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Issue link: https://magazine.cyclenews.com/i/128604
Time to declare an interest or two, even if many readers already have PLAYING CARL After five or six laps just putting around trying to keep the tires warm and waiting for a dry line to appear, it still hasn't rained yet. so I start to step up the pace. Doing so makes a bike, that at slower speeds seems curiously cumbersome, perform a chameleon-like quick-change - in personality, at least. The actual quick-change itself is a different matter, the KLS power-shifter on the Fogarty bike is just as hyper-sensitive and frankly dysfunctional as I remember from the last time I rode one of his bikes two years ago. In '98 it was the Corser and Chili duo of works desmos that I sampled, and they both had the KLS set up much more rationally - well, to my taste, I guess I should say. To each his own, and Carl obviously likes a gearshift so sensitive that even brushing it with your toe as you're changing from side to side in a chicane has the ignition cutting out. sending the bike lurching and stuttering as you try to redress your mistake. After stopping briefly in the pits to try an alternative setting, without success, I give up and switch it off, shifting up normally my number, so won't need reminding about them. My annual ride on a Ducati Superbike is one of the highlights of my track testing year, and not just because, more often than not, it's a chance to sling a leg over the bike that yet again has won the World Superbike crown. But, as is generally known by fellow DucaListi, I've been racing Ducatis myself for the past quarter-century, ever since I bought one of the first V -twin customer desmos ever to roll out of the Bologna race shop back in 1974, right up to the 'Ducatina' Supermono I had so much success, and fun, with in the decade just ended. Even in the dog days before Ciaudio Castiglioni and his brother saved Ducati from destitution and set it on the path to its present prestige, I still admired the desmodromic way of doing things. even if it was considered vaguely eccentric to actually write about them fifteen years ago, when Cagiva took over. Well - now it ain't, and the main reason is the other interest I must also declare, and that flag on the side of my helmet might tell you that - or, rather, who that is. Because it's thanks primarily to Carl Fogarty that FF1 class - I've had my eye on young Carl (well, younger than me, anyway!), and from the day in 1992 when he blitzed the world's best four-stroke riders on a private Ducati prepared by my mate Steve Wynne to win a round of the World Superbike series at Donington, Foggy's been my hero. OK, OK - journalists are supposed to be impartial, I know. But I'm a bike fan who ended up making a living out of his hobby - so cut me some slack, and allow me to hero-worship at the court of King Carl. Actually, it's not so much the fact of the Fogarty fame that's so admirable, but the way he goes about eaming it. I mean - the eyes; the animal way he muscles the motorcycle into submission, willing it on, both mentally and physically, to do his bidding; the take-no-prisoners urge to win that still remains well on the sporting side of endeavor; and above all, the fact that through it all, as Britain's most successful sportsman in any sphere as the 20th century drew to a close, he still remains untainted by stardom, unfazed by celebrity, continuing to race because it's what he's good aI, and still enjoys it. Not many riders leading the World Championship by 69 points halfway through the season would crash in the lead of a race as Carl did at the Nurburgring last year, get right back on and blast through the backmarkers just to finish '15th and earn a single lousy point for doing so. True grit. So, sorry - but I'm a Foggy fan, and the fact he's done it all on a Duke just sort of makes it all better. Full Disclosure Ducati today owns such an envi- able recent heritage of sporting success, with 50% of the company's tally of eight World Superbike crowns accounted for by the British star. Ever since I first raced against him back in '1988 at the Pergusa circuit down in Sicily, the day he clinched his first world title by succeeding the man who would take him to World Superbike success, Virginio Ferrari, as king of the TT Hero worship: The author gets advice from Carl Fogarty (left) and team manager Davide Tardozzi (right). eye I e n eVIlS MARCH 15, 2000 19