MotoGP factories keep the secrets of their motorcycles closely hidden, but the first semi-naked photo of Ducati’s latest Desmosedici reveals a fascinating chassis detail that helps the bike’s cornering performance
Removing the lower right fairing of Bagnaia’s GP24 reveals an extraordinarily long and thin front engine hanger, which increases lateral flex to improve turning, an age-old Ducati issue
A little work and a lot of luck can get you a long way in life. This is what I found out at Portimao last Friday morning.
You’re wandering down Portimao pitlane during FP1, exchanging friendly nods with some mechanics, looking for something interesting to photograph.
There’s always something to shoot — usually new wings or aero things, because aero is 100% visible (that’s the best thing about it!) — but it’s very, very rare to get a shot of a stripped motorcycle.
Years ago, teams happily stripped their bikes with the garage doors wide open, not caring if we shot their naked motorcycles. Now all the teams try very, very hard to make sure that their bikes, beneath the bodywork, are never seen.
I’ve got the first photo of a stripped GP24, but it would be dumb to jump up and down with delight
Teams keep their garage doors firmly shut between sessions and now have screens which are quickly wheeled into position whenever they need to remove bodywork during a practice session, after a crash, or whatever. (These screens are banned in some car championships, because they’re perceived as disrespectful to the fans.)
Which is why there’s rarely anything fascinating to see in pitlane.
But then… there you are, walking past the factory Ducati garage when you see Pecco Bagnaia’s mechanics removing the right lower fairing of his GP24 for a quick look.
I point my camera and shoot. No time for framing the shot and adjusting exposure, or whatever you’re supposed to do.
My camera flash pops, the mechanics realise what’s just happened and quickly lift up the fairing lower to hide the stripped bike from me.
I keep walking nonchalantly down pitlane, because I know I’ve got the first photo of a stripped GP24, but it would be really dumb to jump up and down with delight.
Bagnaia’s fully dressed GP24 being warmed up during the 2024 Qatar GP
Oxley
Ducati obviously won’t be happy and I’d like to apologise to the mechanics who may get into trouble for letting this happen. But I was in pitlane, not in the Ducati garage, so I’m allowed to shoot whatever I see. This is literally my job – to show and tell fans what’s happening in MotoGP and why.
I’m a rubbish photographer and my camera’s autofocus only seems to know what I don’t want to shoot (in this case the number on the front of Bagnaia’s fairing is in perfect focus!), so Ducati will be delighted that I didn’t get the engine 100% sharp.
However, the photo does reveal something very interesting about Ducati’s latest MotoGP chassis. An hour later I’m walking through the paddock on my way to lunch when I bump into a rival chassis designer I’ve known for a while.
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I show him the photo (this isn’t industrial espionage because they’ll all be looking at this photo now) and his eyes nearly pop out of his head.
Before we go into those Desmosedici chassis details, it’s worth remembering that this merry dance between MotoGP journalists and photographers and factories and teams has been going on since the dawn of racing.
Possibly the best photographer/team fight happened during the 1965 French GP at Clermont-Ferrand. This was the first season of Honda’s new six-cylinder 250cc four-stroke, arguably the most exotic GP bike of all time.
No surprise that Honda wanted no-one to photograph its fabulous creation and reveal its secrets. But there were no garages back then, just a grassy paddock (the name literally comes from horse paddocks), so Honda mechanics worked on their bikes under tarpaulins and stripped engines in vans.
During the 1965 French GP photojournalist Mick Woollett (white shirt) sneaked the very first naked photos of Honda’s legendary 250 six. Rider/team manager Jim Redman (dark jersey) pursued him, demanded the film and a scuffle ensued. These photos were published in Woollett’s superb book Honda Racers in the Golden Age, from Neko Publishing Co Ltd
The doyen of GP photojournalism of that era was Mick Woollett, who took photos and wrote reports for British weekly Motor Cycle News. He was tough, professional and very hard-working.
At Clermont-Ferrand he realised he might be able to get the very first photos of a naked 250 six — a huge scoop, if he could make it happen.
“I crawled under a van to get the shot,” Woollett told me some years ago. “Then Jim Redman [Honda’s rider/team manager] got all upset about it and came after me. Who won the scuffle? Well, I kept the film, so I must’ve, mustn’t I? Over the years the people I got into the most trouble with were Redman, Phil Read and Bob McIntyre.”
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Woollett told Redman that he’d been outside the Honda enclosure when he took the photos, so Redman had no right to take the valuable film.
Of course, Woollett wouldn’t have known that he’d really got the shot until he returned to the UK on Monday morning to get his films developed and file his report for MCN, which was (and still is) published each Wednesday.
Things were very different in those days. Woollett thought nothing of riding a Triumph Trophy sidecar (laden with typewriter, cameras, racing leathers and the rest) all the way to Salzburg for the Austrian GP (how many stops for roadside maintenance?!), shoot photos, write reports, take part in the sidecar GP (he was passenger for various riders over the years) then ride the Trophy home on Sunday night. And this was before the days of roll-on, roll-off Channel ferries.
Anyway, back to the photo of the GP24 and what’s so interesting about it?
Look at the front engine hanger (the vertical aluminium alloy arm, partially hidden by a radiator hose). It is super-long and super-thin – much, much thinner than any engine hanger I’ve seen on a MotoGP bike.
It’s so thin – just a few millimetres thick – that it looks more like a cheap shelf bracket you might buy from a DIY shop. And it almost looks like it’s been stamped, rather than CNC-machined from solid, which is the norm.
At its top it carries the steering damper and is welded to the frame’s steering head section. At its bottom it’s bolted to the V4 engine’s lower front engine mounts (hence, engine hanger).
Why is it so thin? Because front engine hangers are an excellent way to create the lateral flex required in a racing motorcycle chassis.
A crashed 2022 Yamaha YZR-M1 shows the thin but very wide front engine hanger. The thinness creates lateral flex, for cornering, the width creates longitudinal stiffness, for braking and accelerating
Gold and Goose
When a motorcycle uses lots of lean angle through a corner, its suspension doesn’t really work, because it’s at such an acute angle to the road, but the rider desperately needs the bike to absorb irregularities in the road and continue to track the surface perfectly.
Therefore engineers build lateral flex into the chassis (lateral meaning left and right, which becomes up and down when the bike is on its side!), so the chassis flexes up and down at full lean, creating its own suspension movement.
If the bike doesn’t track the road, the tyres won’t grip the asphalt and if the tyres don’t grip, the bike runs wide and fails to turn the corner tightly and quickly, costing valuable time.
And what was Ducati’s age-old problem? Mid-corner turning. And this is what the rival engineer told me when I showed him the GP24’s super-thin engine hanger: “Lateral flex, for turning”.
Honda’s sublime 2002 RC211V was one of the first GP bikes to use longer front engine hangers to allow engineers to create lateral flex
Honda
The last Desmosedici I saw partially naked was a GP15, the first designed by Gigi Dall’Igna. The front engine hanger was a bit shorter, machined from solid and more than ten millimetres thick. The latest hanger obviously allows much more flex when the bike is leaned over. It’s almost certainly this feature that has played a part in the Desmosedici’s improved turning, which has helped the bike dominate in recent years, even though some bikes are still better mid-corner.
All manufacturers have gone thinner and thinner on various section of their frames and swingarms in search of controlled flex. If you flick some chassis parts with a fingernail they’re so thin – around 1.2mm – that they ping like a beer can, but usually this thinness is compensated by larger overall sections.
Take a look at the Yamaha YZR-M1 and you will see that the engine hanger is very wide, because while engineers want the bike to flex when it’s on its side they don’t want it to flex longitudinally (lengthwise, not sideways) when the rider is braking or accelerating, when upright or nearly upright, because this would cause problematic instability.
Therefore Ducati must have regained some longitudinal stiffness elsewhere to keep the bike stable. But I don’t expect they’ll tell me where or how!
