BROOKLYN, NY, JAN 18 – The 2012 factory MotoGP machines may end up being the most technologically advanced and fastest Grand Prix racebikes ever built. Given free reign and a 1000cc engine, the Hondas, Yamahas, and Ducatis will feature the most sophisticated electronics, materials, and engineering ever seen. But it may only last one year.
If Dorna CEO Carmelo Ezpeleta has his way the MotoGP machines of the future will be dumbed down, while the major manufacturers will be asked to build 1000cc MotoGP machines for sale to private teams for €1 million (about $1.28 million).
Ducati is the only remaining factory that doesn’t have a production four-cylinder, which the CRT concept is based on. If they want to sell motorcycles to CRT squads in 2013 and beyond, they’ll need to either start from scratch or sell a dumbed-down version of the GP12. And they’ll need to do it for the proposed price.
Ducati technical boss Filippo Preziosi said that a lot was “going to depend on the regulations which are going to be drafted. So the cost for the bike, also, say the price at which it can be sold, is going to depend a lot on this.
“Of course it’s going to be a difficult challenge. From a certain point of view it is indispensable to cut down on costs so as to have enough bikes on the grid. On the other, manufacturers and among these, Ducati, OK, they are interested in participating into a championship in which research gives to the company know-how which justifies the investments which are being done to participate, so we have to choose regulations which should try to find the best possible compromise between these two needs, because in some cases they’re contrasting one against the other.” So, he said, it was difficult to say “if €1 million is a reasonable price.”
“It’s going to depend on the regulations,” continued Preziosi. “Clearly there are some other championships in which we can sell competitive bikes at a very limited price, but it depends, of course, on the regulations. It depends also on the level of investments of the other competitors.”
Dorna’s Ezpeleta has asked that the manufacturers’ group, the MSMA, come up with a set of proposals for 2013 by May. Ducati Corse CEO Claudio Domenicali said that talks are ongoing, but that it’s “a difficult equation to solve.
“It’s not easy, because also the parties are kind of different. Honda is very big. For them, the most important issue is developing technology and they have less, if you want, they are more far from the economic situation, because for them it’s much more a brand exercise and technology development exercise. For us it’s different, because we are more European and so we understand more the problem of Dorna and so we are trying to compromise the situation. And so it’s kind of an interesting period in which we will discuss for the future.”
Building motorcycles to a cost point is one thing, slowing down the prototypes in which the company has invested millions of dollars in order to allow the CRT machines to be competitive, is quite another.
“It’s very clear that if you end up in a situation in which you have to invest a lot in developing prototypes and then you have the same performance as a CRT, it gets very funny and not interesting,” Domenicali said. “So is not as easy and simple as it seems, you know, that you limit the performance of the factory bike. Because in this way I think the factory will leave the championship. So it’s a complex equation.”