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WEDNESDAY 10 JUNE 2009 kkk"achcfWmW`YbYkg"Wca
Track test MotoGP v WSB replicas
PICTURES AND VIDEO BY IAN JUBB
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1098R v DES RR
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Funnelling down through Almeria’s turn two, I’m cranked hard over and carrying as much corner speed as I dare aboard a Ducati 1098R, complete with a booming race exhaust and gooey Pirelli Superbike slicks. With so much mechanical grip on offer from this amazing machine our datalogger shows it’s pulling -1.25 lateral g through this long, fast downhill right hander. I can feel every pulse of the 1198.4cc engine throbbing through my hands, feet and bum. It’s mechanical
violence on an industrial scale. Each bump and ripple assaults nerve endings via slicks, lightweight wheels and Ohlins suspension. The intense noise and heat add to the show. This can’t be a WSB race replica… it feels like the real thing.
Is that Stoner ahead of me? To make the experience even more vivid, the approach to this technical third gear corner is butt-clenchingly blind and this is someone else’s one-off £32k two-wheeled work of art. And it gets better. Just two metres in front of me is a luminous red Ducati Desmo-
sedici RR – MCN’s 2008 Machine of the Year. Unless you’re a MotoGP rider, it’s a view you’ll see only from an on-board camera on TV. This is like the best ever wide-screen, surround-sound, smello-vision in the world. From where I’m sitting it may as well be Stoner in front of me. The eye-piercing colour ticks the box, as does the circularsection underseat exhaust, which is part of the £5450 GP exhaust system fitted to this amazing MotoGP replica. I can hear its V4 exhaust cry over the top of the 1098R and to top it all, fellow MCN tester, Bruce Dunn, has a similar style and the
physical size of young Casey himself. If I didn’t already have my hands full I’d have rubbed my eyes in disbelief.
Extreme and no compromises After two days spent in the hard race seats of the Desmosedici RR and 1098R, you really do have to kneel down and kiss the feet of Ducati for having the balls for producing two such extreme, uncompromising machines. This is Ducati all over, though. What other manufacturer would produce not only a WSB replica, but a MotoGP one as well? And these are the real deal, too – they are so close
to the real thing. The only parts Ducati changed from racer to road bike had to be done to make them road legal, durable and capable of starting on the button each morning – which they do. There’s actually little to separate these two incredible machines at Almeria. We’ve levelled the playing field by getting rid of the Des’s 16-inch rear wheel in favour of a 17-inch item from a 999R, so we can put both bikes on the same Pirelli Superbike slicks. They both have race exhausts, too, but despite this only a tenth of a second, in favour of the 1098R, separates them. But lap times don’t tell