Ducati Panigale V4 | Photo credits: Robb Report
By showing such a dominant performance during the first round of the 2019 World Superbike season, last weekend at Phillip Island, Ducati Corse has the upper hand over their main rivals, the Kawasaki Racing Team. The Japanese bike was outperformed by the Panigale V4 R ridden by Alvaro Bautista, except on the Superpole session, and that allows Ducati Corse’s general manager Gigi Dall’Igna to react to Kawasaki comments over the new Italian superbike.
Even if Dall’Igna was thousands of kilometers away from Phillip Island, attending the official MotoGP tests at Losail, Qatar, he still found the time to congratulate the Arubait Ducati team for the results on Australian soil and at the same time answer to Kawasaki
“I can only be happy at the moment, because it’s difficult to win three races like this, with a new bike and a new rider. I’m very happy, we’ve worked hard over the last years to prepare the arrival of this bike, and I’m happy for everyone that worked on this project. I’ve read some comments of Kawasaki (Pere Riba), before the races, in which he says that he doesn’t see anything special on our bike. I don’t know if they’ve changed their opinion by now”.
Gigi Dall’Igna goes even further on his comments about the Ducati Panigale V4 R, and those that complain about Ducati taking advantage of the technical rules. Ducati Corse general manager is pretty clear about this
“There are technical rules and we have worked having those rules as a base. There are clear rules about the rpm limits. The rpm limits were introduced last season, and before there were no limits, so if this penalizes anyone, that’s us. I haven’t got much more to say about it, except that when I prepare a race bike I read the rules and I try to interpret them the best that I can to get the best performance out of our bike”.
With Ducati Corse happy about the performance shown by the Panigale V4 R and Alvaro Bautista, rival teams, like PATA Yamaha WorldSBK, through their manager Andrea Dosoli, and Jonathan Rea after race 2 in Phillip Island, are now asking World Superbike organizers to introduce stricter rules that penalize Ducati.
Will World Superbike change the rules?