Jorge Martín scored the fourth fastest time at the end of the first day in Qatar, being the fastest Ducati and emphasizing that on this track speed comes naturally to him, not in vain last year, as a rookie, he achieved his first pole here and his first podium with Pramac.
Martin’s honeymoon with the Italian brand, however, suffered the first setback this weekend, when it was discovered that the official team drivers, Pecco Bagnaia and Jack Miller, had finally homologated a different engine in their GP22 than the one they will use the rest of the pilots, who have continued with the latest version of the Borgo Panigale engine.
This change now forces Ducati to have two lines of development with this year’s motorcycles, on the one hand, the official ones and, on the other, the motorcycles of Martín, Johann Zarco and Luca Marini, in addition to the 2021 Enea Bastianini prototypes, Fabio Di Giannantonio and Marco Bezzecchi, a division that could slow down the growth of a brand that, with eight bikes on the grid, seemed to be clearly dominant this year.
“What I can say is that I ride the GP22 and in the tests I felt comfortable with this bike. We have work ahead of us, especially in acceleration, but I think that this engine has potential, as regards the other engine (the one that Pecco and Jack have chosen), I don’t know exactly what he’s wearing and I don’t know what that change is about,” Martin explained this Friday when asked by Motorsport.com about the situation.
“The only thing is that at the level of electronics and setting now we are going in a little different directions, when before we could help each other more. But now we are Zarco, Marini and I with this engine and we are going to try to find the way, surely it will take time a tad more, but we’ll get there”.
At no time during the preseason did Ducati give Martín the option of choosing which engine he wanted to race with this year.
“We always want to take the most advanced bike and in this case it is the 2022, they informed us of what was going to happen, but in the end we knew we were going to take this bike,” he said, admitting that he had no other choice.
The scenario that arises now is somewhat confusing, since now we have to see what level of support Ducati offers to riders who are not those of the official team, despite riding, on paper, this year’s bike.
“It is clear that Ducati wants to make this engine work, and it is a point in our favor that the new bike has to work well. It is an engine that is the version of the future, the base of next year and the next three or four years. years, surely.”
An engine that has been talked about wonders but that Martín still hasn’t finished finding them.
“We haven’t really found the virtues of the 2022 engine yet, it seems to have more power, but we haven’t been able to get it to the ground yet. That’s the biggest potential of the new engine, but until we can use all the horsepower we’re a bit on the same level as with the other engine”, in reference to the 2021-22 hybrid chosen by the official drivers.
