Ciabatti: You have to set ambitious targets

In Sepang, Paolo Ciabatti, sporting director of Ducati, reiterated  the teams desire to move forward again in 2015. The Italian squad has spent the last four years in the doldrums since Casey Stoner left for Honda but the strides made last year with the various iterations of the GP14 showed the progress that has been made since Gigi Dall’igna took the reins of Ducati Corse.

Speaking to MCN in Malaysia Ciabatti outlined how Ducati has changed over the last year with the greater co-operation within the race department a key area of improvement:

“Gigi joined the company in 2013 after a couple of very difficult seasons for Ducati and there haven’t been many changes in terms of the people in the race department but there has been a change in how they work together. Now we’ve got a group of people working well together because usually the electronics, chassis and engine engineers all work independently even though these are the three key areas for the bike and you need to have a compromise from each to build the best bike.

Of course having the team work as a unit is only one element of their efforts. Results on the track need to reflect this shift in working practices and with the softer Open  tyre available to Ducati in qualifying, but not a useable race tyre, and extra fuel the team should have potential for strong results in the hands of Andrea Dovizioso and Andrea Iannone.

Whether these advantages be translated into race victories will only come clear when the season gets underway but for the first time in four years Ducati will bring far more to the table than empty promises. Sepang showed the potential of the new bike and Ciabatti is confident that winning a race is now a realistic goal for the team.

“Our target is to fight for podiums and win one race. It’s not over-ambitious, it’s ambitious because if you don’t set ambitious targets you won’t reach them so we’re looking to put extra pressure on ourselves to go get the result. As well as that we expect to be title contenders very soon even though we know that Honda and Yamaha have almost perfect bikes and four of the best riders in MotoGP.”

For more on the GP15’s on track debut see this week’s issue of Motorcycle News.