The chances are you might not know who Alessandro Valia is but if you’ve seen a Ducati promotional video or ridden any new Ducati in the past few years, you will have experienced his work.
Those impossibly fast videos of a Ducati Superleggera V4 lapping racing circuits with a rider scraping his elbow on the track and sliding the bike sideways on the brakes and the throttle? That will be ‘Ale’ as he is called by his workmates at Ducati.
Valia is a super-cool Italian ex-racer who is ridiculously fast at riding motorcycles on track and on the road and has what many people might assume is a dream job… Ducati Official Test Rider.
Insidebikes sat him and down found out more about his job.
What is your background? How did you first become a Ducati test and development rider?
I started when I was five years old, with motocross bikes, and I switched to asphalt when I was 14… a lot of years with 125cc and 600cc race bike. In 2002 I was Italian Superstock champion and I raced as wild card in the Italian World Superbike rounds when I scored some points with a privately run superbike. After the race in Misano, Ernesto Marinelli (Ducati’s former WSB chief engineer) asked me to join the Ducati test team to develop the 999 factory bike, which won the championship with Neil Hodgson in 2003.
Are you a full-time Ducati employee?
Yeah!
What is your job title?
Ducati Official Test Rider
What is the best part of your job?
My work and my passion are the same thing.
All jobs have elements that are not so good? What is the worst part of your job?
I hate riding when it’s cold! Of course I am joking. I remember the first time I tested the cornering ABS and it was quite scary to perform panic braking at 50° of lean angle.
What is the one thing people get wrong when they think about what you do for a job?
That I only ride bikes and have fun every day.
If you could only own one Ducati for the rest of your life, which would you choose and why?
Streetfighter V4, the Ego Booster!
Is any motorcycle ever completely finished in terms of development? Or do you just run out of time and budget and have to make the best of it with what is available?
As you know it’s not easy to respect timing and budget of the project and I am never completely happy. I always want to have more and more and push my engineers very hard. We work day and night sometimes but it’s not so difficult because it’s also their passion too.
Of the bikes you have worked on, which one thing would you go back and change now you have the benefit of hindsight or more experience?
The first generation Streetfighter 1098, was particularly oriented towards handling stability and as a result the handling was not so intuitive. I would have worked in a different way on a bike that has still a stunning design.
If you could go back and be involved in the development of any Ducati in history, which one would you choose?
Diavel 1200 first generation was a really challenging project, where we started on a white paper to create a new segment. A muscle bike that has awesome handling, that reaches incredible decelerations, and of course accelerates like a superbike! Wowwww!!! And the 1260 DVT is even better!
What is the set-up for a Panigale V4 S you would use to set the fastest possible time around Mugello if the bike was on street-legal tyres?
I would use Riding Mode Race of course, with dynamic control of the suspensions, nothing else.
How does it feel to be far away from Bologna and see a customer riding a Ducati you have been involved in developing?
It’s a great feeling, I am proud of the work that all the guys in Borgo Panigale do. Every time I develop a bike I try to put myself in our client’s shoes, because I want them to have a fantastic experience with our bikes that are much more than an object, they are dreams that materialize.
Of all the Ducati bikes you have worked on, which one is your favourite and why?
Superleggera V4, because it is the maximum expression of technology, performance and sophistication.
What bikes do you have in your own garage?
I have only my 125 of the 1990s , an Aprilia AF1 Sintesi and Gilera Chrono. But I am really a lucky guy, because I also have a personal testing plate that I can put on every bike we have in the Ducati test garage!
What’s the single best innovation on motorcycles in the past 10 years?
I would say that there are two main innovations that have changed completely the rider life. First of all the cornering ABS that improves safety, avoiding crashes after a panic brake while leaning the bike over. In the case of Panigale V4 with the ABS set at level one “only front/cornering” this allows the rider to improve his performance on track with a safety net that can also save the rider from crashing if they make a mistake while pushing hard and leaning the bike over.
On the other side there’s new aerodynamic that work on the vehicle in a magic way, because it doesn’t influence the dynamic at low speed but gives big improvements in terms of stability and riding precision at high speed.
You have a full tank of fuel – the last you will ever be allowed to use – where are you going to ride?
Imola racing circuit! All the life!
