Luca Bernardi and Philipp Oettl have set their sights on Rookie of the Year honours in the 2022 WorldSBK Championship as the WorldSSP graduates pulled the wraps off their respective Spark Barni and Go Eleven Ducati Panigale V4 Rs.
Coming as the official Aruba.it Ducati outfit revealed its factory-engineered Panigale V4 Rs for Alvaro Bautista and Michael Ruben Rinaldi, the Italian firm’s long-standing satellite arms were also formally launching their 2022 WorldSBK campaigns too.
With both teams enduring a troubled campaign in 2021 with disappointing ex-MotoGP rider Toni Elias and the injury-hampered Chaz Davies, both were unexpectedly defeated in the overall standings by sophomore counterparts Motocorsa with Axel Bassani taking his Ducati to ninth in the standings.
As such, Spark Barni and Go Eleven are adopting a similar strategy for this season with the hiring of two leading contenders from the middleweight class.
Bernardi begins the first of a two-year deal with the now Spark-backed Barni squad, the San Marino rider having caught the eye of boss Marco Barnabo in a 2021 season that yielded five podiums before a crash at Catalunya curtailed his campaign early.
“After the first touch with the team in the tests in Portugal, I need to improve my feeling with the Ducati Panigale V4 RS 22 and I hope to do that in this two-day test in Misano, which is my home track.
“It was a pleasure to be able to welcome the sponsors at this presentation before we hit the track, the bike looks wonderful, and now we have to work to ride it fast.”
Oettl, meanwhile, takes over from Chaz Davies at Go Eleven having gotten the nod over British Superbike Champion (BSB) Tarran Mackenzie for the ride.
The German racer - who achieved 11 podiums in two seasons of WorldSSP with Kawasaki - has already caught the eye in testing with some strong lap times out of the box.
“The bike is a Ducati V4 R, WorldSBK spec,” said team owner Denis Sacchetti. It is derived from the 2021 bike; we have updated it and brought some improvements. The development never stops and there are some very interesting tech novelties, the bike won’t be new, but it will be a development one compared to 2021.”
In addition to its WorldSBK effort, Spark Barni will also branch out into the WorldSSP Championship with a Ducati Panigale V2 for Oli Bayliss, teenage son of three-time WorldSBK Champion Troy Bayliss.
