INTERVIEW
P70
DUCATI CORSE'S BERNHARD GOBMEIER
THE
NEW BOSS
STORY AND PHOTOGRAPHY BY
HENNY RAY ABRAMS
W
ell before the MotoGP season was over,
Ducati Corse began making moves that
would transform the racing department,
a process that would continue well into the winter. They shuffled technical boss Filippo
Preziosi into the production department. They moved project
manager Alessandro Cicognani
aside; he remains with Corse in
charge of sponsorship. Then they
began hiring. They brought back
Paolo Ciabatti, the well-liked and
very effective former boss of the World
Superbike team and they brought in
Bernhard Gobmeier as the head of Ducati
Corse in charge of both MotoGP and World
Superbike. Gobmeier had just come off a year
where he transformed the BMW Motorrad team
into a proven winner, one that should have won the
championship had Marco Melandri not had a lateseason meltdown.
Gobmeier came to Ducati after a successful
career with BMW, but also Porsche, working in a
variety of capacities on both the technical and management side, both in production and racing. At
BMW he worked first on the production engines on
the M3 and M5, and then in 1989 he switched over
to the racing side of BMW where he developed
five different race engines on the four-cylinder. Following that was a four-year stint at Porsche, then
back to BMW Motorsport to launch the M brand
in the U.S., mainly with the M3 that immediately
began racing in the IMSA GT class. After a slow
Ducati's Bernhard
Gobmeier is the m
in charge of both
MotoGP and Worl
Superbike
Bernhard
Gobmeier is the
man in charge at
Ducati Corse.
