Luca Marini explains where Ducati GP21 gains over GP19

Luca Marini has described where he feels Ducati has made the most progress from his GP19 to the very latest GP21.

Ahead of his first home Italian Grand Prix as a premier-class rider, Marini - who is spending his rookie premier-class season on the bike that took victory with Danilo Petrucci in the most-recent 2019 Mugello round – explained:

"Sincerely from the data, the most impressive thing is the acceleration on the exit of the corners when they [GP21s] use the [ride height] system.

"They are very fast in that phase and also the speed at the end of the straight, when they put sixth gear, especially. The bike accelerates with the same torque curve, while my bike drops a little bit [in sixth]. But my bike is also fantastic.

"What I can feel and see from behind is that they also improved a lot, in my opinion, the balance of the rider and the bike in the middle of the corner.

"The new bike looks like - this is my opinion - that they can turn a little bit better on-gas. This is one thing that I'm struggling with a little bit for now, during all these races I miss a little bit of turning. But with the new bike I saw that they found something, so it's great.

"But they changed a lot, the chassis, the engine – it's a totally different bike [to 2019]. So it's not possible to replicate the change that they did with my bike, so we are trying to fix this in our own way. And I'm sure that here at Mugello, which doesn't need so much this [on-gas turning], we can be fast."

The Ducati GP21 has won the last two races in the hands of Jack Miller, sits second in the riders' world championship with his factory team-mate Francesco Bagnaia and has also been on the podium with Pramac riders Johann Zarco and Jorge Martin.

Marini meanwhile has a best result of twelfth, which he equalled last time in the Le Mans rain.

Although he and fellow rookie team-mate Enea Bastianini are riding the bike that Petrucci took to a thrilling Mugello victory in 2019, Marini isn't sure much of that data will still be relevant.

"The Ducati performs very well here, but in these two years all the other manufacturers, including Ducati, improved a lot. Also the tyres have changed. So I don’t know if all the information about 2019 can be very useful for us," he said.

"We will do FP1 and then compare the data like always with Enea, Pecco and try to improve and do a great job all weekend. Here I will have fun for sure."

Marini will be easy to spot this weekend thanks to a colourful home livery on his Avintia Sky VR46 machine.

"It's just great. Every year it's very good but this year it’s superb. My favourite of all the years," he smiled. "I hope that I can do a good job here and stay more in the front positions.

"This is my favourite track for sure. It's the only track that when you finish the race you want to be here next year as soon as possible."