Luigi Dall’Igna warns MotoGP must reward ‘the best team’ after concessions penalised Ducati

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Luigi Dall’Igna says MotoGP must find the right balance between entertainment and sport with the concessions system.

Ducati have won the last six constructors’ championships and fielded the last four riders’ champions, but their period of dominance is at risk of coming to an end this year.

Marco Bezzecchi and Jorge Martin currently sit one-two in the standings for Aprilia, though VR46 Ducati rider Fabio Di Giannantonio is only 26 points back. Massimo Rivola’s team also lead the satellite squad by 117 points in the teams’ table.

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Luigi Dall’Igna: Concessions are unsporting but we have to compromise

Dall’Igna says Ducati won’t use concessions an excuse, but they have almost certainly been a factor in the competition catching up.

Re-introduced in 2024, the system allows greater development and testing opportunities to teams who are lagging behind. The further off the pace they are (based on their points tally), the greater the assistance they receive.

Teams are assigned ranks every half season, so Aprilia are still in the same tier as KTM and Honda. They receive 50 more testing tyres than Ducati and have access to wildcards for Grands Prix.

If MotoGP were a ‘pure sport’, then there would have been no effort to curb the dominance of a single team, but Dall’Igna recognises the need to ‘compromise’.

He said, via Moto IT: “It’s the difference between entertainment and sport, and if ours were pure sport, then concessions wouldn’t even be conceivable: it’s not like they’d let [Olympic champion Armand] Duplantis compete in pole vault with a shorter pole than the others.

“But that’s sport, whereas we’re not just sport, we’re also entertainment, and it’s such an expensive reality that some compromises have to be made. However, I’m fine with it up to a point: the entertainment is fine, but I’d like MotoGP to remain primarily a sport, with the best team winning.”

Ironically, Ducati could receive concessions themselves when performance is assessed following the German GP this summer after the drop in their results. They may move down from their perennial ‘A’ rank to rank B.