Rossi will finally get his...
Rossi will finally get his chance to talk to the media at the annual Wrooom Ducati/Ferrari team introduction event this week. (photo courtesy of Ducati Corse, photo illustration by Kent Kunitsugu)
Valentino Rossi can finally talk.
The nine-time world champion was prohibited from giving his first impression of the Ducati Desmosedici GP10 following the end of season test at Valencia. But this week, in the scenic Italian ski resort of Madonna di Campiglio, high in the Italian Dolomites, Rossi can finally break his silence.
Rossi will offer his thoughts at Wrooom 2011, the annual gathering of the world’s MotoGP and Formula One media that’s funded by Phillip Morris, whose Marlboro brand sponsors both the Ducati MotoGP and Ferrari Formula One teams.
Now in its 21st year, Wrooom is a combination of skiing, feasting, and swag, with the occasional bit of work thrown in. There is some form of interaction with the riders, drivers, or team members every day, but also plenty of time to spend on the ski slopes. Rossi, an avid snowboarder, won’t be able to take part as he continues to recover from off-season surgery on his damaged right shoulder. Look for once-a-year skier Nicky Hayden to represent the team on the slopes and in Friday’s ski race, where the journalists compete against the riders, team members, PR staff, and a few ringers.
Wrooom 2011 kicks off on Monday with an opening night banquet which gives a nod to the resort’s past as a bastion of Austrian royalty, where men and women in period costume greet the guests. It will also be the official unveiling of Rossi in Ducati red, though he and Hayden will have already shot team photos at a studio near the company’s headquarters in Bologna.
Rossi will finally offer his thoughts on the Ducati on Tuesday morning, when he and Hayden face the media in an auditorium at the congress hall. The two riders will have separate press conferences, then pose for photos with team manager Vitto Guareschi and others.
Rossi finished next to last...
Rossi finished next to last at the Valencia post-race test in November, but he was not going for ultimate lap times. (Photo by Henny Ray Abrams)
Rossi finished next to last at the Valencia test, which confirmed to some that only Casey Stoner could ride the bike, while others were less alarmist. Filippo Preziosi, the bike’s designer, asked Rossi to sacrifice an outright fast lap in the service of progress. The team didn’t need Rossi to be top of the order, what they needed was that he spend quality time on the bike in order to provide feedback that they’d need in designing and building the 2011 model.
The lap times also suffered because of Rossi’s physical limitations. Since injuring his shoulder back in April, he hadn’t ridden that much in that short a time span. He’d come off three days of riding in the final race of the year, followed by a one day break, then two days of near constant saddle time. That would have been taxing under the best of conditions, but it was made worse because of the physical nature of the Ducati.
Kevin Schwantz is one of the few to have ridden all of the current GP bikes back to back. The 1993 500cc World Champion tested all of the 800’s at the end of their first year, 2007. What he remembers from that experience is that the Ducati was a handful, which he observed watching this year’s races.
“Riding them all in ’07 there’s no doubt the Ducati was physically a more difficult package and I haven’t ridden anything since the end of ’07 to be able to compare them all,” he said, adding that it doesn’t appear to have changed. “It looks that way to me. Casey (Stoner) has got to get off the inside of the bike and really give the thing a big tug. Whereas (Jorge) Lorenzo can be much smoother, much more fluid, doesn’t have to be as exaggerated in all of his movements.”
The Ducati’s problems centered around the balance, which made the front end unpredictable. Many of Stoner’s and Hayden’s crashes came early in the race or on cold tires. The front Bridgestone of the Ducati is thought to run about 10 degrees cooler than that of its competitors. The team made a radical set-up change—more front weight bias at the Aragon Grand Prix—that transformed the motorcycle.
“We’ve basically moved my body position further forward but without sacrificing rear grip,” Stoner said at the time. “We’ve moved the steering position and shortened the swingarm to get more grip but at the same time putting me over the front of the bike more without me having to physically do it. We’ve tried that this weekend and it seems to work so we’ll see how it goes in the race and whether it works at other tracks.”
The upside was that the set-up worked well enough for Stoner to win three of the final five races. The downside was that he lost the front end and crashed on the first lap of the Malaysian Grand Prix, and again on the fifth lap of the Portuguese Grand Prix while chasing Jorge Lorenzo.
The interest will be great in listening to Rossi describe his early laps on the Ducati and how he and the team designed the GP11. The Ducati needs to be more consistent and less physically demanding if it’s to keep up with the Yamahas of Lorenzo and new teammate Ben Spies, and Stoner and Pedrosa on the Honda RCV212. Stoner was instantly fast at the final test of the year, which he and Lorenzo dominated.
Following the press conference, the riders will unveil the GP11 at a photo op high in the mountains.
Wednesday is a day for the team bosses. Ducati Corse boss Claudio Domenicali will be peppered with questions about Rossi and Ferrari race boss Stefano Domenicali will have to answer for the pit strategy that may have cost Fernando Alonso the Formula One title in the final race of the year in Abu Dhabi. Formula One drivers Alonso and Felipe Massa meet the press on Thursday.
Friday begins with the ski race and ends with a party, and in between the riders and drivers face off on the frozen lake in the center of town. Last year the riders, joined by Guareschi, and drivers, along with Ferrari test driver Giancarlo Fisichella went head to head in two different races. The first race, in Panda 4x4’s, was won by Massa over Hayden and Stoner. Hayden dominated the following go-kart race from the outset, beating Massa and Stoner.
"That was really awesome; I mean I know it was just for fun and not everybody taking it serious, but still to win is cool," Hayden said last year. "I mean, I'm a competitive person, so the first win of the year."
Hayden didn’t win again in 2010, but Rossi did. Starting in 2004, Rossi began the process of turning the Yamaha YZR-M1 into the best bike in the field, and Ducati and Hayden are hoping he can bring that same magic to the Desmosedici. We’ll know what he thinks in just a few days.