About seven years ago Ducati is on everyone’s lips during each start of the season. The Italian factory has become a pioneer when it comes to making improvements to its motorcycle and instead of abiding by the MotoGP technical regulations, Dall’Igna, the team’s general manager, preferred to look for small loopholes in the gray areas that would give him something advantage over its rivals. The Borgo Panigale engineer, who began to amaze in 2015 with the introduction of the wings in the Desmosedici, He highlighted how there were still many possibilities to explore and he has been making them known with the arrival of each new course.
From the wings to the ‘holeshot’, Every innovation that Ducati has introduced has not gone unnoticed since most of them have been accompanied by controversy and resources, which have only managed to modify the approach of Dall’Igna’s original idea to find its legality. It happened with the fins, prohibited for being sharp elements dangerous for pilots, but they reinvented themselves to be accepted by presenting them as a stationary element in the fairing to prevent the front tire from rising at the time of acceleration.
Despite the protests of all the teams except Ducati, later Honda, Yamaha and the rest went to slipstream and nowadays a fairing without these elements seems almost inconceivable. The best known are the spoilers that are placed at the front, designed to pso that they do not intervene positively or negatively in the curves, exerting its function only in the acceleration of the line. The Desmosedici has shown that they fulfill their mission, as Zarco broke all the records in the FP4 of Qatar 2021 reaching 362.4 km/h with his mount, but at the same time he put on the table the cons of an aerodynamic progression that increases braking time.
condition the piloting
The increased downforce force that has been found to defy regulations, hinders braking ability when the mount is not rolling in clean air. In the same scenario that Zarco established the highest top speed in history, during the MotoGP race this season it was possible to see how Márquez lengthened the trajectory at the entrance of turn 1 and to a great extent, it was the aerodynamics that conditioned the piloting and the trajectory of the rider from Lleida in that area of the track.
All the elements that mounts have incorporated to gain speed create an absorption effect on the following bike that, when it rolls too close to the pilot in frontsucks it in and has a greater resistance to braking than the one obtained by a pilot shooting solo. There only the resistance of the air intervenes and therefore, it is much easier to stop the motorcycle than in front of a slipstream, it increases its difficulty leaving the typical ‘coladas’ that have become common in braking that occur at the end of the straight.
However, all the advantage that these elements provide in terms of competitiveness, convinces the brands much more than those consequences that can be dealt with by piloting, even knowingly. of the weight that the saddles have gained with their incorporation. And although now the Borgo Panigale factory has suffered a new censorship with the prohibition of the ‘holeshot’ striker in the race, from Bologna they have made it clear that they will not stop looking for novelties in an aerodynamic war that continues to revolutionize MotoGP