Bagnaia discards the 2022 Ducati engine and will run with last year's

The first blow of the MotoGP World Championship has been starred by one of the top candidates for the title, the Italian Pecco Bagnaia, who has decided to discard the new engine that the Italian house has mounted on the 2022 prototypes to return to the one used in the past year, and with whom he was fighting for the title almost until the end of the season.

That decision affects his teammate, Jack Miller, who by regulation is required to have the same engine as his teammate in the official factory line-up. The measure does not affect the rest of the Ducati riders.

The new Ducati GP22 that the brand’s riders claimed improved what was already a perfect bike, the 2021 one, was not finished, at least in the hands of the young rider from Turin , who last week announced its renewal for two seasons more, until the end of 2024.

Bagnaia, it seems, did not find the same sensations with the new 2022 power unit that led him to be the best driver in the second half of last season, when he achieved four victories in the last six races.

According to the Italian manufacturer’s engineers, Bagnaia has decided to return to the 2021 engine and mount it on the Desmosedici GP22 prototype, making the necessary modifications, and with that hybrid bike he will try to assault the MotoGP title, as Motorsport has learned. com .

The engine that the official team drivers will use is an improvement on the latest 2021 version, already tested during the Mandalika tests after verifying, in the Sepang tests, that the 2022 engine did not improve on the previous one.

Ducati presents eight motorcycles this season on the grid of the highest category, five of them should be the 2022 model, those of Miller, Jorge Martín, Johann Zarco and Luca Marini, in addition to Pecco himself. The rest of the drivers, Enea Bastianini, Fabio Di Giannantonio and Marco Bezzecchi, will compete with the GP21 version.

Following the change, Pecco and Jack will race a 2021-22 hybrid bike, while the Pramac and Marini riders will race the full 2022 version of the Desmosedici.

With the decision to mount the 2021 engine in the first Grand Prix of the year, Bagnaia and Miller are forced to run this engine for the rest of the season, as the engines are sealed from the first to the last race of the year, with a maximum of seven units per pilot, all of them identical.

Jack Miller, Ducati Team