The importance of data for winning the MotoGP World Championship Ducati and Lenovo have taken motorcycling to an unprecedented level

For some years now, the discourse on data as an indispensable tool for athletes and sports clubs has been current and useful in understanding the successes or reasons that drive players towards one or the other team. We talk about data in sports mainly for its contribution in long-term planning, or for that ability to make the right investments, and therefore revenue. There are sports such as motorcycling in which data are used for their ability to give an immediate explanation of what is happening on the track, synchronizing technical, mechanical and strategic skills with the cold objectivity of diagrams charts and decimal numbers. 

Among the teams that have most succeeded in making a leap forward thanks to a new approach to reading data is Ducati, which, thanks to Lenovo, has not only changed the way of understanding MotoGP but also the very way in which the bikes are designed. On the occasion of the last race of the MotoGP world championship won by Ducati rider Pecco Bagnaia, nss sports was a guest in the Borgo Panigale team's pits to understand how data and the partnership with Lenovo are writing an important page in motorsport.

The contribution of the technological infrastructure helps the design and this research is also taken out of the racing world, for example into aerodynamic studies. Simulations on racing motorbikes are centralised and from 2021 the information is obtained in a third of the calculation time compared to the past, thus doubling the testing. The consequence is the ease of reading all aspects that can influence a race. 

The example of Ducati Corse shows how the sport has to understand what role data can play in planning, not only in sport, its future and its victories. Technology does not stand in contrast to an ongoing quest for romance in sport, Ducati's pits are not sterile offices with cables and Wi-Fi connections, but garages in their own right, with tyres and mufflers playing, waiting for the champagne.