First of all, what strikes you in the pits is the noise: the intoxicating, adrenaline-pumping and deafening one of the Ducati MotoGp disassembled, reassembled and turned on away from prying eyes, or pushed to the maximum on the track. And then that of Lenovo workstations and servers: low and constant, reassuring in his own way; made of ventole at war against over 30 degrees del Mugello, while hardware and software process large amounts of data at high speed. A symbiosis between technology and craftsmanship, between megahertz and horsepower, for an alliance born in the name of performance.
It is the Thursday before the Oakley Italian Grand Prix, the eighth race of the MotoGP that will take place in 2022 at the Mugello International Circuit, and which will be won by the official Ducati rider Francesco Bagnaia. The perfect opportunity to meet the managers of the Ducati Lenovo Team and take stock of a technological partnership that has lasted since 2018: a collaboration that has transformed and “increased” every aspect of development, monitoring and management of the eight red lightning bolts who today run on the track with the Ducati brand (between the official team and the satellite team); and that, in the era of Covid-19, when only a few team members were allowed to reach the tracks, also allowed Ducati to let technicians and engineers collaborate remotely. To compete practically in “remote working”, one could say.
Workstation and wrenches
But let’s go in order: to tell how the Ducati Lenovo Team works with what tools and to do what, the best way is to start from the physical space around the motorcycles, in the pits: here Ducati technicians use ultralight portable workstations. Lenovo ThinkPad P1, with which they download the data from each Desmosedici GP 22 to analyze them on the fly and make any changes without ever leaving the bike. The efficiency and reliability of these PCs are fundamental, because in MotoGP there is no telemetry as in the car Grand Prix, and therefore short stops in the pits (for example during practice) are the only occasion in which it is possible to download the data from the motorcycle, submit them to an initial analysis, make choices and vary the settings. At each stop, there are about 5 minutes available to make repairs and make fundamental decisions that will affect performance until the next stop, so there is no room for system errors.
“We needed a reliable laptop to run our software, and Lenovo built it for us by listening to our demands,” he explains Stefano Rendina, IT manager for Ducati corse. “We practically did it together – he continues – also collaborating in the choice of the Ram, in the optimization of the Bios, or to increase the efficiency in the dissipation of heat, necessary for those who, like us, work in confined and very hot environments, and must often keep the computer closed “.
The union (of data) is strength
Still in the pits, but a little further away from the bikes we find the servers ThinkSystem SE350, small in size and easy to transport, for further processing and analysis of the data produced by each motorcycle. Which are not few: we are talking about 15Gb generated by over 50 sensors for each of the 8 Ducatis in the race, each race. “Only the tires already contain different sensors that measure the humidity or the internal temperature of the rim – reveals Gabriele Conti, Director of Electronic Systems of Ducati Corse – while infrared sensors are mounted on the fork to measure the temperature of the tire in precise points, so that everything is perfectly under control “.
A sea of information that the Borgo Panigale manufacturer collects and – surprisingly – makes available to each team: “The riders compete with each other, but the bikes are all called Ducati – he explains without hiding a certain pride. Davide Tardozzi, Ducati Team Manager – everyone sees everyone’s data and has the same infrastructure available, so their feedback multiplies the results. “The remarkable thing is that this does not create friction between the pilots,” because everyone knows that they can learn from others, discovering where ” detach “before the curve, how the other bikes react, or how the load is transferred.” Information that, combined with the images of the riders in action, is pure gold, a richness that is layered over time and remains usable, allowing you to fish out from data servers useful for dealing with situations when they reappear similar to those already experienced, such as rain on a specific circuit.
From the simulator to the track
“The other great innovation, then, is that we simulate anything – explains Tardozzi – when we test the design of a new engine with our simulator, the system proves to be precise up to predicting exactly how many horsepower it will have. For us it is fundamental. – he clarifies – because it allows us to obtain the result without, for example, having to develop three engines and then see which one works better, keeping costs down “. The same goes for the other crucial element of a MotoGP, that is aerodynamics, which is also developed and tested first in simulators which run in Borgo Panigale, on HPC (High-Performance Computing) clusters based on Lenovo’s ThinkSystem SD530, SR630 and SR650 servers, with significant investment savings for Ducati.
Gareggiare in remote working
It is the third level of technology after the engineers’ workstations and mobile servers that travel with the team. A complex infrastructure on which the results in the race, the development of the motorcycles depend, and on which the Remote Garage collaboration system is also firmly based from 2020. Born during the hardest phase of the Covid-19 epidemic, when lockdowns had drastically reduced the number of engineers admitted to the track, it allowed the technicians left excluded to connect and actively participate in the race wherever they were, working as if were present.
Once the restrictions were over, the system had now become an integral part of the way of working at Ducati Corse, so it was enhanced and made more secure to give access to more people: today many of the 150 Ducati Corse employees they continue to collaborate remotely on race weekends and during pre-season testing, increasing team efficiency and reducing travel costs in a championship that now has 20 races, with stops in Japan, the United States and Australia. “To give an example, the tire specialist works from home – explains Luigi Dall’Igna, General Manager of Ducati Corse – and during the MotoGP days every evening he analyzes the data of all the bikes, then he talks to us to help us to choose the best performing tires and calibrate the traction controls accordingly “.