The latest voice to sustain the cost-reduction strategy is Ducati's. Team boss Livio Suppo revealed some of the conclusions reached by the MotoGP constructors during their meeting in Japan the other week. The discussions focused mainly on reducing mileage during both testing and race weekend, as well as prolonging engine life.
“In practice, since the highest expense comes from wearing material, in particular the engine, we realized that the only thing to do now is to make the bikes spend less time on the track. So it's less test days, shorter free practice and qualifying sessions, and engines able to last at least two grands prix,” revealed Suppo for Italian magazine Motosprint.
The Italian official revealed that most Japanese manufacturers have asked for some time to evaluate whether they can make the necessary adjustments to their power plants in order to sustain at least 2 races. However, he admitted miracles cannot be done in terms of cost-cutting measures for this year, considering most of the work on the 2009-spec bikes are already close to be finalized.
“Let's just say this is technically the most delicate problem, so some manufacturers asked for some time to think. They are evaluating whether they can do it or not. Nothing strange about it. But for 2010 there is time to intervene in a radical way; that's not the case now. There are some limitations for 2009 but the bikes have already been built, so miracles can't be done,” added Suppo.
He also revealed some more cost-cutting propositions due to be discussed by the MotoGP constructors during their next meeting in Sepang.
“There are many proposals, we are thinking about them now. For example, we can move to steel brakes. We can reduce the number of bikes for each team, so two bikes plus a single spare one. And the engines must do more than one race before being serviced, which means making big changes on next year's project,” concluded the Ducati boss.
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