Ducati’s level of MotoGP dominance, including winning 17 out𒆙 of 20 Grands Prix in 2023, means its key staff continue to be targeted by rival manufacturers.

The factory’s technical director Davide Barana admits it’s a “problem” for the r❀eigning world champions but warned rivals that building success in MotoGP is “not just a matter of taking good people”.

Fabiano Sterlacchini, Francesco Guidotti, Cristhianꦡ Pupulin and Alberto Giribuola are some of the names that have been tempted away from Ducati (to KTM) in recent seasons.

🗹Among the l💙atest to leave is ex Ducati Vehicle Performance Engineer Max Bartolini, who moves to Yamaha.

“Yamaha has Max Bartolini coming to them and for sure [he] will [help them] make a big step,” ꩵsaid Ducati’s reigning double world champ🍃ion Francesco Bagnaia.

“Of course it's a problem [to lose staff],” Barana told the .

“Because some people that left have a lot of knowledge, they were a part of Ducati for manyไ years, so✃ they know very well what we did, the reason that we did certain solutions.

“♔But this is part of the game. When you become competitive, it's normal that your competi꧟tors try to hire people from you.

“We try to keep the people if we can. Sometimes we succeed, sometimes not. But anyway, we have also other guys that ar♊e growing.

“When𝄹 you lose a good engineer – a friend also, because we have a long story together – it's always a shame. But we also consider this an opportunity for other guys who have developed in the company to reach a certain level, to give them more responsibility, to also have fresh engineꦓers with new ideas.

“We prefer that people stay, but I think our strength is we have a lot of people who are very good ꦜand work well together.”

Barana added that while targeting its staff can be a sho🌊rtcut to success for their rivals, it’s far from guaranteed.

“It's not straightforward that one good guy will perform as good as𝄹 in Ducati, because you don't know [if] the environment that they go to is as good.

“Also, in other categories like in F1, there have been new entries that collected very clever and skilled people from here and there and ꦫput them together, but it's not obvious they can work efficiently together.

“There have been gr🎀eat projects that failed in spite of them having a great team.

“It's not just a matter of taking good people, the relationship [betwee🃏n them] takes years to be established and to work together efficiently.”

Interestingly, Barana cited Ducati’s in-house approach towards building its MotoGP🔴 project, which🔯 debuted in 2003, as a reason for its current strength.

“I think that the strength of Ducati is that when we entered in MotoGP, we didn't take engineers from the manufacturers that were already present, we kept our guys from the Wor𒅌ld Superbike project, put them into the new GP project and built up our knowledge,” 🌠he said.

“It's a long process, but it will pay back. I think also if in the future we find ourselves in a position where we have to recove🌠r, I don't know if I would hire engineers from the other brands. I would prefer much more to invest inܫ my guys.

“For sure the guys that left are also friends, so I hope for them the best. But with my Ducat𒆙i hat on, I hope they will struggle t🌠o bring the knowledge into the team and improve the project they joined!”

But he agaღin cautioned that there is no instant fix for transforming a MotoGP project.

“I think honestly speaking, looking at our competitors that are struggling, I think one big mistake is to believe that something can ♍be changed in a few months. This makes even more confusion.

“If you have﷽ a problem, i🌄f you are behind, you have to make a recovery plan. But not in 3 months, 6 months. It takes 1 year, 2 years, 3 years. Otherwise you just add more confusion to the existing confusion.

“Because the performance of the bike is a combination of different s🌜mall factors. So you cannot just work on ce𝓀rtain parts or concentrate on only one because it's the weakest point.

“The 𓂃secret, or our strategy, is to evolve𒈔 the bike in a 360 degree way.”