I would love to read the article and watch the video but the bloody cookies consent notice covers the whole screen and I can’t get rid of it because the reject/accept button off the bottom of the screen, but the page won’t scroll properly and “rebounds” back up again when I pull it down.
People get carried with the latest and greatest but if you look at lap records over the last 10 .. even 20 years the lap records haven’t changed ‘that’ much considering the development and power increases. I’d wager the biggest changes have been tyre tech and braking...
Discussed in depth here - thread merge required https://www.ducatiforum.co.uk/threads/k5-vs-v4s.81073/
My pal won NLR a few years back on a k6. Another pal runs an 08 fireblade and batters all sorts of exotic modern machinery on it. A fast rider will beat a pretty fast rider on a modern bike. As said in the other thread. People get too hung up over headline figures and the latest and greatest bikes. If you look at the lap records over the last 10-15 years they’ve not changed much really.
Ducati’s in general are famously difficult to ride fast (actually fast not trackday fast). extra power etc only really helps if you can use it and most can’t. I beat a lot of modern 1000’s last year on my old Honda which had no electronics and at the time a totally stock engine which couldn’t pull the skin of a rice pudding
Easily. If anyone’s ridden the current gixxer it’s a lot easier to ride fast than the Ducati’s have ever been. It’s unusual to see a Ducati doing very fast laptimes unless it’s in a decent factory supported race team. It’s why the gen4 is doing decent laptimes out of the box. It’s easy to live with. my calculations when buying the Suzuki was that I knew it would need certain things but i could do all those things cheap enough and even if I went a bit mad I could have a full superstock race bike at the same cost of say a standard bmw out of a showroom. And the Suzuki with the bits is a much better package. (In race trim it’s done very well from club level to national, TT, world endurance stock1000 etc). stock 1000 is the best teller of how good a bike is as they are close to stock. Superbikes are largely irrelevant tbh as they’re miles off stock. A sorted bike beats an expensive showroom bike every time
GS are the fastest bikes on the road, everyone knows that! I've been having lots of fun baiting racebikes around the Apennine Mountains outside Bologna on my GS haha!!
It’s quite a tight little twisty track that Buttonwillow. The 600 lap record is only a second off the 1000
Fair points there. Also, in the last 44teeth superbike group test the V4s was the slowest, although as they said these lap times are not accurate and Chris managed to crash the "uncrushable" bike These latest bikes are so good I would buy based on reliability and value for monies. Cannot be bothered by looks on a track bike.
There’s no such thing as a crap bike anymore in the superbike sector. It’s all down to taste and what flavour you like
Just as the electronics packages that are now commonplace made it to road bikes - I think Aprilia was the first to bring comprehensive electronics to the road with their first iteration of aPRC on the RSV4 - I was very much a fan of the analogue bikes and Aprilia's and Yamaha's throttle modes on the non-aPRC RSV4 and the first crossplane R1 respectively were enough for me. Whilst I admire the sophistication of the technology we have on bikes and how it advances, I'm still not convinced it's necessary for road riding; anti-wheelie, multi-stage traction control, launch control, multi-axis sensors, etc. to ride round country roads. That said, where I've had bikes with these electronics, such as my aPRC RSV4 and now 899, I leave them on, but dialed down, as I'm never going to ride fast enough on the road to utilise them, and I've never had moments on my older thousands where I thought I wish I had electronics. I appreciate it's different if you're tracking your bike.
I have this mental argument regularly. I came off of a 600 recently. I can’t believe how easy the modern 1000’s are to ride. It’s kind of sad ... I do like them. But for me they do detract from the rewarding feeling you get from actually riding the bike. I know some argue that you still are riding it and Ofcourse you are.. but realistically the bike is helping you on a lot. it’s not very pure. It’s a bit like comparing a caterham to a gtr for me atleast. From what I gather/hear most of the stock1000 fast guys have it turned off or down very low. Which is nice to hear
I managed to watch the vid and as others have probably already picked up, the Gixxer was on slicks while the Pani appeared to be on Supercorsas. The tyre difference must be worth a couple of seconds a lap, plus as it’s a tight and twisty track, that negates the power advantage. So they were basically comparing apples to oranges.
Lolz, that’ll teach me for not watching all the way to the end Edit: I watched the last 5 minutes and after the big reveal, the explanation seems to be that the Pani had a stupidly soft spring fitted for road comfort. I bet you my next bike that that’s an American market spec, because from what I’ve seen on YouTube and forums, many bikes ridden in the USA rarely see a corner and the bike bros’ focus seems to be on straight line speed and truly dreadful bling. Heck, I bet Ducati US even offer an extended swing arm and neons as an optional extra. The relative rarity of twisty roads out there might also be one of the reasons why the Septics don’t seem to produce many world class racers considering how large their population is and how wealthy.
That’s correct. They put the Suzuki back on its road tyres (same ones as the Ducati) and it was still quicker. Their conclusion was the standard rear suspension spring on the Ducati is too soft for most people. I wouldn’t be surprised if the K5 would still be quicker for most people in most circumstances even with a stiffer spring in the Ducati. Suzukis and Jap road bikes in general have always been easier to ride than Ducatis. Ducatis are more about how they feel to ride ... and own!
Put the two on somewhere like Snetterton and it’ll be a different story with the 1100 dropping it down the straights and the Brembos outperforming whatever cheese the K5 used for brakes
