Enigmatic and almost inscrutable, Luigi ‘Gigi’ Dall’Igna has engineered, in more ways than one, Ducati’s rise from a top-ten MotoGP team to consistent podium challengers and, finally, taking their first win since 2010 at the Red Bull Ring.

Dall’Igna arrived at Ducati Corse in November 2013 and the progress has been consistent since. A step at the time, he first designed the GP15 – a bike that was competitive from the beginning but suffered from some teething problems.

But the confirmation of Dall’Igna’s train of thoughts arrived in 2016 with the Desmodedici - the fastest and most powerful bike plus a record of eight Ducatis on the grid, the return of Casey Stoner as superstar test rider and the signature of the five-time world champion Jorge Lorenzo for the 2017 and 2018 seasons.

Like some sort of loud, expensive red puzzle, all the pieces are falling into their place and Dall’igna is aligning his stars to meet his own challenge at Ducati: recapture the competitiveness which produced a world title with Casey Stoner in 2007.

And it began on Sunday in the hills of Spielberg – another bearded man who produces brilliant works of art – with not just a win but a one-two, a pole position and fastest race lap. The Gentleman’s Set.

“The target last year was to win one race. We have been close last season and this year in several occasions, but for a reason or the other we missed it. This year the goal was to claim a win, and why not two. It seemed a joke, but it was not. We are competitive and we can keep on fighting in all the remaining races,” Dall’Igna told Bikesport News in Austria.

“If we look well, this season we have been competitive on all the tracks with the exception of Jerez and Barcelona because of the lack of grip. In these two occasions, in fact, the tyres amplified an issue that we have with the grip. But in general Michelin has done a great job, providing tyres that all the manufacturers can be competitive. This weekend we have been able to close the circle.

“We succeeded to manage perfectly the advantage we had built since the test. We were fast since the first practices, so we could work without stress, focusing on the best setup with a special attention on the fuel consumption and also the stress of the rear tyre. Both Andreas were fast and only Valentino Rossi came in between in the qualifying.

“Being first and second on the podium is a great satisfaction. It’s a great satisfaction and I want to share it with all the guys who work at Borgo Panigale. All the mechanics and the engineers of Ducati Corse who work day and night to the MotoGP project. It’s a team victory. This success is dedicated to them.”

Dall’Igna will barely raise a smile, or a frown for that matter, in the garage – save for Dovizioso’s Argentina nerfing at the hands of Iannone when he went booloo in sight of a camera – so is difficult to read. Success goes with him but how?

Winning pedigree

Dall’Igna was a winner before joining Ducati. During his career in Aprilia and then as Technical Director of Piaggio he can boast in total 47 world titles: 22 in 125 cc (12 rider titles + ten Manufacturers) 20 in 250cc (ten riders + ten manufacturers) and five in the World Superbike championship (two riders titles + three manufacturers).

Team work

Since his arrival in Ducati, it was clear that the real revolution started from the most simple but very important things like the communication between the race department in Borgo Panigale and the team at the races. Since his first day of work, his winning key has been the team.

“The most important thing is to work as a team. I need the people that work for me and I believe that without them I couldn’t have achieved all this,” Dall’Igna has repeated many times. “A company is made of people. At Ducati I found a very high technical and human level. In a meeting you can discuss about things but, once a decision is taken, everybody respects it.”

Competitiveness

Dall’Igna has always stressed the very high technological level of Ducati’s Racing Department. The GP15 was built from scratch, while the challenge for the engineers this year was to adapt the bike to the new regulations. Ducati had an advantage with the single control ECU, because in the 2014 and 2015 seasons they had started to study the Open software used by the Ducati satellite teams, which was the base of the current Magneti Marelli setup. In this way, Ducati had a margin of advantage when the control software was introduced.

Studying the rules

Courage, and careful study of the regulations led Ducati and Dall’Igna to take the brave decision to chose to race in the Open class in 2014 so that they could take all the advantages reserved to this class in order to speed up the process of the machine development.

This unexpected move took the MSMA by surprise and Ducati managed to get even better treatment: they could benefit from the Open spec advantages in terms of number of litres of fuel, tyres and engine, but – at the same time – as a manufacturer, they were authorised by the MSMA to race with their own software which was much more advanced and sophisticated than the open one.

This was an excellent strategy, that allowed Ducati to progress quickly in the development of the machine and put down the foundations for the future GP15. In 2014, Ducati scored three podiums in total, with the factory riders Andrea Dovizioso on the podium in Austin and Assen, and Cal Crutchlow, who finished third in Argentina.

In 2015 the number tripled with a total of nine podium finishes: five with Andrea Dovizioso, three for Andrea Iannone and one with Danilo Petrucci from the Octo Pramac squad. This year, as Dall’Igna said, the results didn’t reflect the competitiveness of the Desmosedici and the talent of the riders, but other factors played their parts and in total Ducati arrived at midway point of the season with only four podiums: two for Dovizioso and two for Iannone.

Innovation

Ducati were the first to introduce wings and one by one, they have been copied by all their rivals till the final MSMA decision to ban them from 2017.

“We opened the way and then we have been blocked,” said Dall’Igna strong and clear on the stage at World Ducati Week. “There was no realistic situation of danger and a bike equipped with wings is much more safe considering that with the wheelying there is also an issue of the controlling of the direction of the front wheel. It’s sad that an important issue like safety has been used as an excuse from the GP Commission to ban a technical solution that we were the first to develop and brought us some advantages.”