'More Ducatis, more problems' - MotoGP rivals wary of 8 Desmosedicis
Ducati's dominant finish to the 2021 MotoGP World Championship means the factory's main rivals are unsurprisingly concerned at the prospect of eight Desmosedicis on the grid this season.
Title runner-up Francesco Bagnaia finished last year with four wins from six races, having also fallen from the lead in Misano and finished third in Texas.
But the Italian certainly wasn't the only Ducati rider at the front.
Ducati swept the qualifying front row at Misano in October and again at the Valencia finale, where the factory went on to fill the podium at a twisty track that limits their traditional top-speed strength.
In total, five of the six Ducati riders took a podium last season and all six qualified on the front row.
"More Ducatis, more problems!" said Yamaha's new world champion Fabio Quartararo of the eight bikes for 2022.
Like Suzuki's outgoing champion Joan Mir, the Frenchman highlighted that the Desmosedicis qualifying form alone means starting a race with several powerful Ducatis already in front.
"It’s super tough for us to overtake [them]. Also it looks like they made a massive step on the bike and not just the engine. How fast they are on one lap, how fast they are in the race…
"[2021] was the first time they made 1-2-3 in qualifying. All their riders made a massive step. We need to make a massive step because we are way too far," warned Quartararo, who will be hoping Yamaha deliver on engine upgrades at next month's Sepang test.
"Definitely Ducati has found something good for qualifying, something great, because they lock-up the front row and they put basically the current year's Ducati up there," agreed team-mate Franco Morbidelli.
"So that's going to be really tricky for us if they maintain this kind of behaviour also next year [2022]. But we're going to try to improve for sure."
In the past, Ducati wasn't always able to maintain its pace for the full race distance due to fuel consumption and tyre wear.
But outgoing world champion Mir saw no such weakness at Valencia, where he dropped four-seconds behind Bagnaia, Jorge Martin and Jack Miller.
"Last year I was able to see that when they started with all that power, it was massive. But then at the end of the race, they were struggling to turn the bike a bit more than us and also on acceleration when the tyre was getting more used, it's logical that when you have more power you use the tyre more," explained the Suzuki rider.
"[This time], I didn't see any loss of performance in the last laps, for me it was the opposite. They are even stronger on the end of the race. So it's not easy to understand.
"I don't see any weak points, and this is something that I'm worried about. And they are able to be fast with a lot of different styles. So we have work to do if we want to fight again next year, because for sure they will be really strong.
"But when I talk about the bikes, I talk about the package, the bikes and riders, not only the bikes. Because the riders are also top riders."
KTM's Miguel Oliveira was also quick to credit Ducati's riders, but admitted it's hard to spot a weakness in their bike at the moment.
"Well, the bikes don’t ride by themselves! The bikes have riders and the riders need to understand what the bike needs," Oliveira said. "But for sure they [Ducati] have a pretty complete bike. In the tracks where you think they won’t perform so well, like Valencia, they are very fast.
"The feeling is like they are on new tyres and we are on used tyres and they are able to use the acceleration and braking phases more efficiently, their turning is amazing now and so it becomes quite tricky to fight them.
"I still believe it is not a perfect bike because there is no perfect bike in this category."
While the other manufacturers were heavily dependent on one rider for their best results last season - Yamaha (Quartararo), Honda (Marc Marquez), Suzuki (Mir), KTM (Oliveira, in terms of their only dry podiums/win) and Aprilia (Espargaro) - the Ducati seems to have a wide working range.
"I believe that [Ducati], the riders and the technical staff have found the way to work and for three-four different kinds of riding styles," Oliveira explained. "You see the official and the satellite guys going fast, even the Avintia rookies are super-fast also, so it is tough to compete.
"You are talking about six bikes around the top ten and it leaves little else. It’s tough competition for sure."
Six becomes eight next season due to the addition of two more Ducatis for Gresini.
Last year's Desmosedici line-up was split between four of the latest bikes at the Official team and Pramac, plus two GP19 entries for Avintia/VR46. This year will see five riders on the latest bikes (Bagnaia, Miller, Martin, Zarco and Marini) and the other three on the GP21 (Bastianini, di Giannantonio and Bezzecchi).
"For sure eight bikes will not be easy work for Ducati because although two more sounds small it is a lot," said Bagnaia. "But I think they will manage well the situation. It means even more data for us. More feedback asking for different things. I think it will be good for us."
The only real downside to filling one-third of the grid is the risk that Ducati might find itself overstretched. But they've supported the same number of entries in the recent past.
"Having eight bikes on the grid is for sure a challenge on the logistics side, but we’ve done it in the past when we had Pramac, Avintia and Aspar [satellite teams]," said Paolo Ciabatti, Ducati Corse sporting director.
"So we know how to handle it and having many of the most promising young riders on a Ducati is very good for our future."
All of which means Ducati, which won last year's constructors' and teams' titles, heads into the 2022 pre-season tests as the manufacturer to beat, as it seeks to finally add to Casey Stoner's 2007 riders' title after finishing runner-up four times in the last five years.
