Yesterday, during the presentation of the Ducati MXGP project, Paolo Ciabatti, General Manager of Ducati Off-Road, took many by surprise by commenting that plans for AMA Supercross in the United States are not yet fully defined.
Ducati’s initial U.S. plan is to enter AMA Supercross for the 2026 season after joining forces with Troy Lee Designs. In fact, we got our first glimpse of the TLD/Ducati alliance at the first AMA Supercross event in Anaheim 1.
“Supercross is something we will do, but we haven’t decided when yet. We have an agreement with Troy Lee Design, which at the moment is something more focused on preparations for the future. At the moment the team will be showing the bike at eight rounds of AMA Supercross. We actually sent two prototypes from last year since we didn’t have any pre-production models at that time. Troy worked his magic with incredible designs on the bikes to showcase them in Anaheim. Right now we want to get the market ready for when the bike arrives in July, so people who like supercross and motocross can get a first-hand look at the bike.”
On AMA Supercross plans | Nothing decided:
“We have a signed contract with Factory Connection (suspensions), so we’re going to work with Ziggy (Rick Zielfelder) to develop the bike. Hopefully by the beginning of the month we’ll be able to send out another couple of pre-series bikes so they can start working with them. Based on the evaluation we will get from them, we will be able to decide when the time is right to race. At the moment we don’t plan to race supercross in 2026. Maybe AMA Pro Motocross and then the full season in 2027. As I say, until we know how close or far away we are at the competitive level, it’s impossible for us to make a decision.”
