Photos at last! Ducati ’s new GP15 MotoGP racer wasn’t ready for the first Sepang test, but here it is, the first clean-sheet motorcycle to come from Luigi Dall’Igna’s new team. We have known since 2003 that Ducati is well able to match the Japanese teams in outright power. Years of painstaking and continuous—no breaks, no time-outs—development in World Superbike have given this company unsurpassed engine technology. In 2007, the combination of Ducati power, Casey Stoner’s riding, and Bridgestone tires designed for that motorcycle gave this small company a MotoGP world championship. Yes, the bike had natural understeer but Stoner overrode that. As we now know, things went wrong enough to steadily reduce the number of Stoner’s wins. Because the original steel-tube trellis chassis had fallen behind tire grip (a story told many times in this game), a gamble was made on the other extreme: an extremely stiff carbon-fiber chassis/airbox in Vincent style. The result was not enough compliance at the front to warn of doom; Stoner fell often because that bike gave no warning. Then came a series of Band-Aids—an aluminum demi-frame, more flexible head and front wheel bearings, smaller fork tubes. Tests were inconclusive. 
When Bridgestone became MotoGP’s spec tire supplier, the Japanese manufacturer had to switch from close cooperation with Ducati to designs that would serve the whole paddock. This brought part of the illusion that Ducati was somehow “un-developing” its motorcycle, with fewer wins every year after 2007 until they won nothing at all. Valentino Rossi was laid on but found no magic and moved on. Now Dall’Igna has come from Aprilia to move Ducati MotoGP away from its favored path, theory, to something closer to trackside improvisation. No-fairing photos of the various 2014 Ducatis showed that they had abandoned their original mounting of chassis to heavy bolting points on the heads and adopted what has worked for the others since Honda demonstrated the concept in 2002: a laterally flexible steering head. Yes, it’s crude to rely upon sideways movement of the wheel, brakes, fork, and the front half of the frame, but show us something that works better. So in 2014 we saw long engine hangers, descending from the steering head to attach lower down on the engine. This, by supporting the steering head on a four-legged spider (two main beams, two vertical engine hangers) sought to give the front tire the lateral flexibility that is so important to “feel” (or, as Colin Edwards put it, warning). 
Yet through all this struggle and disappointment, feel or no feel, the bikes understeered. They pushed. That meant it was too easy for engine power to shift weight off the front, robbing the front tire of the grip needed to guide acceleration off corners. The harder riders gassed it, the more the bike headed for the outside, a no-win choice between being slow or crashing. At first, many thought Ducati’s long-traditional 90-degree cylinder Vee angle was the problem. With two heavy cylinder heads splayed so far apart, a lot of engine mass ends up to the rear. And then came the bombshell: Honda revealed that its series-winning V-4s were also 90-degree engines. Patent drawings further suggested that Honda’s engine might use shorter-than-optimum-length connecting rods as an element in making the engine more compact. Why is that 90-degree Vee so sacred? Not because Ducatisti crave it as they crave single-sided swingarms, but because it allows simple crank counterweights to completely balance the engine’s primary (crank speed) shaking force. No balancer shafts. Simple. On bikes that vibrate, all the parts have to be heavier to resist being shaken to pieces. 
So when this flood of 2015 photos appeared, I made a to-scale 90-degree Ducati engine cutout and found that, YES!, it could fit behind the massive radiator array up front (no front cylinder head poking through, its cam cover polished by tire contact, as on so many Ducati Superbikes). The problem then moves to the rear. With the cylinders rotated rearward, where can you put the gearbox? One answer is in the crankcase, right up against the crankshaft, under that rear pair of cylinders. Route the two exhaust pipes upward, above the gearbox (Ducati has had updraft exhaust ports since their introduction on Testastretta). Other matters of interest are the Honda-like treatment of rear suspension, rear exhaust pipes, and fuel tank. Honda gives its tank a “foot,” which extends to the rear, under the seat. To make room for those exhaust pipes, they are one atop the other on the right, with the fuel-tank extension (protected by a heat shield) on the left. With these two interlopers claiming all underseat volume, suspension, linkage, and swingarm bracing move into and under the swingarm. 
And what a swingarm! The big compromise on early Ducati Superbikes was their dinky 19-inch-long swingarms. This tended to work best when it moved least, for squat/anti-squat geometry improves with longer arms. Like other MotoGP bikes, this GP15 has a great long swingarm, maybe 26 inches. All that paddock talk about Ducati’s swingarm pivot height being “all wrong” may stop now. When it’s wrong in the usual way (Honda went hip deep here in 1988, very embarrassing!), as the rider rolls on throttle to accelerate, there is too little drive chain tangent force to prevent weight from transferring off the front tire to the rear. The chassis squats at the rear and the front tire pushes. When you look at the photos, you see that the pivot is located in an oval chassis cavity, strongly suggesting up-and-down adjustability. Not so long ago, Honda was ready to field its bike without the usual range of chassis adjustment. The engineers decided that was a good idea because “too many adjustments confuse people.” At the last moment, that decision was reversed. Trackside wisdom teaches that a full range of adjustment is just prudent self-defense against unanticipated changes in tires, etc. If you do get confused, go to baseline and start over. With the Supermono long ago, Ducati discovered the extra drag caused by ejecting low-energy hot radiator air through the sides of the fairing. Alas, MotoGP engines make too much heat and are too wide for any easy alternative to this. The upper edges of the fairing are brought close to the chassis beams to keep the rider from being toasted by hot radiator air. 
These photos reveal only the upper half of the main chassis beams. The swingarm is carbon, which suggests the team is satisfied that its stiffness won’t require constant adjustment. Long ago, the teams made clear why they have not made more use of carbon structure: Motorcycles have very little grip in comparison with cars, so they must promptly adapt to tire and rules changes. Making changes to metal is just cutting and welding, but changing structural carbon parts require expensive, time-consuming mold-making. As with the other contenders, the rider is located so far forward that the windscreen does not overhang the top of the steering head. Dragsters have the luxury of wheelie bars to help them stay pointed during extreme acceleration, but until roadrace bikes are given steerable tailwheels, the problem of keeping the front tire in pavement contact will remain. If these new changes make the Ducati steer, the team and riders Andrea Dovizioso and Andrea Iannone may be able to actually race at lap times they could sustain in 2014 for only one to five practice laps. This is what we all want, for the red bikes to fight race long for podium positions. In the past, top Honda people have found Ducati annoying, calling them “pirates.” I wouldn’t want Honda to get too comfortable. 
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