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PETEMAUHAR D rafted into the team from round seven at Utah Motorsports Campus, #RideHVMC Crew Chief Pete Mauhar from Gemini Racing has a wealth of experience in the AMA Pro Road Racing paddock, including managing the Mi- chael Jordan Motorsports team for a decade. Pete's input was vital in getting the Ducati Panigale's electrical issues sorted for round eight at Laguna Seca. What were some of the issues you faced with the development of this Panigale R? Basically, I flew into Miller and hadn't really even seen the bike before, only pictures. The team was struggling a bit with the stock electronics, the fuel mapping, some of the general "make the bike run" stuff. The on/off throttle was bad. I think each weekend we've tried to make some strides towards improving the electronics package which was traction control, wheelie control and electronic engine brak- ing. It kept getting better each weekend, and with that being more stable we could then focus more on suspension. You guys were using Tune Boy software from Australia for the first half of the year, and then you had a Ducati Corse technician come over and re-flash the ECU back to stock. Right, and we just manually mapped it here at the racetrack instead on a dyno where it belongs, but because we were in the middle of the season we didn't have the time to do that. We've been looking at lambda curves and picking points out and going in and changing the map. Are you going to run the Magneti Marelli electronics next year? I think we are, yes. It's a new system. It's a proven system. All of the world superstock teams run it, so that is a better starting point. It's more tunable whereas here, this is a street bike with street elec- tronics. The parameters for, say, traction control, those settings work for the street but they really don't for a racer at race pace. I think the Magneti Marelli will give us two things: it's a lot more tunable and it also integrates data acquisition where you don't have a pig- gyback BBS system to alter the wheelie and traction control settings, like we use now. What about suspen- sion? How does Corey like his bike set up? On the 600s he seemed to like a somewhat high front that was soft with lots of trail, with the rear a bit low and stiff and not a lot of movement. But the Ducati is a whole different animal. Here we've tried a high bike, a low bike, a front-heavy bike, a back- heavy bike, big preload, little preload. We haven't really hit the sweet spot yet. Even some of the changes I've made to try to get Corey to come in and even say, "Wow, that's horrible. That's definitely the wrong direction." But we haven't even seen that. So you're taking big chunks out of it and not seeing the equivalent result. Right, which you'd think you would see. So we've been struggling with that. Does that come down to the mono- coque design of the Panigale R? It may. It might be a characteristic of the bike with the short swingarm and no frame. Maybe it's the tires. It may also be that we're running different suspension than they do in Europe, or the factory trac- tion control and wheelie stuff that's still fighting us. We're not really sure, ex- actly. We can get the bike to the point where he's al- most at race pace, but he needs that half a second and we're trying to find the solution that gives him the confidence to push that little bit harder. action cut of forward motion, nothing at all like early Panigale systems that would slam your family jewels into the tank when in action. Across the two six- lap sessions, I engage the TC system only a couple of times, purely down to me not being comfortable enough on a brand new track to really push this foreign machine that I don't own and, more importantly, can't af- ford if I crash! Despite this, hitting the throttle hard when cranked right over out of turn four is a blast on this bike. Power progressively dialed in through second gear, VOL. 53 ISSUE 41 OCTOBER 18, 2016 P113