Sponsors are usually silent partners, but they’re are the ones that fodder teams pockets and allows them to continue racing and they often wield power that goes beyond seeing their names on the livery.

Many of you may remember Maurizio Arrivabene, he’s the Vice President of Marlboro Global Communication & Promotion for Philip Morris International and his vitriolic statement back in 2009 after Casey Stoner dropped out of the championship to recover from his illness, “I hope that Stoner at Estoril will have the decency to apologize to the team,” so you’d think that after Valentino Rossi’s extremely dismal and highly expensive 2011 season, Ducati could be on the verge of losing their long time sponsor, instead Arrivabene seems optimistic about Ducati’s future.

“We remain extremely optimistic about the project shown to us by Ducati. We are tied together and we are continuing our partnership with them without any problems, but rather with joy.”

Continue reading: Maurizio Arrivabene: "We believe in Ducati's project"

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Dorna’s CEO Carmelo Ezpeleta is extolling the need and virtues of CRTs in MotoGP to fill dwindling grid numbers in order make racing less expensive with major rule changes expected for the 2013 season, hypothesizing that the new rules could include limiting factories to selling satellite bikes and not leasing them (something that satellite teams have been complaining about for years, with the manufacturers prefering to having the bikes returned and crushed at the end of the season) at one million euros, limiting performance with spec ECUs, rev limits, restrictions on engine development and even a weight system, a la Superbike.

So how are the factories taking these proposed new rules? Not well, if we were to base our opinion on a statement by Ducati’s General Manager Claudio Domenicali’s during the 2012 Wrooom.

Domenicali basically said he agrees on cost cutting is a necessity, but the zinger is, “If the championship goes in the direction of CRTs only and this means only production based four-cylinder engines to go racing and to be competitive then we would be forced to leave the series.”

Continue reading: Ducati's Claudio Domenicali: 'We're not interested in a CRT championship'

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Gabriele Del Torchio, President of Ducati Motor Holding confirmed once again that 2011 was record year for the Italian manufacturer during yesterday’s press conference at the Wrooom event.

“We’ve grown 21,5%,” said Del Torchio. “These numbers are consolidated and we’ve done well worldwide and we’ve sold 42.200 motorcycles, it was the best year in our history. 80% of our production is exported. The U.S. is our number one market , followed by Italy and Germany with a 31% increase. In France we sold 4,100 thousand motorcycles and in the Far East a + 84%. We didn’t lay off any workers. In 2008 and 2009 instead of cutting down on investments we invested on new bikes and strategic alliances that helped us promote our brand. We understood that in Italy things weren’t going well and that we’d better look at other markets and this helped us have a great 2011 and hope for a better 2012.

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Over the last year Ducati’s second testing track has become Jerez and they too will be present at the Spanish circuit with test rider Franco Battaini who will continue development work on the GP12 1000cc with the help of 2011 World Superbike champion Carlos Checa. Even if the testing rules have been relaxed, it is doubtful whether Valentino Rossi will show up as he’ll be busy with this weekend’s Monza Rally show that kicks off on Friday.

Jerez will see an array of different bikes on track over the next three days, besides Ducati’s test team and BMWs Superbike team with Leon Haslam and Marco Melandri, there’ll also be a number of Moto2 teams including Aspar, Gresini, Marc VDS, Pons Racing and Tech3 and supposedly a pair of CRT teams will be present like By Queroseno Racing (BQR) with the FTR-Kawasaki bike with Yonny Hernandez at the helm and the Inmotec prototype bike with newly crowned CEV Stock Extreme champion Ivan Silva.

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Ducati didn’t preview this weekend’s Valencia GP with the usual comments from Valentino Rossi and Nicky Hayden, instead they had team manager Vittoriano Guareschi doing the talking, and the Italian team is paying tribute to Marco Simoncelli in their own personal way with this touching dedication on all their trucks - Sic nei ns cuori (Sic in our hearts).

Valentino Rossi will debut a special helmet design in memory of Simoncelli, while Andrea Dovizioso will have #58 close to his heart on his leathers and Loris Capirossi in his final MotoGP weekend before he retires, will be running his Pramac Ducati with #58 plate (he was wearing a black arm band with #58 at the pre-event press conference) and no doubt there’ll be other riders, especially the Italians who will have tribute helmets and Sic’s number on their leathers and bike liveries.

“The Valencia Grand Prix will have a different atmosphere than normal because we’ve been thinking about Marco since Malaysia. He’ll be with us in Spain and beyond, but I think there will also be positive feelings in the paddock, because for Marco, racing equalled happiness, which is a concept that I understand very well,” said Guareschi.

Photo source | davidebrivio@twitter.com

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Every now and then we get news from New Hampshire about some new bike coming out of Walt Siegl’s workshop. And every time it’s an eyecandy. Let’s take this custom Ducati 900SS for instance, called Riviera Ducati: Walt has been working hard on this project for 4 months, day and night, and this is the outstanding result. The engine derives from a 900SS air cooled V-twin, whose displacement has been increased up to 944cc thanks to a special kit. Walt, a well-known old-school master craftsman, has built the chrome-moly chassis and the carbon-kevlar fuel tank as well.

Other special bits are the stainless steel exhaust system and the aluminium footpegs. Front forks comes from Triumph, while the swing arm can fit an Öhlins dual shock absorber. Marchesini wheels and Brembo calipers were lifted from a Ducati 999. Motogadget’s instruments are essential, with simple in-built speedometer and rev counter. The final outcome is a compact and muscular special, with vintage aesthetics and a Cafe Racer flair to it. What else could you wish for?

View the full Walt Siegl’s Riviera Ducati photo gallery

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Three-time World Superbike champion Troy Bayliss is highly involved in the development of Ducati’s new Superbike, with names like Xtreme, 1199, SuperQuadro or Panigale which are just some of the names that are being bandied about.

Bayliss is the star of this brief video teaser from the Italian manufacturer, about something new that we’ll be seeing a bit of next Wednesday on Ducati’s YouTube channel, which is no doubt a lead up to the EICMA show in November, where the Superbike will get its official debut.

Bayliss describes the new machine on his Facebook page as a ‘red beast,’ so we can’t wait to see what Ducati has in store for us.

Source | ducatinewstoday.com

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While Ducati is weeping in MotoGP, in Superbikes it’s all smiles, proving that all those moans and complaints and the rest of the yada yada from fans that came when they announced they would be pulling out their factory team at the end of 2010 a was pretty well unjustified as Carlos Checa and the Althea Racing team are doing an excellent job in taking up the slack.

Carlos Checa took Ducati to its 300th Superbike win during race one at Silverstone and to mark the event, Ducati held a special celebration with the Ducati Corse racing department and Checa in their factory in Borgo Panigale.

Checa also autographed the new poster that hangs on the wall of the main reception area of the Bologna factory.

Ducati’s historic 300 race wins in the World Superbike Championship started with victory for Marco Lucchinelli in the first ever World Superbike race at Donington Park, England in 1988 and continued as 25 more Ducati-mounted riders wrote themselves into the pages of motorcycle racing history. Legendary riders such as Carl Fogarty, Doug Polen, Raymond Roche, Troy Corser, Giancarlo Falappa, Neil Hodgson, Pierfrancesco Chili, Ben Bostrom, James Toseland, Noriyuki Haga, Troy Bayliss and many others up until the current World Championship leader, Carlos Checa.

The victories have generated a total of 155 Ducati pole positions, 753 podiums, 13 Rider’s and 16 Manufacturers’ World Championship titles.

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Thanks to 150elode.it - a project undertaken by Mercedes in association with Autostrade for the unification of Italy’s 150th Anniversary - we have the opportunity to bring you this small photo gallery by Massimo Sordi and Francesco de Luca. With the aim of getting the public to better understand Ducati’s behind-the-scene work, and together with work by other photographers such as Marco Zanta and Seba Kurtis, this project visually explores the reality of this successful brand.

In the gallery, we are going to show you few shots taken in Borgo Panigale (Bologna) the heart of Ducati’s production, where the Ducati factory headquarters and the Ducati Museum are located.

View the full Ducati Borgo Panigale photo gallery

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Hardcore Ducati fans are in for a treat, because if you’ve got one of their motorcycles, their clothing, their perfume, their Satellite U500 Ducati Toshiba laptop, or any other Ducati branded items, you can now get ringtones for your cell phone to match the sound of your own Italian dream bike.

Just hit the the Ducati website to download or play that unmistakable Desmosound.

Don’t think this is a novelty, because Honda made available to fans the ringtone of Freddie Spencer’s 1985 NSR 500 two years ago.

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It was one of the most horrid weekends that Valentino Rossi has ever had and Silverstone proved to be a bête noire for the Italian and his team, who were counting on better results after the Catalan GP. Finishing in sixth, which could have been even worse if three riders (Lorenzo, Spies and Simoncelli) in front him hadn’t crashed. The Italian struggled from Friday all through today without finding the right set-up that would allow him to ride as he wanted to. Lacking in grid and never getting his tires into temperature, Rossi cut his losses hoping for a better race at Assen on June 25th and that he doesn’t end up more than an embarrassing minute adrift from Casey Stoner.

“Without a doubt, this weekend was the most difficult so far this season, but we at least managed to do a good job of limiting the damage. Considering how we came into the race, sixth place is a fairly positive result that helps us to stay not too far from the top of the standings in fourth, which isn’t bad. We knew that my lack of experience here compared to the others would hurt us, but it’s also true that we haven’t managed to improve our setup as well as we should have. In fact, today Nicky managed to have a nice race and ride well, even setting the fastest lap, which demonstrates that the Ducati is competitive in the wet. We didn’t improve enough though, and that made it hard for me, as the bike was difficult to ride and I couldn’t push hard. We’re all responsible: me, the bike, and the team, so together we’ll try to improve and return to the level we were at in Le Mans and Catalunya as soon as possible, and then take another step forward.”

Nicky Hayden actually outshone his more titled team mate, in all the practice sessions and in qualifying something that no one would have expected heading to Silverstone this weekend, finishing in the same position as he did last year.

Continue reading: Valentino Rossi limits damage with 6th, Nicky Hayden happy enough with 4th

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Matteo Flamigni is one of the many crew memember who left Yamaha to follow Valentino Rossi to his new adventure in Ducati, which included crew chief Jeremy Burgess, four mechanics: Alex Briggs, Bernard Ansiau, Brent Stephens and Gary Coleman, and even chef Michael Quarenghi decided to make the switch.

Flamigni is Rossi’s track engineer and in this video interview released by TIM, one of Ducati’s main sponsors, the Italian engineer talks about this important step in his career, the positive and negative aspects of his work and the emotions that the team shares.

Since the video is in Italian we’ve decided to translate it for you.

Continue reading: Video: Matteo Flamigni talks about his switch to Ducati

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