Ducati has finally revealed their weapon for the 2015, as well as the livery of the bike and the two contracted riders Andrea Dovizioso and his new colleague Andrea Iannone. Dovizioso is a seasoned rider whose services Ducati was very happy to retain, while Iannone himself is no longer a rookie and has already proved that he can be exceedingly fast in certain conditions.
Anyway, the riders and their leathers are not the front page news today. The most important thing of all is the all-new Desmosedici GP15 machine Ducati has revealed, the bike which encompasses all the hopes of the Borgo Panigale. It is definitely not an understatement to say that there are more expectations tied to this bike than to pretty much any other machine Ducati has built during the last years.
Dall’Igna promised he would build a new bike if need be
Gigi Dall’Igna is the man who could bring back glory for Ducati. CEO Claudio Domenicali brought Dall’Igna over from Aprilia and gave him a free hand over the MotoGP department, also offering him resources and support for whatever solution he would see fit. Dall’Igna said that he would not dismiss the idea of having to build a completely new bike… and it looks like this was in the end the solution he went for.
So far the GP14.2 and GP14.3 have shown consistent performance improvements in 2014, with the 14.3 version tested early this month at Sepang and posting lap times which were hard to compare with what the year-ago test showed. The engine has retained the V4 architecture, but is now lighter and smaller, while the power deployment and software are developed from the GP14.3 and taken one step forward.
At the same time, the new bike Dall’Igna engineered also comes with a narrower profile and new bodywork with improved aerodynamics. Ducati openly declares that the goal for 2015 is to claw at least one victory, while one of the strong points is the fact that Dovizioso and Iannone are quite different as riders. Dall’Igna says that this will allow the team to gather even more data from various riding scenarios, helping the mechanics refine the GP15 bike to a (hopefully) race-winning trim.
Like all other factories, Ducati is not that willing to share too much inside data. That’s why we so far have to settle for figures such as “over 240 hp, over 340 km/h (211 mph).” The weight however is fixed, 158 kg (348 lb) according to class specifications. Find out more in the attached PDF and enjoy the mega-gallery. Learning about how it performs si amtter of days now, as we get to see it in the second test at Sepang.
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