Chapter 1. Ducati Corse’s rise and fall in the MotoGP competition
1.1 2003: The Magical Mystery Tournament
In 2003, despite being a new entrant in the FIM Road Racing World Championship Grand Prix series (or MotoGP), the Ducati team experienced a great deal of success, including a victory and nine podium finishes. In this section we will explore what factors may have contributed towards this unexpected achievement. As we shall see later on in section 1.2, some of these success-factors were at the heart of Ducati’s rude awakening in the subsequent year.
Following a change in regulations In 2001, Ducati Corse first decided to enter MotoGP. While the company had previously been very successful in the only other major motorcycle racing series, the World Superbike, there was a strong realization that manufacturing a bike for the sole purpose of racing was a new and challenging avenue for the company to develop state of the art technologies and build more brand awareness. As a result, there was enormous enthusiasm among the engineers, which would prove an important factor in the subsequent success. In addition, Ducati was able to select among the top engineering graduates in Italy.
While the decision to participate in the tournament was announced as early as May 2001, Ducati Corse decided to wait until the 2003 season before actually entering the competition. Work on the design of the bike was started in November 2001, while the first race was in April 2003. This meant that the company had all the time it could ever need to develop a competitive bike, which was another important factor for success. In addition, decades of prior experience, both in the World Superbike tournament as well as in the commercial exploitation of bike manufacturing, ...