Gigi Dall’Igna expects Ducati factory/year-old difference to be ‘a bit higher’ in 2024

It’s not what the likes of Marc Marquez and Marco Bezzecchi will want to hear, but Gigi Dall’Igna predicts a bigger difference between the factory and year-old Ducatis for the 2024 MotoGP season.
Marco Bezzecchi, Alex Marquez, Francesco Bagnaia, Argentina MotoGP, 1 April
Marco Bezzecchi, Alex Marquez, Francesco Bagnaia, Argentina MotoGP, 1 April

Although Francesco Bagnai♐a and Jorge Martin finished first and second in the world championship on the latest 2023 Desmosedicis, the year-old bikes won GP races with Marco Bezzecchi (3) and Fabio di Giannantonio (ꦬ1), plus a pair of Sprint victories for Alex Marquez and one for Bezzecchi.

Such form convinced third-in-the-world championship Bezzecchi to remain at VR46, tur🥀ning down the offer of a switch to Pramac and access to the late𝄹st Ducati machinery in 2024.

It also helped convince Marc Ma🅘rquez to leave Repsol Honda and join brother Alex at Gresini nℱext year.

However, while ꦗexplaining the difficulty in making major design changes due to the limited winter testing available, Ducati Corse general manager Dall’Igna expects a bigger gap ꦯbetween the GP24 and GP23s.

Francesco Bagnaia, MotoGP race, Qatar MotoGP, 19 November
Francesco Bagnaia, MotoGP race, Qatar MotoGP, 19 November

“The problem is that we do not have a lot of tests during the w𝔍inter to set up properly all the new partsꦛ that we would like to introduce,” Dall’Igna said.

“We made a mistake [in the past] because we tried to put too many de💫velopments on the bike. So we learned from that lesson and we don’t want to put too many evolutions on the bike.

“This year [2024] we will do something morꦕe. So I think that for the next season, the dif♉ference between the factory bikes and the previous year’s bike will be a little bit higher.

“But we will see.”

As this season, the Factory (Francesco Bagnaia, Enea Bastianini) and Pramac (Jorge Martin, Franco Morbidelli) ▨riders will have the latest spec Desmosedicis, with VR46 (Marco Bezzecchi, Fabio di Giannantonio) and Gresini (Marc Marquez, Alex Marquez) riding year-old bikes.

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