Ducati Sporting Club UK > Sport > Race > Ducat Corse interview 2004/5

[Ian]

makes for interesting reading, not a fan of soup myself but if this is script printed as it was said ther are some interesting facts in here.

http://www.superbikeplanet.com/2004/Sep/040929a.htm

Anarchy in the SBK
interview with ducati corse's julian thomas
by jim mcdermott
Wednesday, September 29, 2004
Ducati Corse Press Officer Julian Thomas spills Corse's guts on many of their '05 plans.

It's friday night at Imola, in town for the penultimate round of the 2004 World Superbike Championship. I had a 7 PM appointment at Ducati Corse Hospitality to interview Lorenzo Lanzi, and the short walk from the Olympia Hotel was proving to be quite a task. A Biblical, windy, rainstorm had started in the late afternoon, making a mess of Superstock qualifying, throwing sheets of almost horizontal water down and leaving vast lakes in the parking lot and paddock. As my umbrella turned inside out for the 10th time in the 15 minute walk, Frankie Chili ran by with his wife, soaked and making a futile attempt to keep them both dry under an equally bent umbrella.

The paddock seemed empty, darkened; normally it is an intense hive of activity at this time. Threading through the puddles, I glanced at my watch worriedly and saw it was 6:59. No matter what stereotypes still exist about Italian definitions of promptness, I did not want to be even a minute late. Ducati Corse is a well-oiled machine where every minute seems to be a treasured thing. Accordingly, I picked up the pace and walked straight through the puddles—I was wearing boat shoes after all.

When I arrived, Ducati Corse PR man Julian Thomas was waiting with Lanzi, and the interview commenced almost immediately. It was raining so hard that, upon playing back the interview later, the voices on the recording were barely discernable over the tight din of rainfall on the roof of the tent.

The interview was going quite well, with Lanzi an eager, articulate subject (while Thomas translated), and then in the middle of our discussion, Thomas dropped 2 bombshells—1) that Corse would not be running a Supersport team in the 2005 season (hence the question, where will Lanzi be riding? He has another year left on his Corse contract) and 2) that Ducati Corse would be "scaling down" their support of the customer and satellite teams in the World Superbike Championship. It was clear that the opportunity to discuss both of these points further with Julian could not be missed.

After finishing up with Lanzi, we started to chat about the 2004 SBK season for Corse, and the effect it will have on the 2005 season. Thomas, a self-professed Sex Pistols and Clash fan from his mid 1970s school days in England, was remarkably candid in this impromptu session. While it would be extreme to define Ducati Corse as "beleaguered", they have certainly had a tough 2004 season on many fronts—in AMA Superbike, MotoGP, and World Superbike, their performance has not been up to the competitive level that most have come to expect from Ducati. Perhaps more importantly, it is not what Ducati expect from themselves.

There does seem to be an undeniable tremor in the normally unassailable confidence of Corse Ducati. The 2004 SBK season certainly hasn't been the cakewalk that most predicted it would be for them—will the things that cannot kill them make them stronger? Soup picks it up with Julian Thomas:

Soup: So, you dropped some pretty big news during our Lanzi interview. Can you elaborate further?

JT: You know, World Superbike is vitally important to us, and MotoGP is obviously top priority as well. We realize that we would like to do everything, and we would like to win everything, but it's not always possible. So I think in World Superbike we will be scaling down our support of the private and satellite teams.

Soup: How do you actually define that? Because your support right now is selling them the factory bikes from the previous year, you give them technical support on those bikes as well as the RS bikes ...

JT: Those are the RS bikes, we only sell the RS bikes.

Soup: But Haga has a 999F03.

JT: Haga has, technically it's an RS. It is very close to the F04.

Soup: So how do you scale it down, does that mean that you won't make as many RS bikes available?

JT: No, we will certainly make available the bikes, but we will be focusing all our resources on the factory team.

Soup: So does that mean if someone has a technical question on how to set up a bike, you'll say, "read the manual"?

JT: (laughs) No. No, we always like to keep good relationships with everybody that we sell our bikes to. (Pause) But we have addressed the issue since Austria, before that round there were a lot of, ah, let's say apparently fragile engine components, or components of the Ducati 999RSs, it wasn't giving a good impression for us, a good image for Ducati. So I think since then we have addressed that problem and I don't think there have been any controversial aspects since then.

Soup: How do you control those aspects if you tell a satellite team, "here are the recommended intervals on changing a piston", and they don't listen to that? How did you improve that?

JT: We are not at liberty to comment on what individual teams do with the bikes that they get from us. We stipulate that they follow a certain maintenance schedule, and if they don't, it's not really our responsibility or my place to comment on that.

Soup: But in terms of supplying technical information, did you lower the intervals on when some components should be changed to get better reliability? How did all of a sudden did no bikes blow up after Austria is the question?

JT: (with a Cheshire cat grin) We addressed the problem.

Soup: Ok, different question. Do you feel that, like Honda in MotoGP, having so many riders on Ducatis has diluted your efforts, made your Championship aspirations more difficult, in effect, competing with yourself?

JT: I certainly think so, because the 999F03, the FO4, and the RS customer bikes are the highest-performing twin cylinder racing bike that you can buy. It's a successful, winning bike, and we're the only manufacturer who make available winning bikes to other teams. I think our policy has been proved right this year because guys like Garry McCoy and Nori Haga have won races, Steve Martin has put the bike on pole a couple of times, so from a company viewpoint, we can be greatly vindicated by the success of our customer program. Obviously from a factory team point of view, it's tough to see our factory riders being beaten by other guys on private bikes. But I think that's certainly preferable to seeing other guys on other brands of bikes beat us. We have to swallow our pride a little bit and say OK, Haga's won races and that's great, from a company standpoint. From a team standpoint, we think that our riders should be fighting for wins at every round of the championship. Maybe it hasn't always been so with James Toseland this year, it certainly has been so with Regis because he has been there in virtually every race and qualifying session, whereas James had not lived up to expectations in the first half of the season, but the second half he's coming on very strong.

Soup: Kind of like Xaus.

JT: Like Ruben. Once the guys get to grips with the bike that they have to handle throughout the year, then they become a winning proposition.

Soup: In terms of the complexion of this year, it seems like you're getting ready for an "all change" in 05. There are rumors about Eric Bostrom leaving Ducati, one or both of the Corse riders exiting, Bayliss moving from MotoGP ...

JT: They are all rumors. Our major, let's say "headaches" at the moment right now are getting a good result to end the AMA season with Eric and Lorenzo, and winning the SBK championship. In a couple of weeks time we'll be more free to comment on what future scenarios could be, both regarding riders in AMA and in SBK.

Soup: But one would think that if either Regis or James wins the Championship, you would retain him for 2005?

JT: Absolutely, it could even extend to if we finish first and second. The outcome of the last 4 races in this Championship are important, the season as a whole counts. We have a great rapport with both the riders that we have here in the Ducati Fila team. James is a young rider, he's still growing and improving all the time, we'd like him to improve with us. Regis comes from like 10 years of GP experience, so there's very little he can be taught, but he's proved to be a remarkably fast rider as well.

We obviously haven't had the same situation as last year because Neil and Ruben were on different tires than the rest of the field, which proved to be superior. It certainly didn't falsify the results of the Championship, but this year there has been a lot more interest in this Championship brought about by the one make tire rule.

There are two important things to stress here—that the one make tire rule has levelled things out for the better, and the fact that we made available competitive bikes to many of the riders of the field made a great impact on keeping the Championship alive, while it went through this difficult two year transition, It seems that things are looking better for next year, hopefully they are because we would prefer to beat other manufacturers than our own customer supplied bikes.

Soup: It's something that hasn't been pointed out too much, that if you hadn't supplied the bikes, it would have been a really dreadful season.

JT: Absolutely. Again, it's good company policy on our part. It also has to be emphasized that there were no 999 customer F03 bikes in 2003, the customer bikes were the 998 F02s, which were made available in RS form to HM Plant and others, and the difference between those two bikes was quite large, whereas this year the difference between the 999 F04s of Laconi and Toseland and the 999RSs that we sold to customer is very very slight, and that has made a major impact on the nature of the Championship.

Soup: The history of the customer RS bikes was that the factory always had a small displacement advantage as well.

JT: Yes, although we made available the same Testastretta engine available in the 998 F02 as was in the 999 F03. We always have some additional bells and whistles in the factory bike.

Soup: We saw MV on the track today, and Jeremy McWilliams from Aprilia has been wandering around the pits. How critical an element in the success of an Italian bike is a successful race program?

JT: I think Aprilia have probably got more important things on their mind at the moment, and from what I understand they won't be taking part in MotoGP next year from what (Aprilia race boss) Jan Witterveen has said, but that doesn't mean they'll be diverting resources to Superbike. I believe that they don't think that the twin cylinder bike is capable of offering a competitive challenge in World Superbike. We would like to prove everybody wrong. Racing, whether two wheels or four, is the ideal test bed for any manufacturer that is serious about selling their product. Very few, if any manufacturers are not involved in one form of motorsport or another. Certain manufacturers are involved in a big way, others are not.

I think the MV bike (racing this weekend) cannot be considered an official factory bike. If they are going to come back, they'll probably do so in the form of what's happening in the German Superbike series, where Teuchert has won a couple of races with a 1000 F4. And German Superbike doesn't have the same rules as WSBK. But again, looking from a company standpoint, both Aprilia and probably MV have other things on their mind at the moment.

You know, companies work in different ways. Some make decisions purely on marketing strategies, others, like Ducati, have racing in their blood. We go racing wherever we have a racing bike, and wherever there is a championship to race at. Other companies don't have the resources to make that decision. We'd all like to see eight or nine manufacturers racing out there in an ideal world, but an ideal world doesn't necessarily exist. Every year we have to make the best of what is available. If one make tire rules re imposed next year, then we have to go racing with those rules.

Soup: Are you guys going to "step it up" in America?

JT: We'd certainly like to step it up in America. We'd like to have a two-rider team.

Soup: But on the level of Honda or Suzuki, in a real substantial manner?

JT: We would like to win the AMA Championship with the best possible package. We believe that the 999 is still a winning successful bike, Michelin tires have given us fantastic success over the years. We would have liked that this year. We think Eric Bostrom is still a great rider, maybe he hasn't delivered what we thought he would deliver this year, he's certainly won a race and we've had a higher profile in America than we've had in recent years. But we'd like to step it up and offer a better challenge next year. The American market is important to us.

Soup: It is strange the think of the historic dominance of Ducati in racing, yet you have not won an AMA Superbike title in ten years. Monsters and Multistradas are selling well, but sales of the 999 and 749 could be better in America, could they not?

JT: The 999 helps to further this fantastic image of Ducati that people have. Some people did not like the bike when it first came out. I think that the cosmetic changes that have been made to the 2005 bike, and the upgrading of the engine, will possibly help to change a lot of people's minds. A lot of people still have the 916 lineage in their mind, that raced for 10 years. It would be wonderful if the 999 could continue for ten years. People still have that sort of thing in their heart, but the company has to move on. There was very little further that could be done to the 998, so we had to move on with a new bike.

We still think that that bike is very competitive with the four cylinder bikes, and there's a lot more than can be got out of it with the right package. Just look at what happened in Muguello at the start of August, we did a few changes here and there and James was a lot more competitive with the bike. Sean Emmett in the British Superbike Championship made some changes and he was a lot more competitive in the last three or four rounds. Racing is a funny business, sometimes you can work at things for half a year and nothing comes right, and other times you can slot in a different tire, change a click and a spring here and there, and it goes right for a certain rider.

The changes to the 2005 999 road bikes were brought about by racing, because everything that Ducati does has a racing basis, and that effects what people eventually buy for the road from Ducati.

Soup Epilogue: Tides change in war, and racing is a sort of war. On Sunday, the usual characters were on the podium in race one—Laconi, Vermuelen, Toseland, with Haga close behind. It was looking like this would go to the last corner of the last race. Then, in race two, Vermuelen had a crash pre-race on cold tires when he used a backup bike (his #1 machine died with electrical gremlins as the grid formed), salvaging a miracle 6th in the race. Haga crashed out with a stuck throttle, possibly ending his title hopes. Although not the best result in terms of the "show", it certainly made things rosier for Laconi and Toseland, who came home first and second.

Laconi now leads the points with 295, Toseland 291, with Vermuelen back in third on 282.

Ducati Corse won the battle of Imola—who will win the championship war at Magny Cours? And will Bostrom and Lanzi make it a happy ending for Corse at V.I.R.? Stay tuned.

ENDS