Cycle News is a weekly magazine that covers all aspects of motorcycling including Supercross, Motocross and MotoGP as well as new motorcycles
Issue link: https://magazine.cyclenews.com/i/127809
RACER TEST Troy Corser's and John Kocinski's Factory Ducati 996cc Superbike Comparison By Alan Cathcart· Photos by Kel Edge and Guus van Goethem oohan and Criville, Hill and Villeneuve, Slight and Fogarty, Corser and Kocinski. 1996 was the Year of the Teammate, when your closest rival was the guy on the other side of the pit garage, with a bike or car identical to yours. Except - Troy Corser and John Kocinski weren't ever really teammates; this year, they just happen to have been riding apparently identical works. Superbikes, supplied by the Ducati factory but to two rival teams. The same motorcycle - or different? Only one way to find out. So with the cooperation of Troy's Power Horsesponsored Promotor equipe managed by Davide Tardozzi, John's Kremlyovskaya Vodka-backed Virginio' Ferrari team and the Assen track management headed by former journalist Hans van Loozenoord, I spent the day after the Dutch round of the 1996 World Superbike Championship on course work any student of motorcycling would covet: compare and con trast the two factory desmos heading Ducati's efforts to retain their World Superbike crown in the face of Honda's determined' onslaught on four-stroke bike racing's ul timate prize. Mind you, the day before I had wondered if 1'd have anything left to ride, D after the two Ducati riders traded paintwork with each other as well as Carl Fogarty's Honda in a last-corner, se"cond-race dust-up that was breathtalcingIy thrilling, even by World Superbike's nail-biting standards of excitement. From talking to the two riders and watching them in action, I was ready for these two motorcycles to be very different from each other to ride. Each man has his own distinct riding style and choice of setup, and like its Japanese rivals, the racing version of the Ducati 916 is as multi-adjustable as a GP bike, to take account of this. But what I wasn't at all prepared for was the radical difference between these 1996 versions of the 996cc "jumbo" desmo, and its title-winning predecessors in the Ducati family tree, epitomized by Carl Fogarty's 955cc world championship bike that I rode a . year ago after he'd clinched his second world title on it. That Lady in Red'was the ultimate traditional-style Duke, a turbocharged tractor with meaty midrange, ultraflat torque curve and hefty reserves of power all through the rev range up to the 1l,750-rpm rev limiter. Even with the extra 22 pounds of weight that series" organizers F1amrnini Racing had forced the Ducati team to carry when they raised the twin-cylinder minimum weight limit to 341 pounds halfway through the season, the 955cc Ducati still packed a midrange punch that allowed it to out-accelerate its fourcylinder rivals. And in 996cc form as raced by Fogarty in the first and las\ rounds of the '95 season, there was a massive 12 bhp more power on tap at 8,500 rpm compared to .the 955, though about the same 154 bhp output at the top end. Impressive. Only, the '96 version of the jumbo desmo is a different breed of Duke. This is a four-stroke GP racer masquerading as a twin-cylinder Superbike - no wonder 500cc GP lap times have been equaled and even beaten by the Ducatis at many circuits this season. Last year's torquey, easy-riding super-slugger has been replaced by a peakier revhound that you'd have a hard time convincing yourself was a big-bore twin with hefty 98mm soupbowl pistons, if not for the lazy-sounding boom issuing from the Terrnignoni exhaust. Ducati's team of race engineers has achieved one of the'great development feats of the modem era, in both compensating for the additional 15.4-pounds weight penalty they were hit with this season by the introduction of the common 356.4-pound weight limit for twins and fours, and matching the relentless improvemeot in performance from their fOl,U-cylinder rivals, principally Honda. 'They've done this by means of a twin-prong attack, increasing capacity of the otto valvole engine that began life as a 750 exactly a decade ago to the maximum 1000cc twin-cylinder limit for ·the Superbike class, and at the same time going for revs. Some paradox - a bigger engine that revs higher than its predecessor, and a lot higher, at that: Troy Corser admitted after that second Assen race that he'd been revving the engine of the bike I was going to ride the following day to 12,700 rpm! The fact it survived speaks for itself even if the Promotor team hasn't been so lucky all through the season, suffering the huge total of more than 20 engine failures so far in 1996, against none at·all last season for Carl Fogarty in his championship year. There's an inevitable price to be paid for all that extra top end power, and the revs that produce it. . But these aren't just revs for the sake of it - there is a payoff, in the form of an extra 7 bhp more at the top end, and 8 bhp more at 8,500 rpm compared to last