Presented by Lenovo

Since 2020 and the COVID-19 pandemic, the Ducati Lenovo Team has been doing something a little differently back at headquarters in Bologna during MotoGP race weekends: running a replica of the team’s garage remotely from Italy to bring additional engineers and data analysis resources into the mix.

It’s been a resounding success, as well, coinciding as it has with a rise in Ducati’s fortunes that has seen the Desmosedici GP bikes dominate the championship in recent years - taking the likes of Pecco Bagnaia, Marc Marquez, and satellite racer Jorge Martin to titles.

To allow a better understanding of how Ducati has managed to translate that additional resource into on-track success, Ducati Corse and Lenovo invited The Race behind the scenes at the Borgo Panigale HQ following the opening round of the 2026 season in Thailand to better see how that process works.

INSIDE THE DUCATI LENOVO REMOTE GARAGE

“The Ducati Lenovo Remote Garage started in 2020 during the COVID pandemic,” Vehicle Development Manager Nicolò Mancinelli explained to The Race. 

“At that time we realised we were ready to use our simulation and analysis tools during race weekends, particularly for tyre analysis, so we began with a pilot project in 2020 and worked with our partner Lenovo to develop it further.

“Over the following years we built the infrastructure that allows engineers here in Bologna to assist the trackside team during race weekends.” 

While Formula 1® teams might have been using a similar set-up for years, MotoGP budget and logistics considerations means that Ducati Corse has had to go about making it work in a different way - something that the partnership with Lenovo has aided by allowing Ducati to do the heavy lifting of data processing trackside rather than transmitting the tens of gigabytes of data back to Italy first.

“In MotoGP we don’t have the same dedicated satellite connections used in F1,” he added, “so we had to find a different solution. 

“Together with Lenovo we decided to move most of the computational work to high performance computers at the track. This means we can use a lower bandwidth connection while still allowing engineers here in Bologna to access the data remotely.

“It’s been a long journey, but it has completely changed the way trackside engineers work together with those back at the factory.”

So what exactly does a race weekend inside the remote garage (situated just across the corridor from team boss Gigi Dall’Igna’s office) look like? 

Normally filled by a team of three people, each has a specific role and looks after a different part of the process to allow that the trackside team more available time and a narrower focus on their primary duties.

“The first [person] is a software engineer who ensures that all the data processing systems running at the track operate correctly,” Mancinelli said. 

“They monitor the workflow and make sure all the tools and updates are deployed properly. We currently have six Ducati bikes on track, so there is a huge amount of data generated every session. This engineer ensures that everything is processed correctly and on time.

“The second engineer is a data analyst. Their job is to extract information from the data — both for reliability and performance. They process the data, extract key performance indicators, and generate reports that are shared with the engineers at the circuit.

“These reports allow the trackside team to quickly understand the most important information from a huge amount of data. Typically, they’re available just minutes after a session ends. In some cases we also run real-time KPIs as the data arrives, which means the analyst can immediately warn the team if there are reliability concerns.

“The third engineer is a vehicle dynamics specialist, mainly focused on tyre analysis. They process performance data related to tyre behaviour and generate reports to help the trackside engineers decide how to manage the tyres and which tyre specifications to choose for the race weekend.”

And, with extra resources in terms of personnel combined with the added computing power afforded by the team’s relationship with Lenovo, it means that Mancinelli sees a very real impact on the team’s performance.

“Race weekends are extremely time-critical and we have a massive amount of data to process,” he said. “MotoGP does not allow live telemetry during sessions, so we download the bike data after each run.

“Once that happens, we run many algorithms to analyse the data. Some of these are virtual sensing algorithms, which estimate physical quantities that cannot be directly measured. Others extract performance metrics.

“All of these algorithms must run as quickly as possible so that the trackside engineers can make decisions quickly. Another advantage is that we can run simulations overnight. Sometimes we need to make decisions between Friday and Saturday sessions, and these simulations are very helpful.”

As 2025 examples, Mancinelli cited MotoGP’s first visit to Hungarian Grand Prix venue Balaton Park - a “completely new circuit for us” for which no previous MotoGP weekend data existed and thus swift number-crunching was paramount - and the return to Czech Grand Prix venue Brno, which had been resurfaced so was in effect almost an entirely new track in some ways.

“On Friday we ran practice sessions, but the number of laps was limited [due to rain],” Mancinelli recalled of Brno. “By Saturday we had to decide which tyres to use for the sprint race and predict how tyre temperatures and degradation would behave.

“Using our high-performance computing systems, we were able to run large numbers of simulations overnight using Friday’s data. This allowed us to predict race scenarios and determine the correct aero configuration for cooling brakes and tyres, as well as choosing the right tyre compounds.”

Thanks to Lenovo and Ducati Corse for the behind the scenes access at Ducati headquarters - find out more about Lenovo here