manager] and myself, actually since he was really a young kid,” revealed Ciabatti. “And we always thought that Enea had an extremely big talent. Sometimes a bit not so consistent. Okay, so in those days in his career in Moto3, there was a little bit of ups and downs. But we always thought that if we could put him in the right conditions, he would be really someone that can fight for race victories, also in MotoGP.”

Martin remains with Pramac on a 2022-spec Ducati for this year, while Bastianini has moved to Gresini on a 2021 bike. The former topped the Sepang test outright, signalling he’s beginning to figure out the qualifying form which held him back in his rookie season.

Bagnaia enjoyed a breakout season in 2021 as he finished second to Quartararo, and is only going to get better

Photo by: Gold and Goose / Motorsport Images

At its factory squad, Ducati seemingly as the perfect leader in Bagnaia and someone who could be equally as good in Miller if he can just find more consistency – something Ciabatti says will be key in the Australian securing a seat at the factory table again in 2023. Meanwhile, in its satellite ranks, both Martin and Bastainini are already being outlined as dark horses in the 2022 title race. Throw in a known quantity in Zarco, as well as the potential Marini and rookies Fabio Di Giannantonio (Gresini) and Marco Bezzecchi (VR46) possess, the entire eight-bike Ducati stable is absolutely stacked.

For the first time since 2016, Ducati will field eight bikes on the grid. Five of those bikes are factory-spec 2022 machines, while the rest are the 2021 machines which won seven races.

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While the true shape of the GP22 remains something of a mystery after a low-key pre-season phase – with the acceleration of its new engine the key thing that needs improving – it is still expected to be the all-round package its 2021 predecessor was.

"Our engineers can pull out information of Bagnaia and show to Enea why Pecco is so effective in that corner. And vice versa. I think this is also one of the advantages of the Ducati policy, where we have so many bikes" Paolo Ciabatti

Having eight bikes on the grid will allow Ducati a limitless supply of data to glean from, which can be filtered through its riders to help each of them extract the best from themselves and their packages.

“We are an open book for our riders,” Ciabatti concludes. “Our engineers can pull out information of Bagnaia and show to Enea why Pecco is so effective in that corner. And vice versa. Sometimes also we saw that Enea was doing very good in a certain sector, and then obviously also our riders can do.

“I think this is also one of the advantages of the Ducati policy, where we have so many bikes. Okay, [with] eight bikes on the grid for sure we can collect very, very much information that is useful for all of us and for our engineers because they can really compare the data from eight fast riders.”

And that last point is the key: it is eight strong riders occupying those bikes. Every single one of Ducati’s eight riders this year has won a race at grand prix level – and five of them have stood on the podium at the very highest echelon more than once.

While Ciabatti is convinced Ducati “was also ready to be world champions last year”, its tilt came a few rounds too late. But, as has been proven coming into 2022, Ducati “has all the ingredients to be fighting for the riders’ title” this year from the outset…

Several members of Ducati's expanded roster have the potential to be fighting for the 2022 title

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