Having resolutely stayed out of Grand Prix racing during the two-stroke era in favour of becoming the dominant force in WorldSBK, Ducati unveiled its prototype Desmosedici at the 2002 Italian GP at Mugello. It was Ducati’s first GP contender since its 1971 500GP V-twin.
It was because of that lack of experience that Ducati opted to sit out the MotoGP category’s debut season in 2002 in favour of countless laps of intensive testing to make sure the bike would be competitive for the 2003 season. It thus avoided the red faces of Aprilia, whose troubled RS Cube washed all its very dirty development laundry in public, eventually leading to Ivano Beggio’s company bankruptcy, and its takeover by Piaggio. TPG, Ducati’s then investment-fund owner, was too hard headed to make the same mistake.
So imagine being a fly on the wall of the Honda directors’ box at the end of the first lap of the 2003 Japanese GP, when Loris Capirossi led all seven V5 RC211Vs of reigning world champion Honda over the line on the bellowing, bright red, Marlboro-sponsored Ducati – and the next lap, and the next, and the next – on Honda’s own track?! And the fact that Capirossi wound up on the podium in the GP3’s debut race, third ahead of teammate Troy Bayliss in fourth, showed this was no flash in the pan. It was the start of a major threat to Honda’s hitherto unchallenged MotoGP supremacy.
Mind you, the only surprising thing about the performance of the V4 Desmosedici in its debut season, where it took just six races to
