No influx of new engineering expertise at Ducati

New Ducati boss Bernhard Gobmeier says the hiring of a host of new engineering expertise will not be implemented to help the Bologna factory’s recovery in the 2013 MotoGP world championship.

Gobmeier has the task of re-building Ducati’s MotoGP project after a disastrous two-year spell with Italian legend Valentino Rossi.

The size of that task became apparent earlier this month when the 2013 winter testing campaign kicked off at the Sepang track in Malaysia.

Not one Ducati finished within two seconds of Dani Pedrosa’s best lap time and a tough first test prompted calls from Andrea Dovizioso and Nicky Hayden for a radical new Desmosedici project to be started.

Ducati now has the financial and technical resources of automotive giant Audi to call upon in its bid to slash the performance gap to Honda and Yamaha.

But Gobmeier, who replaced Ducati’s long-serving technical guru Filippo Preziosi in a winter management reshuffle, said he would not recruiting additional staff from outside of Borgo Panigale to work on the MotoGP project.

Gobmeier, who previously ran BMW’s factory WSB squad, told MCN: “95% of the staff will stay the same but we will add a few people where we have already analysed where we have some deficiencies.

“Most of them are Ducati people from other departments or ex-Ducati people who we know are really good. If you think that I am going to bring in 10 engineers from BMW, Audi or Volkswagen then it is not true.

“I’m convinced we can solve the problems internally. The technology is there and we will be analysing to solve the problems.”

See the March 6 issue of Motor Cycle News for full coverage of the second MotoGP test in Sepang.