Ducati unveil '05 GP bike

Ducati has unveiled the Desmosedici GP5 in its 2005 race livery on top of the Groste glacier in the Dolomite mountains in Northern Italy.

“The bike that Loris Capirossi and Carlos Checa will race this season is an evolution, not a revolution, of the GP4,” said Ducati Corse boss Claudio Domenicali. “We learnt from the mistakes we made last year, when we arrived at the first tests with a completely different bike from the previous versions and with no chance of turning back.”

The GP5 is quite similar to the machine used for the final 2004 GP at Valencia, except for tweaks to the chassis, swingarm and ECU. The swingarm is lighter and stiffer, and the chassis now attaches to the swingarm pivot. These revisions have already been tested at Phillip Island and will be used at the start of the race season. The ECU engine control system has greater calculation power, but more radical version are also being developed.

Alongside the gradual evolution are greater changes under testing, including a new ‘step’ engine wich is already running on a dyno, and a new fairing which will appear at the IRTA tests in March.

The team will test at Sepang in Malaysia on January 23-25 and February 11-13, before Phillip Island on February 17-19 and Losail in Qatar on March 1-3.