Ducati, Paolo Ciabatti warns Marc Marquez and Fabio Quartararo
“It won’t take another 15 years for Ducati to win the MotoGP title again.”
Ducati’s sporting director Paolo Ciabatti gave an interview to AS after Pecco Bagnaia won the MotoGp world title and indulged in a prediction with a view to the future, with goodwill to Marc Marquez and Fabio Quartararo.
On the Valencia race he said, “There was incredible tension all week because we were so close, but something can always happen. It was a pretty difficult race for Pecco, because when he touched with Fabio he lost a wing of his bike, but we knew Fabio had to win and Pecco had to finish 15th or worse, so something like that could happen, but it wasn’t easy for it to happen. Congratulations to Fabio, because he was very fast in trying to get closer to the leading group, but he didn’t succeed, so it was better for us. But if he had won, even Pecco’s ninth place would have been enough to make him world champion.”
“However, the heart has suffered a lot, because we have not had this experience for 15 years,” Ciabatti continued. “I have been with the team since 2013, we have been very close with Dovi and we have won many races, but never the World Drivers’ Championship. Now we have the triple crown, which is very important for the people who work in Bologna, for the sponsors who help us and for Pecco, who had an important season winning seven races. It is true that he also had many falls when he was in a position to get good results, but in the end we are world champions, which is the important thing.”
He then stressed the strength of the Ducati team, “I think it won’t take another 15 years for Ducati to come back and win the MotoGP title, because we have a super competitive bike, as we saw with the best season in Ducati’s history, with 16 pole positions out of 20 races and always on the podium. This is a great basis to start next year better than we started this year. We will test the new bike on Tuesday.”
“We will have a Márquez in our ranks, Alex, and I am very happy with the riders we have, with all the respect in the world for Fabio and Marc. The riders of the future are already in our house,” concluded the Borgo Panigale stable’s ds.
