VOLUME 56 ISSUE 30 JULY 30, 2019 P91
PATON S1-R
LIGHTWEIGHT TRACK
TEST—SC PROJECT
TO THE RESCUE
The latest S1-R Lightweight street-
bike features a big step up in
specification and performance
from before, and is hand built
in the Paton workshop within
its owner SC Project's massive
performance exhaust factory to the
west of Milan. Owned by partners
Stefano Lavazza and Marco De
Rossi, SC-Project www.sc-project.
com supplies the exhausts for the
world title-winning Repsol Honda
RC213V bikes of Márquez and
Lorenzo, and several Moto2 World
championship-winning bikes, too.
It also equips many WorldSBK
and WorldSSP entries including the
MV Agusta factory bikes, and pro-
vides a vast array of performance
exhausts for many different street
models. It acquired Paton in 2016,
since when the historic marque's
involvement in modern-day racing
has intensified, with two factory
racebikes entered for Dunlop and
Bonetti in all major 650 Lightweight
(Right) Michael
Dunlop goes
"full send" on
the Paton onhis
way to the 2018
Lightweight
TT win.
races, in addition to the eight
clones of Michael's race-winning
bike built and sold so far, prices
for which start at 37,000 ($41,550)
on up, depending on specifica-
tion—same as with the 25K street
version. Each bike is hand built to
order, with a four-week delivery time
currently quoted.
The S1-R was conceived in
2013 by Roberto Pattoni—son of
the firm's founder Giuseppe, who
passed away in 1999 and his chief
engineer, Andrea Realini, who also
formerly worked with Roberto's fa-
ther on Paton 500GP two-strokes.
"The idea was to create a bike
which incorporated Paton's history
and design ethos, but could be
used on the street," says Pattoni.
"There was naturally only one engine
we could ever use, because the
Kawasaki ER6 motor is a modern
version of the original Paton Bicilin-
drica, using the same parallel-twin
eight-valve DOHC format, with a
180-degree crankshaft and cassette
gearbox as the Paton Grand Prix rac-
ers—my father was the first person to
feature extractable gear ratios on a
motorcycle back in the early 1960s."
The S1-R Lightweight is available
with three different levels of engine
tune, up to and including the top
spec which sees 112 hp at 10,500
rpm delivered to the rear wheel of
the TT-winning Dunlop racebike.
But between that and the 72 hp at
