The weather is starting to cool here in New York, which can only mean one thing: End-of-season motorcycle deals are about to start rolling in any minute. Powersports dealers want to make room on the showroom floor for snowmobiles, so they’ll be digging through their warehouses and putting everything that didn’t sell in the spring or summer out on sale. Like this 2019 Ducati Desmosedici GP19, for instance, which you could get for just $675,000 at an upcoming auction — how can you say no to a price like that?
This is, of course, not just any Ducati. The Desmosedici is the brand’s MotoGP bike, and the GP19 was the top bike for the 2019 season. This particular GP19 placed second out of the entire grid at the season’s end — it was the GP19 of Andrea Dovizioso, who could only be beat by Marc Marquez on the RC213V that season. This is a genuine number-one race bike from that season, meaning Dovizioso certainly rode it in pitched battle against names like Maverick Vinales, Fabio Quartararo, and Joan Mir.
It’s also just a beautiful bike
Dovizioso spent years of his MotoGP career with Ducati, and the GP19 was the second-to-last bike he ran in bright red. He now spends his time on two wheels as a test rider for Yamaha, even testing the company’s new V4 bike — a bike he’s likely comparing to the Ducati, the last V4 he ran in competition. This GP19 is a true piece of MotoGP history, and it’s not often that pieces like this show up so publicly at auction. It may look downright conservative in its aero compared to the modern bikes, but the GP19 is still a hell of a machine.
Iconic Auctioneers estimates that Dovizioso’s GP19 will sell for between about $675,000 and $945,000, plus auction premiums and whatever weird British taxes are involved. It may not be the cheapest end-of-season bike deal out there when it crosses the block in November, but it’ll certainly be cheaper than running an entire MotoGP program of your own just to get a bike — even if Ducati seems happy to throw a GP24 under half the grid. If you want to experience the apex of two-wheeled motorsport, or just own a piece of its history, there’s no better way than this GP19.
