Alan Cathcart writes.....about the Ducati Test (Page 2)

In spite of owning one myself at one stage, I always had a slightly jaundiced view of the MHR road bike, as being a triumph of styling over true race-replica engineering: an SPS version of the stock 900SS, it assuredly wasn't, in the way that the first 750SS was a street-legal version of Paul Smart's works Imola-winner. Now, though, having ridden the bike it was derived from, I have to qualify that opinion, because the most remarkable thing you immediately notice about the 900TT1 is how normal it feels to sit on and ride. Save for the substitution of an oil cooler for the headlamp you might expect to find in front of you, and the classical white-faced Veglia revcounter staring back at you, this could be any Ducati V-twin roadburner with a fairing ever made: definitely a Modified Production battletwin, rather than a twin-cylinder period Superbike racer! This is scarcely surprising, really, given that although the chassis is a specially-made lightweight chrome-moly frame, it was built by Verlicchi on the same jig as the street 900SS, though the seemingly-stock swingarm is actually wider than standard to slot in the wider rear wheel, which might have been shod with a treaded Dunlop as ridden by Mike, but for the fact that it's Avon who make the benchmark race-quality 18-inch tyres today - so that's what were fitted for the test. The advent of 13-inch Girling gas shocks like the ones Sports swapped to almost at once, replacing the shorter and less compliant Marzocchis the bike came with, were a godsend to those of us racing Ducati V-twins in mid-'70s Production events, because not only did they improve handling and help jack up the back end to remove ground clearance problems, in doing so they steepened the effective head angle and sharpened up the steering - well, made you less aware of the stretched-out 1500mm/59 in. wheelbase, at any rate. The lower mountings for the rear shocks are copiously drilled, though, to offer a choice of preload positions.

Though the clipons on Mike's bike are surprisingly steeply dropped - almost like a 125 GP racer - they do at least allow you to tuck elbows and shoulders well in behind the comparatively all-encompassing fairing, while the long shocks mean you sit a little higher off the ground, slotted into that comfy, well-padded seat. The riding position isn't quite as stretched out as the 750SS I've been racing on and off for the past 25 years, though, because the fat backpad that wedges you in place also helps push you forward a little, to offset the inherent 48/52% rearwards weight bias of the air-cooled 90-degree V-twin by using the rider's body weight to compensate. But the footrests feel lower and a little further back than usual on a racing Duke, testament perhaps to Mike's crash at the Nurburgring in '74 which ended his F1 car racing career, causing permanent damage to his right leg and foot that made even walking sometimes painful, and meant that after a classical career of right-foot shifting, for his comeback he had to learn how to use a left-foot one-up racing gearchange, here neatly installed on the Ducati via a linkage through the swingarm pivot shaft. I have to admit being rather glad of that myself - for my Mallory outing on the bike was actually my first time on a race track since breaking my right leg in a race crash three months before, and finding such a historic racer tailored to suit was an added bonus! Except - the low footrests may be more comfy, but in winning the Mallory race Mike ended up dragging his right foot hard enough on the tarmac to wear away the boot leather and finish with a bloody foot. Never having been brave enough to encounter a similar problem with any of the several big Ducatis I've owned and raced down the years, I surprised myself by emulating the master at Mallory - even Kushitani-san's effective toe scrapers couldn't prevent 40 laps of cranking round Gerards and the Esses delivering a severely chamfered right boot. No blood, though - sorry: obviously not trying hard enough. . .

I'd expected the TT-winning Ducati to have a muscular, meaty power delivery down low, even with those high-lift cams, and it didn't disappoint, the higher compression ratio helping it pull crisply and cleanly out of the hairpin or chicane from very low revs, with no transmission snatch or hesitation. It's as smooth and tractable as a road bike down low, and almost as measured in the way it builds revs up to 7000 rpm, when suddenly things start to happen a lot faster, as the exhaust note hardens, engine acceleration picks up and the Veglia tacho needle scoots off towards the five figure zone. But at any revs the big twin motor feels very loose and free-revving, with notably reduced inertia compared to any other bevel-drive desmo I ever rode, even Paul Smart's Imola 200-winning 750, which had not a lot less power but definitely wasn't as torquey as the Hailwood machine, nor - in spite of being smaller in capacity - had such an appetite for revs. Nepoti and Caracchi of NCR must have done a lot of work in refining the internals of the bevel-drive motor, which further benefitted from Steve Wynne's careful preparation. Really, any gear you throw at this bike is the right one, and even with the vastly improved shift action of the Hewland gearbox whose precision makes light work of clutchless upward changes, you really don't need to work the gearbox as hard as you'd expect. Yet even with the very high bottom gear that allows you to scoot out of the Mallory hairpin and into the chicane without changing up, acceleration is strong enough to leave modern 600 Supersports weighing only a little more than the Ducati's 166 kg. half-dry in your wake, with 750 riders taking a closer look at this thundering, cobby-looking timewarp racer as they have to work their engines a little harder to pass right on by. That 87 bhp is delivered to the back wheel in a forgiving, yet still deceptive manner: make sure you get the Ducati lined up right before you pull the trigger on it, because unlike any other big twin desmo I've ever ridden, it'll fast forward the surrounding scenery above that seven grand power threshold, in a way that's undeniably impressive.

Riding the Ducati in what Steve Wynne terms 'something approaching anger' at Mallory Park only increased my appreciation and awe at Mike Hailwood's achievement in winning the F1 race there against the better accelerating, shorter wheelbase fours, even without the chicane that nowadays disfigures the track. The long wheelbase chassis feels ultra-stable round Gerards, especially with the Kawasaki steering damper mounted below the right clipon to stop the front wheel flapping over the bumps on the exit, but that doesn't prevent the front end pattering there as the Marzocchi forks do their best to iron out the bumps, while there's pretty dramatic power understeer on the exit both here and again at the Esses, where you have to work hard at muscling the Ducati back on line. Just back from the TT after my best-ever fifth place finish back in '78, but needing to work on preparing my bike for the next race, I couldn't get to the Post-TT Meeting to watch Mike the Bike do his stuff one more time, but I do vividly remember watching the BBC's live TV broadcast and seeing the way Hailwood threw the bike on its side at the hairpin each lap, en route to an unlikely victory. I remain as awestruck today after riding the same bike round the same track 20 years on as I was back then. Mike's relatively unsung Mallory victory was arguably an even greater achievement than his TT win, because this motorcycle is fundamentally unsuited to such a relatively tight though deceptively fast track. Hero material....