Ducati MotoGP boss defends ride height devices after Bagnaia's Aragon start issues

Ducati’s team manager Davide Tardozzi has defended MotoGP’s ride height devices as the debate on their safety continued after start issues at the Aragon Grand Prix.

In both the sprint and the grand prix, Francesco Bagnaia suffered a large amount of wheelspin off the line as he tried to launch away from third on the grid.

In the sprint, he was lucky not to be hit by Gresini’s Alex Marquez (though the pair would then collide late in the grand prix), while several others - most notably Aleix Espargaro - also had similar issues.

After the sprint, the state of the resurfaced Aragon track came under fire from the riders, as did the lack of proper cleaning they felt hadn’t been carried out.

The track was swept on Saturday evening, though overnight rain brought dirt back onto the circuit for the grand prix.

Some have pointed the finger at the ride height devices, with TNT Sport’s pundits arguing that Bagnaia’s woes specifically were directly attributed to them.

“I think that the device helps,” Tardozzi began.

“Yesterday [the sprint] was another matter. It was a matter of sand on the ground and race direction did everything that was possible for cleaning the race track, the start positions.

“But unluckily it rained sand and it was too sandy. Where the riders don’t pass in practice, it was completely dirty.

“MotoGP is the maximum of technology.

“You have to go ahead. If you want to go back 20 years, like somebody is asking to have the bikes of 20 years ago or 10 years ago, it’s not our view.

“We are looking forward to have more things, more technology, more future.”

Tardozzi repeatedly argued that the rear ride height device helps to reduce rear spinning.

Parallels between Bagnaia’s start issues and Marc Marquez’s in Austria, where he could re-engage his front start device and almost had contact with Franco Morbidelli off the line as a result, were drawn.

But Tardozzi refuted these, arguing that Marquez’s issue was his own mistake, as he accidentally disengaged his front device trying to get heat into his front tyre.

“Yeah, but Marc has a problem because of what happened to the front tyre,” Tardozzi added, referencing the fact Marquez’s problems stemmed from his tyres needing to be put onto a new rim because of a broken valve half an hour before the Austrian GP.

“Then he was thinking that he had to put the front device in the last moment because he wanted to carry the corner as fast as possible to try to make the front tyre hotter and hotter.

“That’s why he made a mistake. In Austria Marc made a mistake.”