The all new Ducati Desmosedici GP10’s has been reworked for the 2010 season. The engine has been reworked during the off season to prepare for the new rule change. The rule change makes it mandatory that each bike will only use 6 engines for the entire championship or 1 engine per 3 races. Each engine will be required to run about 994 Miles (1,600 Kilometers) running at 19,000 RPM.
In order to get a race bike engine to last for more than one race a lot of reinforcement needed to happen and the common sacrifice for this is power. So finding the right balance of reinforced parts and plenty of power to stay in front takes a lot of dyno work and pointy heads (engineers) to make this work. All the main core parts of the GP10 engine has been redesigned - pistons, rods, and crankshaft have all had significant makeovers. The main objective was to minimize loss of power and maximize reliability.
Ducati management feels that this new engine configuration will also help with production motorcycles and give more useful data for prolonged engine life. So more direct race proven technology right to the showroom floor. Let’s see what the benefit will be to the next generation production Ducati’s in 2011.
The second big news isn’t related to the rules, but Ducati’s attempt to make the bike more rideable. This has to do with changing the firing order from screamer (like traditional inline 4 cyclinders) back to the “Big Bang” configuration. This configuration allows for better traction out of corners and a more rideable power delivery.
Another part of the work was dedicated to the chassis. In the pursuit of ease of use, Ducati worked to eliminate the bike’s squatting, which is why the entire rear portion of the bike was redesigned. The GP10 has a rear structure that carries the rider — which they call the seat support — and that also supports the swingarm. That part was redesigned to have six mounting points instead of four; this makes the bike more rigid in a way and it guarantees better rideability and improved rigidity. This bike is also aesthetically different because of the redesigned fairing that was already in use at Estoril last year.
With all these changes lets see what Nicky and Casey can do with this new setup and if indeed the engine will be as reliable as Ducati claims it to be. We will know for certain when the lights go out at the first race.
Let us know what you think of the new bike in the comment section below.
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