What can Ducati do to take fight to Honda?
But Dovi remains confident Honda and Marquez can be beaten
Factory bosses left looking for answers
The pain of surrendering a third consecutive MotoGP championship to the irrepressible Marc Marquez and Honda has hit Andrea Dovizioso and Ducati with a stinging reality check.
And the gap is getting bigger not smaller.
Two years ago Dovi pushed Marquez to a last race decider in Valencia but 12 months on there was a three-race margin. Now Dovi and Ducati have lost the title with a full four races remaining humbled by the dominance of Marquez aboard the RCV.
“It is painful if your goal is to win the championship,” said Dovizioso after finishing fourth, 11 seconds behind Marquez at the Chang International Circuit. “This season it is worse because Marc created a bigger gap than the last two seasons. We can just say congratulations because they had an incredible season.
“This is the third year we are fighting for second place which is not our goal.
“You have to be optimistic and work hard to improve. Marc is more than 100 points from everybody, this is the reality.” A key factor against Ducati this year was Honda’s horsepower upgrade for the RC213V to match Ducati’s once class-leading top speed. That, and Marquez’s key strength of not only applying race-long pressure on rivals but also forcefully resisting when they return the favour, combined to extend their advantage
“This is only one of Marc’s strengths,” Dovizioso added. “Marc can win alone and Honda can win alone so it is always a mix. “It is difficult for everybody to beat Marc. From his first year in MotoGP (2013) he has been so strong and apart from his speed he is so smart. He understands his limit and becomes better. This season he made fewer mistakes and he was always there in the races which didn’t happen before. “It is very difficult to beat him but not impossible and we are working for that.
“This year all our competitors are faster and the tyres are different and there were a lot of races with a fast pace from start to finish.”
Also gone from Dovizioso’s game plan is his previous ability to use the Ducati’s top speed to slow the pace and back-up the field before staging a late race dash. Ducati’s championship losing streak now extends to 12 years since Casey Stoner’s sole triumph on the Italian bike in 2007.
It was a humbling day for Ducati all round with Dovi’s teammate, Danilio Pertruci, ninth and an embarrassing error that saw Jack Miller start from pitlane after he hit the kill switch and stalled his GP19 on the grid. After finishing a frustrated 14th Miller said: “My mistake, I won’t do that again!”