Interview With Paolo Ciabatti

I have been in the motorcycle industry for 20 years, mostly with Ducati.

How long have you been in the industry and would you do anything else, if you had the chance to change things?

I have been in the motorcycle industry for 20 years, mostly with Ducati. I have worked with Ducati for 10 years, from 1997 to 2007. In 2007 I left Ducati and went to manage the Raw superbike series for the Flamini Brothers who were the promoters at that time. Beginning 2013 I moved back to Ducati to be in charge on the MotoGP programme. My whole life has been linked to motorsport, as a kid I raced motocross without much success and had to stop due to a serious accident. I moved to Rallys and then I did one season, a few races with Pablo Boltoffshores. My passion was motorsports, even though there was no connection to motorsports from my family. From the time of being a kid watching Steve Mcqueen’s documentaries on a Sunday afternoon about motorcycle racing in the U.S. For us that generation all wanted to be motocross racers. The freedom was having your own bike and it was a motocross bike, either a 50cc or 125cc. I was very lucky to be able to turn that passion into my job. I have worked for SAAB Sweden, Mazda Japan and for an Italian distributor and I have always managed to stay a part of the racing side with those companies. When I first started with Ducati in 1997, I worked in exports for two years but because of my racing passion and racing DNA of the company, in 1999 Mr Domaki decided to create Ducati Corsa as a racing arm of the company with a clear group of people only working on the racing on the technical side, marketing and sponsorhsips and communications side. This is when I decided to join this team. Most of my expertise is in the automotive business and mainly in motorsports.