Tomorrow Ducati could celebrate its 100th MotoGP victory, a historic achievement that reflects the current dominance of the Borgo Panigale-based manufacturer. One of the architects of this success is Gigi Dall'Igna, the general manager who has made his mark over the past 10 years. "These are important numbers and achieved in a fairly short time. The last 50 victories we have achieved in just over four years," he underlined in an interview with La Stampa.
The engineer from Veneto is nicknamed the Adrian Newey of MotoGP: "I am pleased to be compared to a person who has made history in his world. We are men, everyone likes compliments and everyone has difficulty accepting criticism."
Gigi, rather than a designer, calls himself a "people manager." Many think this skill will serve him well next year when he finds Bagnaia and Marquez in the same box.
"You definitely need a skill to manage champions: everyone has their own personality, they want to excel, it's normal to be like that. You have to make sure that the situation remains within professionalism and intelligence, " he said, "Marc and Pecco don't have to become friends, go to dinner together on Saturday night, but within the Ducati system they have to behave correctly to achieve our goal. My job is not to make things easy, winning a world championship is not."
To do that, he decided to play with two strikers.
"The goal was to find a way to keep both Martin and Marc, unfortunately we realized that would not be possible," he explained, "We chose to make a team with the best two riders in the championship, because in racing it is never a given factor that you will win, a team of our level with a bike of our level needs two champions and in my opinion we have them."
The goal is to continue with the red dominance in MotoGP, but Dall'Igna is an eclectic person who also likes worlds away from two wheels.
When asked which vehicle he would like to design, he said, "Definitely boats fascinate me, although I am all in all ignorant about them. The America's Cup competition fascinates me, I think there is a lot of technology and a lot of room for imagination, which is one of the things I like most."
Speaking about his history in Ducati, he instead recalled the three moments etched in his mind: "the first is debut of the 2015 Desmosedici, the first Ducati designed by me. The second is the first win with Iannone in Austria in 2016 and then, for sure, the world championship win with Pecco. I always get emotional when I think back." And the regret: "Dovizioso's exit from Ducati was definitely not pleasant."