Talk about ‘The Penny Just Dropped’. All summer MotoGP and Ducati fans marvelledat Ducati’s apparent obstinacy. What becamemore and more apparent was that their ‘frame’ – actually a carbon fibre box,which allowed vast quantities of air to be passed that the triangulated steelframe couldn’t, a rather firm L-4 engine and a massive Carbon swing-arm – wasn’tworking. As we know, after the searchfor more and more rigid race frames reached its nadir – probably in the earlynineties - frame designers found that there really could be something as ‘toorigid’. That’s what this frame seemed tobe, and yet Ducati seemed to resist all of the inferred remonstrations of Rossi& Burgess and persisted with this radical approach.
Yet manufacturers a decade ago had started to build indegrees of flex to their frames. Yamahaarguably pioneered the ‘joined wishbone’ design with their deltabox – and perhapsit was no coincidence that in Rossi’s last year at Yamaha they seem to have perfectedthis design such that their MotoGP bike was generally considered to be thesweetest handling bike in the paddock – thanks of course also to both ‘TheDoctor’ – Valentino himself – and the avuncular but erudite Jeremy Burgess.
It’s now a well understood principle that a bike with itssuspension travel out of line with the tarmac by 60 degrees is not going to beable to use much of that movement to absorb bumps. This surely is where the joined wishbonealloy or twin-spar frame comes in. Youdon’t need to be an engineer to see that the wishbone makes a perfect limitedmovement spring connecting headstock to swing-arm pivot.
I’m not sure which race it was at – I think Malaysia - wherethis was manifest in all its Technicolor glory during a slow-ish speed low-sidesuffered by Rossi in practice. Eurosporthave a beautiful high definition slow motion replay technique in which youcould see Rossi’s front forks load up over some big ripples and unload withsuch a bounce the bike was unsettled enough to make the front tyre losetraction. Now this could of course havebeen simply the wrong re-bound setting on the front fork damping, but given theissues with front-end feel, and Rossi’s reluctance to chuck the thing around, Ithink it was a frame issue. The Hondasby comparison were just floating over the same bumps at near full lean.
As I write, Ducati are testing the new twin-spar frame atValencia for the MotoGP 12 – so what an irony that this is on the same day thatthey launched the new monocoque-framed road-going 1199 Panigale. Now I get it. They now face 2012 marketing the most momentous new sportsbike to hitthe market since perhaps the Honda Fireblade, or their own 916 – sporting thesame sort of frame which has brought their blue ribbon racing efforts toabsolutely their lowest ebb.
Well as things stand now, it wouldn’t stop be buyingone. If Troy Bayliss can outrun his owntimes on any other Ducati sportsbike then that’s good enough for me. And as for Ducati MotoGP 12, I am almostcertain that Ducati will persist with the alloy frame in 2012, and also becomecontenders again (for perspective it took Michael Schumacher 3 long hard yearsto win a title for Ferarri). I also believethat the Ducati Panigale will become an iconic bike and one of Ducati’s bestsellers ever. Now how can I persuade ‘eroutdoors that I need another Ducati. . ?