Interview Corrado Cecchinelli
DUCATI CORSE TECHNICAL DIRECTORQ. How are you handling making parts for the Superbikes? Is it in-house or are you sourcing it from other places?
A: In some cases, we are out-sourcing. I would say almost always because we don't have the capacities. For instance, we don’t have the tools and the instruments to work with carbon fiber. So for sure, it’s crazy for us to do in-house. We can do some parts and some motors, one or two pieces, yeah we can do that. We don’t have the high pressure ovens and so on.
If we talk about castings, I think it is clear why we don’t do castings: It takes a huge plant to make castings. It’s better that we don’t do that in-house and we do something else. In general, there’s another big problem, which is the reason why we are outsourcing even something that we could do in-house which is time. Because we make something in-house that we use for the races, we use exactly the same machines, plants and people that make the road bike parts. So sometimes we have time scheduling problems so we are outsourcing more and more things we could make in-house. For instance, is crankshaft needs a lot of machining. We always did it in-house. We now do fifty percent in-house and we want to go 100% outside. Because it’s too slow and unpredictable with the time scheduling in-house.
Q: Do you use mostly the vendors that are motorcycle specific or do you sometimes use automotive companies? Harley Davidson's Superbike team uses some vendors from Formula One and things like that.
A: I would say eighty percent motorcycling and twenty percent different fields. Mainly we are using sometimes the same suppliers that we use for the road bikes for racing. For instance, we use the same crankcases for production, but we tell the supplier give us the best x-rayed cases for the Superbikes.
For instance, our carbon fiber manufacturer is the same that puts out the parts for the production bikes. This is mainly what we do. We have also some suppliers from different fields, but maybe even more than eighty percent let’s say ninety percent the same suppliers we are using for road bikes.
Q: Cagiva has a relationship with Ferrari. Do you have a relationship with Ferrari?
A: We have no official relations. A lot of us are good friends of a lot of Ferrari people so we exchange information and advice because it’s racing so we face almost the same problems. But if you want to know if we have some project or some official activity together the answer is no. I remember two years ago, I think, David Tardozzi went to Ferrari to see how their trucks and are made and their hospitalities made, for instance there’s this kind of collaboration.
Q: What is your history with Ducati? How long have you been with the company?
A: I’m here since January 1997 and I was hired by Ducati Motor because Ducati Corse was not in existence at the moment. I was hired as someone who takes care of time scheduling of all the racing activities, that was my sole job in the beginning. Very soon I became the customer care man of racing. So I did ’97 mostly working with customers in private races. I had the great satisfaction of having, I think, a big role in the winning of the Supersport championship because we had big problems, electrical failures in ’97. We were losing the championship for reliability problems while our bike was much faster than all the others.
From ‘98, I became more and more involved in the official team and then I became in charge of the racing department before we split from Ducati Motor. Then almost at the same time that we split from Ducati Motor I became also the Technical Director at the track for Ducati Corse. You know we have two main sides in the racing managing of the track which is support and technical. One is David Tardozzi and one is me.
Q: Back to the bikes. A lot of people when they think of memory for the fuel injection system, for lack of a better phrase, they think EPROM chips. In reality, on a factory Superbike that’s pretty much being phased out over a different style memory, right?
A: Yes, it’s true. Motor engine management systems in general got rid of traditional EPROM. We have something we call flash EPROM, which means we have a part of memory for sure in the CPU but we don’t have the physical support of a chip that you can take out and put in the CPU. This is much more convenient because you can simply map the engine by connecting from your laptop to the CPU. You can do changes in real time and in general they are more evolved system. We have it only on the Superbike because in the Supersport bikes we still have let’s say we have a traditional CPU with a chip that you have to take out, reprogram and put in again.
Q: On the Superbike to remap it, it just re-flashes it?
A: Yes, it’s an operation that you make by writing the map on your computer and connect it with the cable to the CPU. It’s simply in one only operation you erase the old mapping and you put the new in. Our Superbike CPU allows us to fit two different mappings. Between them you can switch with a switch on the handlebar.
Q: The old style EPROM that was prone to degredation from sunlight and other things.
A: Yes, that is true. It’s a problem that you can simply solve only with some precautions. That is not really the reason why they are disappearing now. It’s an old technology. It’s bothering to take the plug away from the CPU, put a new in. In our case, it’s also in an inconvenient location so it’s a big time saver.
Q. You've seen Ducati's data acqusition system evolve in your time here.
A: Yeah, I didn’t live the age in which data acquisition was first fitted to the bikes, which was between 1994 and ’95. When I came here I already found the data acquisition on the bikes, but I see the improvement in that you have a lot of advantages by using an easy dialog system, which we are now doing by using everything made by one company. Everything is designed to work together so you can, for instance, record engine parameters and so on which normally you cannot do. For sure, the steps for the future are increasing in frequency of data acquisition and capacity of the data acquisition system. We are now testing a system on our development bikes which has a 24-megabyte capacity compared to the 2-megabytes that we used last year on our bikes. So it’s a huge step. It’s smaller and lighter, for sure.
Q: So it just increases the frequency of when it takes a reading?
A: Yes. When you have more room, you can increase the frequency and have the same time or you can have, for instance, with the normal frequencies and the 2-megabyte space that we had last year. In some races, the last laps put out the first ones because the room was not enough for the memory. So you have to lower the frequency meaning less data or to reduce the time which is what we did.
Q: And when it’s pulled out of the system, do you see great advances in what you’re using to read it with, the program?
A: Yeah, there’s a continuous evolution also in the managing software, for sure. When I first came here in ’97, we had a PI system, which was not integrated with the engine management system so problems of dialog and connections. Then we had the first version of the Marelli system in ’98. Now with ’99 we have a completely new and much better system. It’s like having Windows on your PC. You have all these steps which helps you managing quicker the data, more capacity speed and more possibility of making comparisons, selecting different files all together to compare them. The big step we did this year is also a complete computer networking in the pit so that the two sides of the team can look at the computer data from their own PC. The track engineer works with Carl and he can look at Troy’s data to help Carl, there was no secrets between them.
The step we are making this year, in year 2000, is to make the network together Superbike with the base unit on our truck. Because we have a meeting at our truck at the end of every test session. This year I think we will have a computer connected to the infrared in the pit to ones in the meeting, so in the meeting we can have all the data available.
Q: Where do you see data acqusition going in the future?
A: I have no idea. I have no idea where we are going with the bikes, which is my job, so you can imagine. (laughs)
Ends
Ducati freaks and other interested parties may click on these links for exclusive ducati superbike and race shop images
we're going to make 300 996s today
the suspension parts you may claim in AMA racing 2000
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the double top secret rear shock ducati used then abandoned because it was too complicated (note top)
the old shock (which is still used by Biaggi in GP) and the current shock, all by ohlins
the ducati corse race shop from another angle
the bottom-end windage tray system
carl's carbon fiber computer housing
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