Cycle News

VOL. 52 ISSUE 23 JUNE 9, 2015 P59 though exiting either of Imola's tighter chicanes as low as 5000 rpm will still deliver decent drive, unlike before. However, with the DWC (Ducati Wheelie Control) set on Ducati's default level two (of eight) I found the front wheel consistently reaching for the sky, even driving hard uphill from the Tosa hairpin which is the only place at Imola where you're going in a straight line for more than a couple of seconds. All the other straights aren't really that, so you're even leaned over flat out in fifth gear round the long left after the pits, and this means that if the wheel pops in the air as you shift through the gears to fifth (Davide Giugliano gears his Superbike to use just four speeds here, and Chas Davies only uses five gears), coupled with the suspension pumping slightly, you're going to get insta- bility as manifested by the 'bars flapping in your hands. Switching to level three DWC helped a little in calming things down, coupled with weighing up the footrests to force more of my body weight forward on to the front wheel, but it still got squirrely exiting Acque Minerali uphill leaned quite hard over to the left in second, then third gear. Switching to level four seemed to fix it, but at the cost of slightly detracting from accel- eration – or maybe it felt slower just because everything was calmer! Face it – this is a Super- bike with lights, so the fact the new engine format makes it gain revs so much faster brings other issues in its wake – you might say these are good problems to have. Same thing with the TC – I started out on level four and came down to setting this on level two, at which point there was quite a noticeable bit of rear wheel spin, with the warning light on the dash almost con- stantly illuminated at some points on the track. But the upside was that the Panigale R now acceler- ates like a four-cylinder 1000cc bike – and having been riding its V4 Aprilia RSV RF rival just a couple of weeks earlier, I had a good basis for comparison. Believe me, Ducati has bridged the gap. T R A I N S T O P P E R S Faster acceleration means you come to the next corner going quicker than you would other- wise, and that made me glad for the superlative response from the Ducati's Brembo brake package, which combined with the exhaust valve on the Akrapo- vic system, which you can feel coming into effect just as you approach the apex of a given turn, stopped the Panigale R re- ally well from high speed. It was really stable in doing so, too – I didn't get the rear wheel lifting and street-sweeping me into a corner however hard I squeezed the lever, to the point that I even started pushing my braking markers. As with all other Panigale S P E C I F I C A T I O N S 2015 DUCATI PANIGALE R ENGINE: ................... Liquid-cooled L-twin, 4 valves per cylinder, Desmodromic DISPLACEMENT: .............................1198cc BORE X STROKE: ...............112 x 60.8mm HORSEPOWER: ............. 205hp @ 11,500 TORQUE: .............100.5lb-ft @ 10,250rpm COMPRESSION RATIO: ..................... 13.2:1 IGNITION: ............................................. Key TRANSMISSION: ........................Six-speed FRONT SUSPENSION: ......... Öhlins NIX30 43mm fully adjustable USD fork REAR SUSPENSION: ...........Öhlins TTX36 unit, fully adjustable FRONT WHEEL TRAVEL: ................... 4.7 in. REAR WHEEL TRAVEL: ......................5.1 in. FRONT BRAKE: .................... Twin 330mm semi-floating discs, radially-mounted Brembo Monobloc EVO M50 4-piston calipers, ABS REAR BRAKE: .......................245mm disc, twin-piston caliper, ABS FRONT TIRE: .........................Pirelli Diablo Supercorsa 120/70 ZR17 REAR TIRE: .......Pirelli Diablo Supercorsa 200/55 ZR17 FRONT WHEEL: ............ Forged light alloy 3.5 x 17 REAR WHEEL: ............... Forged light alloy 6.0 x 17 RAKE: .....................................................24° TRAIL: ...............................................3.8 in. SEAT HEIGHT: ................................32.7 in. WEIGHT: ...............406 lbs (dry, claimed) COLOR: ...................... Ducati Racing Red MSRP: .......................................... $33,995 variants, the new R-bike steers brilliantly in turns thanks to the way that Ducati has compacted the mass of the bike with the Su- perquadro engine architecture. Sticking the exhaust (complete

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