P55
VOL. 50 ISSUE 40 OCTOBER 8, 2013
"
EVERYBODY WANTED TO
SUCCEED SO BAD MAYBE WE
JUMPED AHEAD OF OURSELVES.
"
- Nicky Hayden
changes going on. Also without
Filippo [Preziosi, Desmosedici
designer and head of Ducati
Corse] around it's been hard.
Recently you commented on
your disappointment that the
carbon chassis was dropped,
and that Ducati might have
done better to pursue their
own ideas rather than moving
towards convention.
It was actually the front-frame,
I meant. It was a carbon chassis,
but not a complete chassis, just
the front frame.
That was really a shame – I'd
meant to try it more. I was going
to try it at the end of the season
after Valencia, and then I broke
my wrist and missed the test. So
who knows if that could have led
us in a different direction.
On the point of conventional
thinking… did Valentino Rossi
steer Ducati the wrong way?
I don't want to blame it all on
Rossi. It's true that experiment
also failed. Maybe we caused
a lot of confusion with too many
changes. Everybody wanted
to succeed so bad maybe we
jumped ahead of ourselves.
Also, on the other hand, I think
Rossi did do a lot of good for
Ducati - in the fact that he made it
clear that the bike needed some
work. I think there were some
die-hard fans that didn't really believe there was anything wrong
with the bike, and it just needed
more riders.
With Rossi there it did show
the bike maybe needed some
work and some adjustment, and
that was good. And in the long
run, with the aluminum full chassis, if you have spec tires maybe you need to be on a level of
chassis. If Bridgestone built tires
around Honda and Yamaha, and
you come to a weekend and you
have two tire choices, basically
very similar tires, the one a little
harder than the other, and we
are over here with a carbon-fiber
chassis and different stuff… it's
not going to work.
I think with different tires and
more choices, and if they could
make a tire profile especially for
you, then I think maybe the carbon chassis has a lot of potential.
At the moment if we're using the same tires as aluminumchassis bikes, I think you need
the same kind of chassis.
If Rossi showed change was
needed, did Stoner do the opposite? And what was his magic on the Ducati?
I would say Stoner did the opposite. He was an incredible talent, there is no doubt about that.
He was pretty young, he didn't
