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Here, too, Rossi’s age is starting to work against him: Dorna have been preparing for Rossi’s retirement for several years now, as the Italian has talked about leaving the series consistently the last couple of times his contract has been renewed. With the goose that has laid so many golden eggs for them on the verge of quitting, Dorna have realized that they need to put something in place to compensate. Although they will never be able to replace a global superstar of the stature of Rossi, their plan for limiting the financial damage that Rossi’s departure would undoubtedly do the series is to try to bring back the exciting racing seen in the past, to create a more stable commercial base. By jumping on the Rossi bandwagon – the Italian is truly a global star known far outside the world of motorcycle racing, a once-in-a-generation phenomenon – Dorna ended up with too many of their eggs in one basket, and now they face paying the price. Their new strategy is to try to create closer, more exciting racing, and reduce the importance of a single individual to the series. The riders will always be the stars, but having great racing ensures the long-term commercial stability of the series as riders come and go, as they inevitably do.
And here is Dorna’s delicate dilemma: by forcing either Honda or Yamaha to provide Rossi with a competitive bike, they will have secured the commercial success of MotoGP for the next couple of seasons, until Rossi retires and leaves, as he surely must one day. However, if the price that Dorna has to pay is to offer too many technical concessions to the factories that the satellite and CRT teams are left without a chance of being competitive, and the processional racing that has characterized the series under the rules drawn up by the MSMA continues, then they could end up saving the series in the short term, only to see it wither and die once Rossi leaves, with nothing to take his place.
Should He Stay or Should He Go?
Overall, Rossi’s best hope may actually lie in staying with Ducati. Right now, he is clearly not competitive, and the bike obviously still needs a lot of work. But a large part of Rossi’s claim to greatness is built on his reputation as someone who can develop a bike, helped in no small part by his legendary crew chief Jerry Burgess. If Rossi leaves without making the bike competitive, then his legacy will be tarnished, despite much of the blame being attached to Ducati. Failing to turn the Ducati around will leave a stain on his reputation and that of Burgess.
Some seeds of doubt are already being planted. Though the M1 campaigned by Alex Barros and Olivier Jacque did not win a single race, Barros had a significant input on the bike that Rossi inherited. Masao Furusawa had already built a completely new bike for Rossi’s arrival, and the Italian’s role was not so much development as correctly identifying the bike that Furusawa had expected to be best. While Rossi and Burgess have received much of the credit for developing the Yamaha M1 that Rossi would go on to win the championship on, that view underestimates the massive role that Furusawa played in understanding the weaknesses of the bike and improving it, before Burgess and Rossi got their hands on the bike to tweak it.
Now, at Ducati, after a total of five frames and two engines, the bike is still suffering, and the magic that everyone expected from Rossi and Burgess is failing to appear. Much of the problems seem to stem from a fundamental misunderstanding between the rider, his crew, and Ducati’s engineers. Once that miscommunication is cleared up, then Rossi can try to prove that his reputation as a good bike developer is deserved, and not just down to being in the right place at the right time.
Two Sides To Every Story
But Ducati, too, need Rossi to do well. They could afford to ignore the input of the riders while Casey Stoner kept on winning on the bike. They could afford to send Marco Melandri to a psychologist, instead of listening to his complaints about the bike. Now, with Stoner gone, and the man who was supposed to be able to ride everything failing so spectacularly, it has become clear to everyone, including Ducati’s engineers, that this situation cannot continue. If they do not produce a competitive bike, there is more at stake than just the reputation of Valentino Rossi, the continuation of Ducati’s MotoGP program is at risk.
Ducati’s MotoGP project has only been possible thanks to the willingness of Phillip Morris, who continue to fund the lion’s share of the Bologna factory’s budget – paddock rumor suggests that the amount is in the region of 25 million euros – to promote Marlboro. The tobacco giant has stayed faithful to Ducati, despite ever-tighter rules on tobacco sponsorship and advertising, with just the red-and-white color scheme remaining to tie the Marlboro brand identity to Ducati’s MotoGP team. The question remains how much success Phillip Morris feels it needs from Ducati, but they will surely be demanding more than the team is currently providing. Having Rossi failing so badly on the bike is bad for everyone’s image, including their tobacco sponsors.
With Ducati rumored to have already massively overrun their budget this year – perhaps by as much as 20% – the Borgo Panigale factory needs to start producing results. The GP12 suffers from two major problems: firstly, though the engine has been rolled back to reposition it, it is still a 90° V, and as I wrote in August of last year, such a wide angle between the cylinder banks makes mass centralization nearly impossible, and makes packaging the engine extremely difficult; and secondly, the power delivery is too aggressive – Valentino Rossi joked that the bike had “a lion under the fairing” at Qatar – making it more difficult to control.
A New Hope?
But there are reasons to believe that this situation could change relatively quickly. Much speculation has centered on the new parts that Ducati are expected to be introducing “after three or four races,” widely expected to be some new chassis parts. While Rossi and Hayden are very likely to be given a new swingarm at either Jerez or Estoril, the big change could come at the tests after the Portuguese round of MotoGP. All the signs point to Ducati bringing a new engine to test there, and that could turn out to be radically different from the one they are currently using. The engine currently in use is basically the same as the original 2012 1000cc engine, designed to be a load-bearing part of the chassis. The rumored new engine will be much lighter, as it has been designed from the ground up to be used in the aluminium twin spar chassis, rather than the original carbon fiber monocoque subframe, and so is substantially less rigid than the current unit. There are also signs that the engine angle could finally be changed, with some sources hinting that the new engine will be a 75° V. Just how reliable these sources are is yet to be proven – guesses based on glimpses of engines may be the result of an optical illusion rather than the actual engine layout. But a new engine layout would radically transform the handling of the bike.
The other hope could come as a result of the proposed rule changes for 2013 and onwards. It now seems certain that a rev limit will be put in place for next year, with 15,000 rpm the most likely candidate. Such a limit would change the nature of the bikes, and probably impact Ducati hardest. However, given that the Ducati’s problem is its excess of horsepower and the way it delivers that to the rear tire. A rev limit would force Ducati to work on mid-range torque rather than extracting maximum horsepower, and make the bike more rideable. That would answer one of Rossi’s key complaints about the Ducati, and if a revised engine improved the handling as is expected, Ducati’s fortunes could be turned around fairly quickly.
Whether that will be enough remains to be seen. No matter how good the bike is, Valentino Rossi faces two riders who grew up knowing that they had him to beat if they were ever to be champions themselves. He was the target they aimed for, and both Jorge Lorenzo and Casey Stoner have hit, and arguably surpassed, that target. Even if Ducati do fix the GP12, then Lorenzo and Stoner are going to be hard to get wins against, and impossible to take the title from.
With the chances of a satellite ride very limited, and a factory Honda or Yamaha seat out of the question, Rossi’s best hope of a competitive ride in MotoGP is to help Ducati turn the Desmosedici around, and create a bike which is easier to ride and offers better feel at the front end. His reputation – and the reputation of Jerry Burgess and the rest of his crew – depends on him fixing the Ducati, and it is the fastest track the nine-times World Champion has to success in MotoGP if he is to remain in racing.
Of course, Rossi’s success depends to a major extent on the willingness of Ducati to make the changes he has asked for. That, for so many years, has been the sticking point, but the Bologna factory is now starting to reach breaking point. If Rossi does not start to score podiums and challenge for wins on the bike, their MotoGP project will be in danger. If they have any ambition of continuing in the series, they have to build a bike that a rider like Rossi can win on. Despite what his detractors say – and over the past 18 months, his detractors have become even more tiresome than his fans ever were – Valentino Rossi still has seven premier class titles to his name, as well holding the record for premier class wins. It is reasonable to expect Rossi to at least be fighting for podiums, and so to see him nearly a second a lap slower than his rivals is a signal that the bike is at least part of the problem. Given Rossi’s renowned grasp of paddock politics and his media savvy, his outburst on Italian TV was almost certainly calculated to put maximum pressure on Ducati to make the changes that he wants.
They Can Work It Out
Like the children of two royal families pledged to be wed, Valentino Rossi and Ducati are condemned to one another. They can either try to make the marriage work and their empire a success, or they can fail and fall bickering to their doom. If Ducati does not build a competitive bike, and Rossi does not commit to riding it the way it needs to be ridden, then both are likely to disappear from the GP scene, both with serious stains on their reputations. Though the wedding between Rossi and Ducati was the high point of the MotoGP year, it has proven to be a marriage of inconvenience for both parties. They need to make it work, and quickly.