Ducati Corse is hoping to exorcise the demons of 2011 at Jerez this week.
Last season was remarkably unsuccessful for Ducati’s MotoGP effort. But Valentino Rossi and team are hoping the GP12 will mean the end of those woes – the bike is supposedly 90 per cent redesigned. They’re testing it at the Spanish track to see if their redesign accomplished its goals.
We don’t know all that’s changed with the GP12, although some are speculating the engine’s placement in the chassis has been changed, to improve front end feel – supposedly Rossi’s greatest problem last summer. We do know that Ducati has abandoned their carbon-fibre chassis experiment for now, going with a twin-spare aluminum frame.
Of course, it’s a little late in the game for Ducati to be starting their GP12 tests – the Malaysian MotoGP test round at Sepang is just around the corner.
Late in the game to start testing?
Not sure that Ducati has a lot of control on when it can test…
From the MotoGP website…
“There is an almost two month long ban on any on-track testing for December and most of January…”