After the successes of recent years, Ducati will be limited in terms of development possibilities for the MotoGP bike in 2024 – including the prohibition of making wildcards, at least initially. Michele Pirro, a test rider, was the rider usually chosen for these participations over the past few years and is not a fan of the new concessions system.
The Italian stressed to GPOne.com that Ducati took a long time to reach the current level and doesn’t have the overwhelming dominance that other manufacturers had in the past, reggreting that the best work is being penalized: ‘It took us 12 years to reach this situation; we won two world titles and not six or eight consecutive ones like others did, or six consecutive ones like [Marc] Márquez won […]. What I regret is that these new regulations don’t give me the opportunity to make wildcards in the first part of the season, and it annoys me that those who have worked well in recent years are being penalized, also because wildcards were also a reward for the test team working behind the scenes’.
However, Pirro expressed confidence in Ducati’s ability to mitigate the limitations: ‘We will get through this, but the aspect to highlight is that we have eight very reasonable riders on our eight bikes, and it’s challenging to think we’d accumulate less than 85 percent of the points. On one hand, I hope Ducati wins as many races as possible, but on the other hand, I say, “If we win a lot…’.