Ducati is saying that it welcomed a record 91,596 three-day attendance to its 10th biennial World Ducati Week at the Misano World Circuit “Marco Simoncelli” on July 20-22 – at least 10,000 more ‘Ducatisti’ than ever before.
The participants travelled to Italy’s Adriatic Riviera from five continents, representing 73 countries. While 60% of the riders were Italian, the remaining 40% are evidence of the power and appeal of the Ducati brand around the world – including two Chinese riders who rode their Multistrada 1200 Enduros 7,575 km through 10 countries from Xinjiang (China) to Bologna in just seven days.
Features included an exclusive "preview room" for a first chance to see one of Ducati's new motorcycles for 2019, meetings and autograph sessions with Ducati riders, riding courses and test rides, taxi drives on the track with high-performance Audi Group Lamborghini, Audi and Seat cars, technical courses at Ducati University, performances by stuntmen, track laps, the colourful "Land of Joy" of the Ducati Scrambler world, the Monster Village (celebrating the iconic bike's 25th anniversary), an area dedicated to the Panigale and the Multistrada Experience, featuring Carlin Dunne's Multistrada 1260 ‘Pikes Peak’, winner of this year’s iconic ‘Race To The Clouds’ in Colorado four weeks earlier.
Ducati took over a total of about 90,000 square metres inside the Circuit, 75,000 in the paddock and more than 15,000 dedicated to the off-road area and Ducati Scrambler Flat Race & School and DRE Safety.
The "Race of Champions" on July 21st was preceded by a spectacular flyover of the Frecce Tricolori aerobatic team. The race featured 12 Ducati MotoGP and SBK Champions competing on the Misano circuit, riding specially prepared with race configuration Panigale V4 Specials. The race was won by Michele Pirro, followed by Rabat, Forés, Miller, Melandri, Rinaldi, then Dovizioso, Siméon, Petrucci, Lorenzo, Abraham and Bayliss to complete the exceptional line-up of “Champions".
Ducati also decided to give fans all over the world the chance to buy the 13 "Race Of Champions" Panigales through a public auction on eBay.
All Ducati employees were actively involved in planning the event and the weekend saw more than 250 people from the company (managers, engineers, technicians and employees) on duty as organisational staff.
For the “Ducatisti Statisti” out there, more than 10,250 laps were completed on the track by cars and motorcycles; 43,000 photos were taken by staff photographers (900 GB of photos); 72 hours of video were shot; 147 Ducati Owners Clubs were represented from 33 countries, and over 1,200 test rides were taken on 40 available bikes. The 45 page dedicated event website generated a total of 612,000 page views since going online, 17 million Instagram impressions were recorded with a 13 million reach, the “Race of Champions” live stream reached 631,477 people, 1,124,053 people were reached by the Ducati Scrambler digital channels with 103,450 people interacting, the official followers count exceeded 800,000 with 22,898,694 Facebook impressions, a 14,949,151 reach, and 13,105 App downloads - oh, and Sky Television gave the event two hours of live broadcast too.
