Ducati 'impressive' but KTM 'strong', Japanese 'did something wrong'

Luca Marini has praised Ducati’s current MotoGP dominance as ‘impressive’, but also feels it’s been amplified by the Japanese manufacturers taking a step back.

Peter McLaren

21 Jun 2023

Francesco Bagnaia, Luca Marini, Jack Miller, German MotoGP 17 June

The VR46 Ducati rider also warned that KTM is “very strong” and expects the Austrian manufacturer to provide a growing threat to the Italian machines.

Desmosedicis, GP23 and GP22, filled eight of the top nine places at the Sachsenring last Sunday.

Pramac winner Jorge Martin improved on his sixth-place result from last season by 33.5s and also eclipsed Fabio Quartararo’s 2022 winning time by 20.4s.

The other Ducati riders that finished both this year and last also took a sizeable leap:

Martin’s team-mate Johann Zarco (runner-up last season) was 18.3s quicker on his way to third this year. Marco Bezzecchi was 35.1s quicker in fourth, team-mate Marini -20.4s in fifth, Bastianini -27.1s in eighth and di Giannantonio -19.2s in ninth.

But there was also similar progress by KTM, with sixth place Jack Miller, the only non-Ducati in the top nine, completing the 30-lap distance 23.9s quicker than Brad Binder last season.

Binder would have made that margin several seconds larger had he not crashed out of third place just after the middle stages on Sunday.

“I hope in the future to have just Ducati against Ducati! [But] KTM is very strong in this moment,” smiled Marini.

“They accelerate much better than us. They have more grip than us, and they can turn the bike in the middle of the corners with the grip in the rear. This is very good… I don't see any weakness.”

Yet in terms of results, it’s Ducati that has won 11 of the 14 races, occupies the top four in the riders’ standings and is 135 points clear of KTM in the constructors’.

“Because we are more. So eight riders can beat [four KTM] riders because we are many, many riders,” Marini said. “I think that Ducati has very strong riders with a little bit more experience, also for the manufacturer, and the Ducati engineers have a little bit more data.

“[But] it’s the first year that KTM is fighting for the victory in every race. So for sure next year or in the last races [this year] they will be there even more.”

With Aleix Espargaro’s soft tyre gamble backfiring and Maverick Vinales suffering an engine failure, Aprilia’s top finisher was the injured Miguel Oliveira, who brought his 2022-RNF machine to the line in tenth.

Oliveira matched Quartararo’s 2022 winning time and was 9.8s faster than Espargaro’s fourth place on the same spec bike last season. Espargaro meanwhile still managed to beat last year’s time despite plummeting to 16th.

Quartararo made the same ill-fated tyre gamble at Yamaha, leaving him 13th at the flag, with a race time 4.750s slower than his victory pace last year.

It marked the third grand prix in succession that Quartararo had been slower than last year, having lost 15s at Le Mans and 14s Mugello.

Even if Quartararo had taken the medium rear on Sunday, he predicted his potential as tenth place. In other words, where Oliveira finished, meaning equal to his pace a year ago.

Team-mate Franco Morbidelli was just ahead of Quartararo, in 12th, having run the optimum medium rear. The Italian improved on his 13th-place time last season by an impressive 26.4s but was still 2.6s behind Quartararo in 2022.

Honda’s performance was hard to measure, with only stand-in Stefan Bradl reaching the flag (last) in 2022 and only Takaaki Nakagami (14th) on the starting grid in 2023.

However, Marc Marquez, a Sachsenring winner on his past 11 appearances, was a shadow of his previous self on the latest RC213V. The Spaniard qualified seventh, finished the Sprint race in 11th and then, after a fifth fall, withdrew from the Grand Prix race.

Luca Marini, MotoGP race, German MotoGP, 18 June

Marini: Other manufacturers did something wrong

Turning to the struggling form of the Japanese manufacturers, Marini diplomatically sidestepped a question on whether he would accept a factory offer from a Japanese team, then added:

“In this moment, Ducati is impressive. And for sure, they deserve it. But in my opinion, also the other [Japanese] manufacturers did something wrong. Because they are going slower [than last year].

“So just if they keep everything like some years ago, they would be there, in my opinion.”

But while Yamaha and Honda have little choice but to experiment with new developments to close the obvious gap, Ducati has learned from last season’s early technical hiccup and only lightly modified its reigning world championship-winning machine.

“In my opinion, this year Ducati made a fantastic job compared to last year. Because they didn't touch so much on the bike. The GP23 is just a small improvement, and now they are collecting a lot of results because they have a very good package, they don’t lose the line [way forwards].”

Marini also felt that Bagnaia’s crash from the lead one year ago in Germany and the lower air temperature in 2023 had magnified the time improvements.

“In my opinion, if Pecco didn't crash [last year], he could win the race last year. But the pace today is faster because of the temperature. Last year was 35 degrees [this year 27].”

Team-mate Bezzecchi believes braking is the stand-out advantage for Ducati, but that their rivals are not far behind in other areas.

“I think our bike is quite strong in braking, so we can brake very late. But then, in terms of grip and acceleration, it's very similar to KTM and Aprilia,” he said. “Also Honda, I saw in Le Mans Marc was accelerating a lot in the exit of the corner. So I think braking is a strong point of our bike.”