When but a mere youth, living in So Cal and riding my 1974 Honda 550/4, which I'd bought for $1,400 brand-new, the best medium-size machine on the market then ... and perhaps even now ... A good friend of mine who lived in upstate New York had connections to the family and the company which imported MV Agusta motorcycles, then, and even now, considered among the best, if not the single best, performance and racing motorcycle brand on earth.
Calling the Agusta "the two-wheel Ferrari" was even considered something of an insult ... to Ferrari. Ridden by Giacomo Agostini, Mike Hailwood to I-forget-how-many-World-Championships, MV Agusta was legendary, even mythical, in those days when two-stroke multi-cylinder machines from Japan were taking over the championship titles from the old guard like Ducati, MV Agusta, Triumph, BMW, Harley-Davidson and all the other traditional four-strokers. But the four-strokes would make their way back into road racing, a they have today, as environmental concerns began doing away with the noisy, oil-burning two-strokes. I say all this about MV Agusta because that machine was my introduction to Italian motorcycles. Just how serious are the people who make these machines? Well, MV Agusta makes a machine named "Brutale", and Ducati has their "Monster". Serious names for serious bikes. Ducati's all-new 1098 R is a racing motorcycle which incidentally also happens to be street-legal, offering 180 horsepower in a 364 pound machine. Now that's serious, too.
And now, once again, Ducati says they have raised the bar and set a world standard for sport bikes, while turning the heads and racing the hearts of enthusiasts throughout the world. The 'R' is a race bike, says Ducati, pure and simple, combining competition specifications and superior components together with advanced electronics and race-proven chassis technology delivering a level of performance that empowers riders with confidence and capability.
Ducati says the 1098 R is the lightest, most powerful twin-cylinder bike ever, and its true competition-level traction control system, supplied standard, offers maximum track performance. The most advanced, most powerful twin-cylinder motorcycle ever built also has the highest torque-to-weight ratio in the sport bike category. It is the product of a team of designers and engineers focused on one objective only – to win, according to the company. Price of admission: $45,085.
Also, Ducati says that World Superbike rule changes mean that the road-going 'R' version is closer than ever to the factory race bike. The 1098 R is not a replica - it's the real deal. A 180 hp L-Twin Testastretta Evoluzione engine in a race-winning Trellis chassis set-up tips the scales at an unbelievably lightweight 165 kg (364 lbs) and comes with a race kit that introduces Ducati Corse's world championship winning traction control system.
Corse, which means "race" in English, is Ducati's racing side within the factory, building the company's championship road racing machines. It's also the catalog of available high-performance parts for the public.
Ducati also states that trademark Ducati features like the high tail section, compact front end, twin under-seat silencers and single-sided swingarm are just some of the features that turned the 1098 models into an instant award-winning success. When launched in November 2006, the 1098 and 1098 S introduced a number of 'firsts' for Ducati and production sport bike design. It was the first production motorcycle to have the amazing stopping power of Brembo Monobloc brakes, the first to have a data acquisition system integrated as standard equipment and the first to use an ingenious construction method for its weight-saving single-sided swingarm. More 'firsts' for a road-going Ducati included the direct application of MotoGP technology, like the power producing GP6-derived elliptical throttle bodies and the use of the information-rich instrumentation originally developed for the World Championship-winning Desmosedici GP7.
Summing up, Ducati's press information goes on to state that the 'R' version of the 1098 is not only the flagship of the Superbike family, but also the platform on which the very latest Ducati Corse technologies are expressed in street bike form. The 1098 R takes all the original 1098 features, reduces weight even further and adds an extra 20 horsepower, traction control, sand-cast crankcases, titanium valves and con-rods, TTXR rear suspension and much more to produce the most awesome performance ever seen in this category.
For those who can't stand the idea of riding a machine like this on the street and is in need of a race track to more completely explore the 1098 R's full bag of tricks, the 1098 R comes with a race kit, which is intended for track use only, boosting power output from 180 to approximately 186 hp. The kit consists of a 102dB carbon fiber slip-on muffler kit by Termignoni and a dedicated ECU. The ECU not only has reconfigured mapping to suit the racing mufflers, but also initiates the system dialog that controls the DTC (Ducati Traction Control) system. Ducati concludes that the 1098 R is the first ever production bike to be fitted with a true competition-level traction control.
Desmosedici is Ducati's name for their series of racing-oriented street and race bikes. It's derived from the name for the valve system developed by Dr.Fabio Taglioni, Desmodromic. This is a valve system wherein the engine valves are both opened and closed by a cam. Advantages of a Desmo engine are that there are no heavy, power-robbing springs used to close the valves, which means better protection for the engine if it is over revved, and better performance and/or overall efficiency.
In a racing application, a normal valve spring engine might have, for example, an upper rpm limit of about 10,000 rpm; that same engine, with a Desmodromic valve system, could be capable of perhaps 15,000 rpm, and that much more power. Ducati and Mercedes are two major companies who have used the Desmodromic system in racing engines. Currently, only Ducati makes a production machine using a Desmodromic valve system. The disadvantages of the Desmodromic valve system are both its complexity and its cost.
Now, I can remember some 20-or-so years ago, when BMW was the first motorcycle-builder to fit anti-lock brakes to a production motorcycle ... Then again, I also remember watching Reg Pridmore on a factory BMW racing against one of the early Kawasaki two-strokers piloted by Yvon Duhamel (father of the current racing star Miguel Duhamel), the two dicing on the world-famous Corkscrew, part of the race track at Laguna Seca just outside of Monterey, CA ... Time marches on, especially on two wheels!
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