The motorcycle underwent several refinements, mostly in cooling the V4 motor, which Ducati getting to use six of them throughout the entire season for each rider. Ducati Corse had previously been using nearly 18 motors a Championship, or one motor per race, according to Claudio Domenicali.
“The main changes to the bike are based on the rule changes, so the major part of the work was done precisely to make it perform better using only six engines for the entire championship. It’s a very important difference, because we were used to using more-or-less one engine per race, so to switch from 18 engines to six is a very important adjustment. All of the main parts were redesigned -- pistons, rods, crankshaft, the basics. It’s an engine with which our main objective was to minimize the loss of power to increase durability,” said Domenicali at the press conference.
“The second big news isn’t related to the rules, but to our attempt to make the bike more rideable. This has to do with the firing order. We have a motor that, since the switch to 800s, utilized a screamer setup. This has permitted us to have maximum power,” he continued.
“We think we have a bike for 2010 with better traction, and that therefore makes it easier for us to find a good setup. Another part of the work was dedicated to the chassis. In the pursuit of ease of use, we’ve worked to eliminate the bike’s squatting, which is why the entire rear portion of the bike was redesigned."
"This bike has a rear structure that carries the rider — which we call the seat support — and that also supports the swingarm. That part was redesigned to have six mounting points instead of four; this makes the bike more rigid in a way and it guarantees better rideability and improved rigidity,“ Domenicali added.
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