Meet the robot which is key to Ducati's MotoGP success

The Ducati-Lenovo partnership has entered its seventh MotoGP season in 2025, but unlike many non-motorcycling or non-automotive sponsorships the Lenovo sticker on the factory Ducati Desmosedicis are about much more fairing space and cash.

Part of Ducati’s rise to the summit of MotoGP has been its ability to use technology such as machine learning to increase the efficiency of its development and its setup work at the track.

Lenovo, being a computing company, has been able to assist in this, partly thanks to a motorised scanner that, since the second half of the 2024 season, Ducati has used to scan the tracks that feature on the MotoGP calendar.

The scans create a 200GB digital recreation of a circuit with details included such as camber angles in corners.

This allows for improved accuracy of Ducati’s simulation models, which help to predict the outcomes of different changes in setup based on track conditions, or how differences in ambient conditions could affect track grip and therefore bike performance.

According to Lenovo, supplying the simulation models with more accurate data can lead to improvements in race times of between 2.5 and three seconds.

For reference, the first non-Ducati at this year’s Thai Grand Prix was Trackhouse Aprilia’s Ai Ogura, who was 7.450 seconds behind Ducati Lenovo Team’s Marc Marquez at the chequered flag.

So, it’s hard to say, based on Lenovo’s numbers, that the combination of the scans and the simulation models are making all of the difference for Ducati, especially when there were also three other Ducatis between Marquez and Ogura in Thailand, but it’s still a significant part of a substantial margin that Ducati appears to have – or at least that which it exhibited in Thailand.