2015 DUCATI 1299 PANIGALE S
FIRST RIDE
P54
long left-handers where you're
cranked hard over with your
knee on the deck, and reaching
the gear lever is a little awkward.
Before, doing so would have lost
momentum as the peakier 1199
Panigale motor struggled to get
on the cam, but this new one is
far more flexible, and thus friend-
lier. It's now happy to run as low
as 4,000 rpm in a turn like Por-
timao's first left-hander—a tight
hairpin with a downhill entry and
uphill exit—pulling cleanly out of
there with a much more linear
power delivery than the old bike,
which behaved more like a ring-
ding two-stroke in midrange than
a muscular V-twin Superbike.
The 1299 starts to pick up en-
gine speed a bit faster at just over
5,000 rpm, and from there to the
torque peak at 8,750 rpm there's
a delicious wave of grunt that
you look forward to surfing each
time you catch it. But even after
that peak has been reached,
the midrange torque doesn't fall
away. It stops building, but stays
pretty much constant all the way
to 11,000 rpm, by which time the
shifter lights either side of the
Thin Film Transistor (TFT) dash
before the large central one flash-
es brightly at 11,500 rpm to tell
you that you've hit the revlimiter.
Being a Ride-By-Wire (RBW) digi-
tal throttle there's no cutout—you
just stop building speed and revs.
With the broad spread of power
and torque the 1299 now has,
there's no need to rev it right out
to the limiter like on the 1199.
I already know from only rid-
ing it on the track that the 1299
The new Panigale
was a joy to
ride on the
fast, undulating
Portimao World
Superbike circuit.
