The importance of data for winning the MotoGP World Championship

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.

One of the most interesting aspects of the role of data in motorbike racing at this level is the relationship between the human management of the athletes and the objectivity of metrics and numbers, which manages to explain time and all its variables with perfection that seems to contrast with terms such as feeling, often associated with riding, which arise from a subjective perspective. Lenovo's challenge was precisely to perfect the talent by creating an unquestionable balance "We realized that it was no longer enough to make the most powerful engine or select the most talented drivers: technology was now a determining factor in a team's success. That's why we looked for a technology partner who was a leader in its field and could maximize the best technology available on the market to meet all our needs, both on the track and in the company," says Luigi Dall'Igna, General Manager of Ducati Corse.

The race has gradually become an exact elaboration of the sporting gesture, the data from the bike is used to prepare for each outing on the track, and it is symptomatic how the first thing that is done to the bike upon returning to the pits is to attach it to a large black cable that starts processing and transmitting all the data to the server. At the end of the weekend, there are around 100 GB of metrics that tell the story of why you won or why you lost, collected from 60 sensors positioned throughout the bike. All this data becomes fundamental as a historical memory for the team in the short and long term, but above all it is shared between all 8 riders of the 4 teams of the Ducati ecosystem, perfecting to the thousandth the interpretation of individual races.

As mentioned above, Dall'Igna does not hide the fact that there is a component of risk, linked mainly to the way in which this data is read and the speed with which choices have to be made, subject to constant variables linked to the rider or simply the weather. All this constantly changes the yardstick of judgement, and Lenovo has embraced the task of being able to process the data with almost instantaneous speed, not yet in real time but with a level unique to motorbike racing. 

The boost to the levels of the World Championship title, achieved last year by Bagnaia, came not only thanks to the speed or the sheer volume of data, but also thanks to Remote Garage, a system that allows information to flow from the track to the headquarters in Bologna and vice versa, increasing the exchange of information and reducing development time. Sharing data creates the best set-up for the riders and their characteristics at every turn of the race, but while Lenovo provided the tools for Ducati, the team's sporting vision was to set the company challenges that would lead to change in the world of motorbikes. Engineers know that one of the next challenges is contemporary, as well as the introduction of AI, machine learning and augmented reality, which could improve and predict race variables.  

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.