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/1496288
VOLUME ISSUE APRIL , P99 second and third gears. And with the Full power mode, you have just a very small reduction in first gear. That's primarily for the race mode? Yes. For the track. But for ex- ample, for me it's hard to drive with the Full mode because the power is too much. I'm not a professional pilot. I'm a normal person. So, I pre- fer to use the High mode, in which I have a small torque reduction, but it really helps me. Making a high-performance bike is not easy because a lot of power is not manageable by a lot of people. You also have to consider this aspect. We don't make a bike only for professional riders. Ales- sandro (Valia, Ducati's Lead Test and Development rider) is happy without the torque reduction, but he is different to most riders! I am happy with torque reduction. Depending on your riding ability and depending on the confidence you have on the track and with the bike, you can change this mode during the day. At this Andalucia circuit I can also ride with the Full power mode, but in many tracks, for example when I ride at Vallelunga in Rome, a track I use a lot, for me, rid- ing the Panigale with the Full mode is too much. My lap time is slower because it's too hard to manage. I can ride only for two or three laps very fast, and then the lap time increases because it requires too much effort in riding. When I use the power mode with the torque separation, every- thing becomes easier. I can ride six, seven laps with the same lap time. I'm more constant. I'm more concentrated on the track, and my lap time is a little bit lower. So, everything is easier. Tell me about the gear shift. One of the best things about this bike is how well it goes back through the gears at really high rpm. Yes, the quickshifter, and the software that manages it, inside the ECU all comes from the Pani- gale, that's why it works so well. But the bigger evolution of the quickshifter is on road, because we found a way to manage the gear shifting at low rpm and low torque that is much smoother. How long until we get seamless shift gearbox like in MotoGP? That's a complicated matter [laughs]. We would like to do it, of course. Everybody wants it, but I don't know if the market is ready. It would be very expensive, too. It would be expensive, plus I'm worried about reliability. In a racing bike, it's one thing. Road bikes are completely different. Racing bikes are used only in one way, always the same, flat out. Streetbikes, you have to consider all riding conditions. So, it's really more complicated. Is the electronic suspension the same as the old model? This new model is softer but more or less the philosophy is the same. So, it is the Ohlins event- based suspension. Thanks to the IMU (Inertial Measurement Unit) signals from acceleration, raw rate, pitch and lean, the software can recognize the driving phase in a very easy way. It's not something complicated. Sometimes the bet- ter solutions are the easy ones, especially when you're riding on track because you need the feeling. The feeling you have, the feeling only if there is a smooth evolution of the bike. Otherwise, you lose it immediately. You lose the connec- tion. So, the secret of even today's suspension is this. We don't change immediately in 20 milliseconds the thing. There is a stepper motor that continuously changes it, but you don't feel. You just feel more sup- port on your braking, more support when you are accelerating, and very soft suspension when you are leaning, so you have more contact feeling, especially in the front. Only at high speed, the system acts also as a steering damper. Then you He also likes to get down on his company's products and isn't shy to give it some!