CAIROLI AND DUCATI

Nine-time Motocross World Champion Antonio Cairoli is very much one of the most important people in the development of the all-new Ducati challenge to becoming one of the leading motorcycles in the MXGP championship in the future.

Cairoli, who raced many years for Yamaha and KTM has enough experience testing machines to make sure that the progress of the Ducati machine will run smoothly, although for the time being, there isn’t a point that the Italian legend would return to the racetrack to race the machine in competition.

“I’ve ridden the bike some time already and the bike is very, very good. I mean the first time I rode it I was really surprised because it was only the second or third time that the bike was on dirt. I said to all of them: ‘Really? This is only the second or third time the bike has been on dirt?’ They said, ‘Yeah, we put the bike on a dyno for quite a bit of time, but never on the track.’ I was very surprised with the bike. It is very nice and very easy to ride. Of course, from here to arrive to be competitive, these is still some work to do, you know? It is a very good place to start.”

At the moment though, the racing isn’t the main goal for the Ducati team, but to first make the bike close to being the best it can be at this stage. If they bike does become good enough, then Cairoli might consider racing against leading MXGP machines.

“I’m completely involved in the development of the bike. We test new stuff and new updates to the motorcycle. Of course, the racing is not really the main part of my plan, at the moment. We’ll continue to develop the bike and we’ll see how that goes and then maybe I will do some racing. At the moment that is still far away because we have work to do to be in front in the moto world. It’s still time to do some work. If the bike reacts good and we have good response and I am happy enough on it, yeah, for sure I would like to do some racing this year. We don’t know which kind of racing or which races, but I would love to do some racing. When it comes to testing, the best part of it is the racing. That’s a good thing.”

So, once we do see the red Ducati machine racing, we can expect some solid results as the team progresses to the next level and that level will be the MXGP championship. That is a moment we all await. An exciting time for the sport and we all look forward to seeing it happening.

Photo Credit: Ducati