In the 2023 MotoGP season, Ducati broke every historical wall that its rivals had put up in the past. With 17 wins out of 20 rounds, Ducati riders were the most successful ever in a single campaign. They also secured 17 pole positions, a total of 43 podiums, managed eight rostrum lockouts, and won all three championships: riders’, constructors’, and the teams’ title with Pramac Racing.
After a 14-year wait for a riders’ title, Ducati celebrated their third just over 12 months after Francesco Bagnaia scored the company’s second. The Italian’s back-to-back success came in a dramatic finale at Valencia, where a Ducati rider was guaranteed to win the championship.
While it may seem like Ducati’s dominant performance in 2023 was due to the sheer number of riders they fielded, the company’s position as MotoGP’s dominator was the result of almost a decade of work within its “new history”.
Ducati’s sporting director, Davide Tardozzi, stated that, “This bike is not a revolution. This bike is the evolution of the 2015. So, we arrived at this point where everybody is very competitive. We were in trouble when everybody said, ‘Only Casey Stoner can ride the bike.’ And now we’ve come to the point where we have eight riders and all eight riders are very competitive. And this is something that made us really proud about our job.”
Ducati locked out the podium on eight occasions in 2023, including at Misano, as the opposition rarely got a sniff
Aprilia won twice, its veteran Aleix Espargaro beating Bagnaia on the final lap of a British GP duel and romping to a home win a few weeks later at Barcelona. But Aprilia only excelled when either grip conditions were low so it could profit from the RS-GP’s excellent drive grip, or the circuit layout was fast and flowing.
Honda was the only other manufacturer to give Ducati a Sunday defeat in 2023. Alex Rins benefited from his riding style to mask the RC213V’s numerous drawbacks and claim his and HRC’s only grand prix win of the season in the US,
