Former General Manager of Ducati Corse Filippo Preziosi has resigned from the company, ending his 19-year career with the Italian manufacturer. Preziosi led Ducati‘s racing program for the last decade including its lone MotoGP championship in 2007, but the 44-year-old engineer also carries a lot of the blame for Ducati’s recent struggles including the doomed Valentino Rossi era.

Preziosi held the position of GM of Ducati Corse until last November when he was replaced with former BMW Superbike manager Bernhard Gobmeier. At the time, Ducati announced Preziosi would assume a new role as director of research and development for Ducati, tasked with developing new products.

It appears that Preziosi never actually assumed that new position. Ducati says Preziosi was to take on his new role “after a period of rest”. The company now says Preziosi has resigned due to “health reasons related to his particular physical condition”. Preziosi is a parapalegic, losing the use of the lower half of his body after an accident in 2000. Continue Reading »

Ducati has named Bernhard Gobmeier the new general manager of Ducati Corse, handing the former BMW Superbike racing director the reins to the company’s racing program. Gobmeier replaces Filippo Preziosi (pictured above) who will be reassigned to the post of director of research and development for Ducati, shifting his focus from racing to developing new products.

The personnel change carries two storylines. On the one hand, Preziosi’s tenure as GM of Ducati Corse was a disappointing period for the factory MotoGP program, highlighted by the two disastrous seasons with Valentino Rossi and the continuing struggle to make the Desmosedici race bike competitive.

The other plot thread is the appointment of a German to lead the Italian manufacturer’s racing program. Ducati is now, of course, owned by Audi, and the appointment of Gobmeier has the German automaker’s fingerprints all over it. As the official announcement reads, Gobmeier’s role is to “to enter the new phase of development for Ducati’s racing activities and to achieve the targets set during the recent acquisition by the Audi Group.” Continue Reading »