I’ve known Ducati’s Sporting Director Paolo Ciabatti and team boss Davide Tardozzi for literally decades. Tardozzi was one of the original heroes of WorldSBK when I was a young racer, and then when I became a WorldSBK rider he was a team manager for riders I raced against.
In these same years, Ciabatti was working for the WorldSBK promoter. I suppose their firsthand knowledge of my racing experience, together with their experience of what riders appreciate, inspired them to arrange with Michelin’s Piero Taramasso a set of ‘real’ MotoGP Michelin tyres for my test on what’s clearly the best bike on the MotoGP grid this year: the Ducati GP22.
This is not usual, actually it’s quite rare. Michelin’s MotoGP tyres are strictly allocated. In addition to this, the tyres must be used in the correct temperature window – and we’ve all seen what happens to GP riders when they let the temperatures drop outside these very narrow parameters.
In my experience of slick tyres the general rule is the higher the level of grip attained the narrower the temperature window they should be used in. I understood the weight of what Ciabatti, Tardozzi and Taramasso had arranged for me – it was something very special. I would get to test the best racebike on the planet on the tyres that its suspension, geometry, electronics, carbon brakes and aerodynamics were all designed to be used with. This meant that experience Ducati MotoGP riders have.
