as was debated here in the forum: should Ducati focus on WSBK ... on of the arguments to leave motogp is that it would take years to succeed and most of all take away heavily needed resources and knowhow from WSBK, Ducati's core racing environment with the Panis ending between 2 to 3,5 seconds behind Sykes during Aragon training, it seems that Ducati Corse being spread too thinly over the 2 racing projects starts to show. Are the teams Alstare and Mr responisble for develloping the engines, the electronics are held firmly by Ducati. and this seem to be a big part of the problem the main complaint comes from Neukircher where his team have sent the two Ducati enigineers walking as the service they got from them was way under par and far below standards.. internally , everyone seems to agree that the best ducati people are all searching the holy grail in motogp... and that WSBK has to make due with B grade know how... if this is true, Ducati can end up being irrelevant twice..
Stuff the 1198 lets get back to the good old days with equal cc . Ducati have been stretching the rules for years now . The 916/955/998 all racing against 750s then at last the 999 on equal terms, at last , winning well only for them to stretch the rules again and go bigger . Just wait till mid season they will be threatening to pull out again unless they are allowed to have half the weight and bored out to 1400 cc . For a company that wanted nothing but to race and then made some road bikes they have taken an almighty back step. Just hope Audi see the errors of Ducatis ways and sort them out.
i don't think the 1198 would keep up either and as said elswhere, competition has never been fiercer.. there will be less restriction by mid year.. 51mm sounds like quit some bottleneck. would love to see that enginge unrestricted just to see what it can do!
