Ducati boss Luigi Dall'Igna says the court case against its rear winglet was “not the best way to do motorsport”, as it had to reveal technical secrets to its rivals.
Ducati raced to victory with Andrea Dovizioso in Qatar using its swingarm-mounted device, which was protested by Aprilia, Honda, KTM and Suzuki following the race, with the case taken to the Court of Appeals last week.
The four accusing parties believed the device to have an aerodynamic benefit, and therefore contravened the regulations, while Ducati was adamant its use was for cooling the rear tyre.
The Court ruled in favour of Ducati, who maintained it always “interpreted the rules in a proper way”.
“We read and interpreted the rules in a proper way,” Dall'Igna said on Thursday in Argentina.
“This, not only from the technical director's point of view, but also the Court of Appeal point of view who has the possibility to rear our documents, but also the documents of our competitors.
“In front of the Court of Appeal, we have to tell something about our knowledge, and this was not only in front of the Court of Appeal, but also in front of our competitors.
“I think this is for sure not fair and not the best way to do motorsport.”
Dall'Igna revealed Ducati's wing cools the rear tyre by as much as seven degrees, while only creating 300 grams of downforce, and says the Italian marque copied the rain deflector Yamaha used in Valencia last year.
“To put some air on the rear tyre, and the result of our tests we did in the Qatar test before the race, is that we can reduce the temperature of the tyre by about seven degrees on average,” he added.
“And this, in Ducati's opinion, is an important result in terms of performance of the bike.
“All the parts that you have that are fluid and have movement create a force. Also the Yamaha water spoiler Yamaha used at the end of last year have this secondary effect for sure.
“In our case, I think that we can tell you we have more or less three, four newtons [of force] at 180km/h – 300g, more or less.
“Ducati have this idea copying Yamaha, because Yamaha us a system like this in Valencia and maybe also before in some practices.
“So Ducati have this idea by watching what another of our competitors was doing. So I think that the others will copy us.
“We didn't do any windtunnel tests with the device, because our target was not the load, the force of the device, but was only the thermal effect on the rear tyre.”
