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/128355
James roseland's Ducati 999 F04 Dr:C/'rrrrn~r So perhaps that is another reason why the F04 doesn't shake its head like the Hodgson F03 did. The current 999 still stops as brilliantly as before , braking in a stable and predictable way from the 200-meter mark at the end of the kilometer-long st raight, thanks to the great bite coupled with the good feel of the ventilated Brembo radial brake package. But there are two more factors helping t he desmo V-twin superbike stop so hard and so controll ably. The first is the Ducat i's superb ramp-style slipper clutch, with its distinct ive click-on upward shifts and even clutchless wideop en ones , w hich you can feed out progressively to really maximize engine braking without chattering the back wheel under reverse torque, even with those big pistons. The second factor is the lower seating position , which in turn reduces we ight transfer under braking and helps stop the bike from weaving about when you brake very hard. This ultrapredictable, stable behavior means you can stop the Ducati very hard and late, knowing you can pick a line and stick to it. Of course, there's still that same won derful engine, easily the greatest asset of the series of title-winn ing Ducati superbikes over the past decade and a half, and still my personal favorite race engine of any make that I've had the honor of samp ling. Even with zero development for extra performance in 2004 , this is still a deeply impressive package, so smooth and potent, whose appetite for revs without sacrificing any of the desmo V-twin's legendary torque all the way through the rev range seems very improbable until you experi ence it. Those huge 104-bore pistons will power up smoothly to the soft-action, 13,200 rpm rev limiter if you want to hold 66 JANUARY 5, 2005 • a gear to save a co uple of changes on the sweet-action powershifter - easily the nicest I've yet sampled on a works Ducati. The motor is not nearly as abrupt or snatch y as it was last year - or especially as it was back in the Fogarty days. For Ducati to produce a race engine that pulls mean ingfully from as low as 4000 rpm and has a comple tely linear build of power over what amounts to a 9000-rpm powerband, that is truly amazing. Tap the race -pattern powershifter almost anywhere in that milewide powerband, and you're rewarded with a halfoctave change in the ex haust note and just as much power and torque as you had before. Truly impres sive. The way the power builds so fast , yet predictably, accompanied by the flat, distinctive blat from the underseat exhaust 's single silencer, is the F04's main asset . In spite of the impressive power-to-we ight ratio of 189 bhp at 12,500 rpm delivered by a bike scaling just over t he 360-pound twincylinder weight limit, the Ducati has such a smooth and torquey power delivery that you get a shock when you glance at the tacho and find you're already revving to 11 ,000 rpm - there's no rea l sense the engine is spinning that hard and no undue vibration of any kind to give you a rem inder that it might be. Yet, with the Ducati geared high enough overall to break the 18S-m ph barrier down the long Mugello front straight (the team never changes the internal gear ratios why bother, with such a flexible motor?), that meant using bottom gear in a couple of the chicanes , without a hint that you're passing through neutral as you do so. I found it was better to short-shift at around I 1,500 rpm in fourth in preparation for the demanding off-camber left-hander dropping down t he hill behind the Mugello pad- CYCLE NEWS dock . It helped the Ducati run a tighter line through it before I got hard on the gas to drive up the hill , pulling hard. Seriously fast. So, dial up at least six grand on the digital Marelli infocenter, incorporated in the ECU in front of the adjustable steering head , and you 're rewarded with deci sive and controllable, rather than explosive, drive out of the turn . Still, if you 're smart, you'll remind yourself to pull the Ducati upright to avoid getting out of shape under the vivid acceleration the desmo V-tw in is capable of, hovering the front whe el above the ground out of turns as you gas it wide open down to the next one. Care must be taken to feather the rear brake to prevent the Ducat i from pulling an outright power wheelie, which might look the business but loses precious time - go, not show. Anyway, the first time the rear Pirelli on James Toseland's F04 Ducati lost drive on me at Mugello and started spinning, I'll admit I instinctively got frightened at the thought of crashing the I89-bhp bike that James had to go win the World title on in the com ing month , and I did all the wrong things - like instinct ively backing off the throttle. Mistake! Actually, it proba bly would have been one on anything less forgiVing than the soft rear Pirellithat the Italian tire company's race boss Giorgio Barbier had supplied for me. So, what might have been a crash turned into a vicious flick of the handlebars as I regained involuntary control - what a star, see how I saved that? Well, no, actually - the Pirelli did it for me . But at least I was smart enough to know what to do next time that happened I'd seen enough of those fabulous TV shots of James leaving black darkies while powersliding around the last fast turn at Phillip Island, as the smoke plumed off his rear Slipirelli, to realize what had to be done . So I began spinning the back tire and stilldriving forward , and the Ducati let me do it because of its so-friendly power delivery, that controllable chassis and the acres of manageable torque. Let me tell you, it's a big, B-I-G thrill powersliding a bike this fast so controllably - not sure if it makes you go any faster, mind, but it's still serious fun! Infact, in gett inga short preview of what it's like to go racing at the world level in the control tire era rather than on a few handmade trick tires, I can say from experie nce that the re's now a volume production range of race rubber, cranked out by machines, delivering adequate if not exceptional performance that is shared by all, rather than a select few. And while it doesn't have the same level of outright grip as the tr ick stuff, it is reckoned by many riders to be controllable and predictable from first to last, so it lasts better. And that helps make average riders safe ones , as well as leaving it down to the qualities of bike and man to win the day at the highest level. I reckon Ducati can be pretty satisfied with winning the 2004 World Superbike Championship with the 999 F04, because this time it was the bike that did it, on its own , guided by the best man over the 22race season - not because of the tires. Winning on a level playing field underlines that the Ducati 999 really is the best bike in the superbi ke business - and the FilaDucat i team can take a lot of credit for putting it on a pedestal two years in a row, making it a two-time World Champion, under old rules and new, and with a good chance of making it three in a row in 2005... Care to bet against it? eN