By Mike Nicks

Niccolo Canepa, the 20-year-old mechanical engineering student from Genoa, who has never raced a superbike or a MotoGP bike, is on Ducati's shortlist of riders for its Alice-sponsored satellite team in 2009, the factory's MotoGP project manager Livio Suppo confirmed today.

"Niccolo has very little experience, but he is very fast," Suppo said at the Sachsenring. "He is doing an incredible job, and he will race our superbike next week at Brno, and then he will test the MotoGP bike at Mugello at the end of the month for us, and in Brno [after the MotoGP on the Czech circuit in August].

"After that we will have much more information about him."

The dream situation for any Italian team in motorcycle or car racing is to find Italian talent, and in this respect Ducati appear to have achieved their goal with Canepa.

He won the 2007 FIM 1,000cc Superstock on a 1098S in the Ducati Junior team, and recently equaled double world champion Troy Bayliss's best lap time when testing the Xerox Ducati superbike at Vallelunga.

"I hadn't been on a Superbike for several months, so the results are pretty positive," Canepa said after the test. "The only thing that I'm missing now is competition, so I can't wait to get to Brno next week and finally race there."

Suppo also confirmed during his conversation with Crash.net that he is talking to Mika Kallio, the Finn who is riding KTM's 250cc bike, and that "we like" Nicky Hayden, who is looking for a new home in 2009.

"Kallio is an exciting talent," Suppo said. "With Hayden, nothing is decided."

Suppo has seen Casey Stoner get on with the job of dominating the GP8 Desmosedici this year, while the three other Ducati riders - Melandri, and Toni Elias and Sylvain Guintoli in the Alice team - have struggled.

But the latter two are unlikely to get sympathy from Suppo, it would appear from his conversation.

"The Alice team's performance depends entirely on the riders," he said frankly. "Sylvain did a better job at Assen [he finished tenth], and Toni is finally waking up a bit this weekend [he starts 12th on the grid]."

It's really hard to see those two keeping retaining their rides next year now that the team manager's interest has been stirred by fresher faces.

He clearly does sympathise with Melandri's psychological problems, but offered this comment: