In 2004 Furusawa engineered the big-bang YZR-M1 engine that Rossi needed to beat Honda’s RC211V. In 2006, when the M1 was beset with chatter problems, caused by a too-rigid chassis, Furusawa created mini mass-dampers – oil-filled canisters, with weights and springs inside, which were attached to the front forks. The idea was that the opposing weights would damp out the chatter. But they didn’t work.

Thus no other engineer has been so successfully involved in a MotoGP project, from design and development of the entire motorcycle to daily trackside input than Dall’Igna, which makes Bagnaia, Dall’Igna, Desmosedici the greatest MotoGP trinity of all time.

When the former Aprilia engineer arrived at Ducati before the 2014 season he took charge of a race shop that was in the same deep hole in which HRC currently finds itself. The company hadn’t won a race for years.

Dall’Igna’s contract with Ducati gave him total control – otherwise, what would be the point? Factory rider Andrea Divizioso called the GP14, the last pre-Dall’Igna Desmosedici, “hardly a motorcycle”.

Dall’Igna knew the radical ideas percolating through his brain would transform MotoGP and bring him into conflict with old-school riders who weren’t too sure about his futuristic plans. Dall’Igna famously had many arguments with Dovizioso, who wanted to continue racing motorcycles, not two-wheel Formula 1 cars. Dovizioso went, Dall’Igna stayed.

“The engineer must be strong with his riders,” says Dall’Igna.

There are two particular Dall’Igna concepts that have helped make the Desmosedici all-powerful in MotoGP.

Everyone knows a motorcycle has two tyres. But he was arguably the first engineer to understand that you can and must make full use of both tyres at all times.

Why focus on stopping the bike with the front tyre, just because load is thrown onto that tyre during braking? Why not rebalance the entire motorcycle to keep it more horizontal during braking, so the rider can use the bigger rear tyre’s greater grip to help stop the bike in the shortest distance possible?

This is why Ducati’s rivals say they can’t match the Desmosedici on the brakes.

Of course it’s no coincidence that the bike gets better every time it’s equipped with a better rear slick. When Bridgestone tyres (great front, poor rear) were replaced by Michelins (poor front, great rear) in 2016 the Desmosedici started winning again. When Michelin introduced an improved rear in 2020 the bike began to win lots of races (once Dall’Igna had replaced his old-school riders with youngsters) and this year’s new rear has made Ducati just about unbeatable.

And why not try increasing the front tyre’s grip exiting corners? A big limiting factor during the first stages of acceleration is bike balance shifting rearwards when the rider opens the throttle, which reduces the front-tyre’s contact patch and therefore grip, so the bike runs wide, unless the rider waits to open the throttle fully.

The answer is obvious when you think about it: you transform horsepower into grip, because grip is even more important than horsepower (and it helps if your engine has power to spare, thanks to the genius of Fabio Taglioni, Ducati’s first great engineer, who introduced desmodromic valve control, following chats with his friend Enzo Ferrari).

So you attach downforce accoutrements to the front of the bike, which create drag but more importantly increase load on the front tyre under acceleration. Now the rider can open the throttle harder and sooner, without running wide. The wings also increase performance once the rider is going straight, by minimising wheelies, allowing the rider to use more throttle.

These are two of many Dall’Igna concepts that have created a level of dominance unseen since the glory days of Honda’s NSR500, which held the record for most wins in a season, until the Desmosedici bettered it last year.

Dall’Igna also understands that the MotoGP technical regulations book shouldn’t be regarded as some kind of sacred text like the Ten Commandments. This is how Japanese engineers have always looked at the rulebook – they read the rules and that’s that.

Dall’Igna looks at the Ten Commandments and sees room for manoeuvre between each commandment. Okay, I’m not allowed to do that, but how about this?

Bagnaia’s Red Bull Ring victory was Ducati’s 97th, so there’s every chance that the brand will record its 100th MotoGP victory, with the Desmosedici, at next month’s Emilia Romagna GP, just down the road from the Borgo Panigale factory.

When Dall’Igna signed Bagnaia for 2019 the trinity was complete. Dall’Igna knew he had a rider that would be at one with his motorcycle and its creator.

Bagnaia’s winning secret is corner entry and that’s where riders can make the biggest difference, because there are no rider controls looking after you when you’re hurtling into a corner from 200mph, it’s all down to skill, bravery and precision. Which is why he occasionally gets it wrong.

Two of his sweetest 2024 wins so far were at Assen and Red Bull Ring – two very different tracks which brought his special talents to the fore.

“This track is hard braking,” he said last weekend. “And Assen is corner-entry speed – these are the biggest things on my side.”

The techniques Bagnaia uses to consistently beat his rivals – even the raging-hot Jorge Martin – are intricate and barely perceptible to the naked eye.

His precision on the brakes is mind-boggling. Occasionally he skids the rear tyre a few degrees out of line to take load off the over-stressed front tyre, but only a few degrees, because any more than that will play havoc with the downforce aero, overloading one side of the motorcycle and underloading the other. These are the things he must compute at all times.

Exiting slower corners he subtly balances the bike with his body to keep the bike leaning one way or another, which puts more rubber on the ground to reduce wheelspin, which leaves the traction control asleep, so the throttle butterflies remain open and his bike accelerates faster.

Therefore Bagnaia makes it look so easy, like he’s not even trying, because he needs to keep the bike stable, which is the way he likes to ride anyway. He’s a modern-day ‘Steady’ Eddie Lawson, the man that unseated ‘Fast’ Freddie Spencer from the MotoGP throne. (By the way, Lawson hated his nickname.)

“There was ‘Fast’ Freddie and I kicked his ass, so I didn’t care,” he told me years back. “Everyone would go, ‘Hey, Steady Eddie!’ and I was, like, “Okay, yeah, whatever’. They’d say, ‘Boy, you look slow out there,’ and I took that as a compliment. If I won and looked slow, what did that say about the other guys?”

Bagnaia, like Lawson, is a stealth bomber. He keeps his head down, gets on with the job, almost unnoticed, and isn’t worried too much about anything else.

His riding technique is similar to Jorge Lorenzo’s – see-God-then-brake followed by devastating corner-entry speed – but when Bagnaia is off the motorcycle there’s none of Lorenzo’s ‘Gorgeous George’ attitude.

And yet don’t believe the perma-calm facial expression and the butter-wouldn’t-melt smile. Bagnaia has an inner maniac, just like every other top bike racer.

When he crashed out of the 2022 German GP, putting himself 91 points behind title rival Fabio Quartararo, he trudged back to the Ducati garage and came close to tearing the place apart.

The scene features in the MotoGP documentary There Can Only Be One. Ducati’s garage doors are closed but there’s a Dorna cameraman lurking in the corner when Bagnaia returns from his tumble.

“A fallen rider is like a defeated soldier, so it’s fantasy to expect them to behave like rational human at this moment”

Bagnaia marches into the garage through the backdoor, still wearing his helmet and still mad angry. He sits down and starts shouting…

“Have you ever seen a MotoGP rider spin around because the rear goes away like that?!” he says to crew chief Cristian Gabbarini and anyone else listening. “I spun around – I’m not on a minimoto track!”

Then he punches some garage furniture, kicks a chair and turns the air blue with profanities – beep, beep, beep! When Davide Tardozzi tries to console his rider the team manager gets angrily pushed away and Bagnaia storms out the back of the garage for some ‘me time’ in the team truck.

This kind of thing happens all the time in racing – usually away from the cameras and away from the eyes of the fans – it isn’t a bad thing and it isn’t bad behaviour. A fallen rider is like a defeated soldier, so it’s fantasy to expect them to behave like rational human beings at these moments.

Like chassis engineer Alex Baumgartel (who worked with Bagnaia in Moto2) says, “You can’t have a lion on the track and a sheep in the garage”.

For some reason, Dorna (as far as I know) has never used this scene outside of that documentary. To me, it gives fans a real idea of how much racing means to Bagnaia, how mentally and physically riders are dedicated to their cause. It’s not just a game.

And it would be so good for Bagnaia’s public profile, because it reveals the fire that burns within.

So far, the Italian hasn’t inspired worship, because he doesn’t wrestle his motorcycle into submission like Marc Marquez and he doesn’t woo the fans like Rossi.

However many races Bagnaia wins he will never sell as much merch as his mentor and I’m 100% sure he’ll never lose a moment’s sleep over that. Racers are not pop stars – their job isn’t to win the hearts and minds of fans, their job is to win races.

Will Bagnaia become the tenth rider to win a hat-trick of MotoGP titles later this year? He won’t say, of course, but all he will say is this…

“We are always fast and we [are] always there – it’s the second time I’ve had this feeling – now and 2022.”

That’s the year he came from way to win his first title. Unless Martin finds some extra speed from somewhere it’s hard to see Bagnaia getting beaten.