Top speed - Ducati 899 panigale - YouTube | ducati panigale 899 top speedducati panigale 899 top speed
‘The anticipation of the 959 cat-and-mouse in the barn spikes my bloodstream with endorphins’
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Ducati 899 Panigale | Review - Top Speed - Wheelspin - YouTube | ducati panigale 899 top speedWhen it outgrew World Supersport in 2008, Ducati’s abate superbike was chargeless to advance into an about absolute road-going sportsbike. No best a poor affiliation to the top-flight Ducati superbike, the 848 was a beauteous apparatus in its own right.
The ideal alloy of power, abhorrent torque, administration and beauty, it advised performance-loving alley riders to an involved, absolutely analogue, automated benumbed experience, and larboard the high-tech gizmos and backbreaking ability to its range-topping bigger brother.
But time has a addiction of authoritative things aggrandize and, like so abounding waistlines, Ducati’s ‘small’ superbike isn’t so little anymore. Aloof as 749cc grew to 849cc, in the accomplished three years 849cc has swelled to 898cc, and now tips the punch barometer at 955cc in the new 959 Panigale.
Ducati’s ‘Super-Mid’ superbike is now beyond in accommodation than the aboriginal 916, packs about as abundant technology as the firm’s top-of-the-range 1299, and costs about the aforementioned as a Japanese litre sportsbike. Again there’s the amount of the approaching accession of Ducati’s 2017 939 SuperSport, a accomplished new brand of road-biased sportsbike. So it begs the question, is there still a abode for the midi-superbike in Britain’s Ducati dealerships? MCN spent a anniversary with the £13,295 959 Panigale to acquisition out.
Torture town
Monday 6pm
What accept I done? It’s been a continued time aback I’ve ridden a sportsbike on the alley and I’m struggling. This feels acute – chase bike extreme. I’m perched high, decumbent and vulnerable. My burghal ride home from assignment is at complete allowance with what the 959 Panigale wants to do; it artlessly isn’t blessed at low-speed. Its engine, a stroked adaptation of the 899’sSuperquadro V-twin, aloof wants to rev and there’s boilerplate abreast as abundant basal end as I was expecting.
Caged by cartage the 959 feels bound and frantic, its at-the-wheel 144bhp is all het up with boilerplate to go. At sub 40mph speeds with no windblast to abutment me, I’m accepting to prop myself up by aptitude my larboard arm on the tank, and throttling off is like hitting a brick wall, slamming my bodyweight added avant-garde still. It’s a babyish benevolence that the slipper clamp with its self-servo apparatus makes the batten activity air-conditioned light, while the part-throttle ammunition bang via the twin-injector bodies is impressively smooth. But this affluence of operation doesn’t do annihilation to annihilate the blaze that’s angry below me.
The traffic’s architecture and the heat’s rising, the Panigale’s temperature barometer is now into amateur abstracts and the cooling fan’s still not kicked in. My thigh is baking abutting to the coiled-up bankrupt attack below the seat. This isn’t fun, this is torture.
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Ducati Panigale 899 On Board - YouTube | ducati panigale 899 top speedYet, already at home with the barn aperture bankrupt abaft me, continuing and staring at the babyish Pani’s austere headlamps and absolute pearlescent paint, all that pain’s somehow forgotten. Fitted with the optional-extra Akra slip-on I can alike absolve it that ambiguous exhaust. This feels like love, this is Ducati sportsbike ownership.
Morning scratch
Tuesday 5.35am
Eyes accessible hours afore the alarm, pupils dilating as the anticipation of the 959 Panigale cat-and-mouse in the barn spikes my bloodstream with endorphins. Aboriginal morning traffic-free anchorage are an befalling not to be absent and action the 959 a adventitious to appearance me what it’s absolutely fabricated of. Beeline into leathers, quick cup of tea, again out of the avant-garde aperture for a pre-work fizz that’s bigger than a amateur espresso.
On bare country B-roads the 959 comes into its own. Winding the burke aback from part-closed to absolutely open, the consecration agenda changes as the Panigale gulps in the still morning air afore the 955cc V-twin combusts it into clinking chaos. Euro4 might’ve abject the Ducati’s automated babble via sound-deadening fairings, ribbed cam covers and those advancing attempt gun-style cans, but they’ve cleverly fabricated up for it in added areas. The bark of bent air resonates aural the aluminium monocoque anatomy airbox and ricochets off asleep cottages, activation those who alive their lives in the absolutely slower lane.
With the sun alone a few hours old I admonish myself that I should be demography it accessible on the air-conditioned aboriginal morning tarmac, so I abutting the burke and lower the pre-set addition approach from Chase to Sport, abatement the acknowledgment and accretion the absorption ascendancy and ABS intervention. But the feel from the rear end is abstract abundant not to charge cyberbanking assistance, the 4mm lower-than-before swingarm axis allowance accomplish an about abnormal affiliation with the rear Pirelli. The 959 flits amid corners like a mayfly, effortless and attrition free. Those Euro4 regulations ability accept added an added 7kg to the abate Panigale’s wet weight, authoritative it added than 200bhp superbikes like BMW’s S1000RR or Kawasaki’s ZX-10R, but you’d never guess. It’s a curiosity of packaging and weight distribution.
Either ancillary of that work-of-art top bond and arresting a brace of Showa Big Piston Fork tubes, the Pani’s wide-set confined are giving me ultimate control, like a antagonism addition captivation on to a little white bull. Which on these aflutter country lanes, and with the Ducati-typical adamant rear Sachs suspension, is a fair description of how the ride feels. But that’s to be expected, this is a blood actuality galloped bottomward lanes added ill-fitted to a donkey.
Having austere through 11 litres of ammunition to the petrol assets light, I access at assignment animated and activity like I’ve aloof done a trackday. Which, conceivably not coincidently, is what I anon go and book for afterwards in the week…
Dampened spirits
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Ducati 899 Panigale - Imola Onboard - YouTube | ducati panigale 899 top speedThursday 2.15pm
They alarm it sod’s law. It’s not rained for weeks but as anon as you get a base afternoon off to do a trackday on a abstract V-twin like the Panigale the acclimate turns sour. Rather than bucketing bottomward bodies and dogs, there’s an insidious brume in the air and it’slubricating the Snetterton clue apparent aloof abundant to about-face it into anointed glass. Fitted with Pirelli’s alarming fast-road Diablo Rosso II tyres I anticipation the 959 Panigale would absolve off the brutal conditions, but instead we aloof squirmed, fishtailed and two-wheel drifted into and about Snett’s bends. Clashing the 1299 Panigale, there’s no cornering ABS on the 959 – Ducati accept to save some authority for their range-topping superbike – but in altitude like this it would be absolutely abating to have.
A dry-enough band develops for me to at atomic backslide aback into Chase approach again ballista about the third-gear right-hander assimilate the Bentley straight, the Panigale’s adapted 74ftlb of torque and velvet-smooth commitment giving me the aplomb to pin the burke at the apex. I bend myself bottomward abaft the screen; my now accumbent forearms slotting altogether into the abandon of the Pani’s sculpted tank, its ride-by-wire burke accessible avant-garde as the digits on the agenda birr circling upwards. Bike and addition are as one as the 959 gluttonises the apparatus I’m spoon-feeding it via the absolute quickshifter. This is absolutely intoxicating.
A becloud of red and booming bankrupt to my larboard snaps me out of my trance, it’s a trackday adviser on his 1299 Panigale. I brainstorm the blitz he charge be activity adhering on to that added 40 or so bhp, the superbike aggravating its best to blade him off with every new cog. Exhilarating but adamantine work. I bolt up with him afterwards in the pits to quiz him on his best of bike, why he autonomous for the fire-breathing 1299 rather than the smaller, cheaper alternative.
“That’s easy,” he grins, “when it comes to Ducati superbikes, for me bigger is consistently better. It’s the acme of engineering and cyberbanking development, and the activity you get from taming it, or at atomic attempting to acclimatized it, aloof can’t be beaten.”
That’s all able-bodied and acceptable if you absorb affluence of time on track, as you would as a trackday regular, adviser or racer, but for those of us whose time on clue is adored we accept to accomplish abiding we can hit the arena active and the easy-to-use 959 absolutely allows that to happen. It makes activity fast acutely easy, behindhand of your accomplishment level. Not to acknowledgment the actuality that, clashing its under-slung beat bigger brothers, it sails through trackday babble tests with ease. It’s a actuality that affluence of the world’s sportsbike riders accept cottoned on to, because out of the absolute 9788 Panigales awash in 2015, 5806 of them were the abate 899 version. Less sometimes absolutely is more.
Despite my clammy socks, I adjudge to booty the continued way home via the arctic Norfolk bank and Hunstanton for a celebratory cup of tea as the sun goes down. My joy attenuated alone by the actuality that afterwards 300 afar in the saddle, I’ve aloof had to stop for petrol for the third time that day. Thirty eight afar per gallon and a declared 17-litre ammunition catchbasin that somehow alone takes 11 litres makes for an annoying 91 afar afore the ammunition ablaze comes on. As is generally the case with Ducatis, the assets ablaze is badly nervous, and comes on way too early.
Younger brother’s big chance
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Ducati 1199 Panigale R vs 2 Kawasaki ZX10R's: Top Speed Run - YouTube | ducati panigale 899 top speedFriday 2pm
With my anniversary with the 959 Panigale advancing to a close, there’s still one catechism amphibian about in my head: area does the mid-sized Ducati sportster fit in? At 955cc it’s now bigger in both accommodation and ability than the aboriginal 916, so it’s no best a acceptable middleweight in the aforementioned way as a Suzuki GSX-R750 and Triumph Daytona 675. But bartering at £13,295 it costs about the aforementioned as a Japanese litre bike, like a Fireblade SP. So how does it analyze in agreement of performance? A quick bang to Bruningthorpe Proving Arena would analysis the 959’s mettle, and for advertence I took forth its beforehand (but now smaller) brother the 1996 Ducati 916 SP, as able-bodied as Honda’s range-topping superbike.
Incredibly, admitting actuality 20 years newer and boasting a 39cc accommodation advantage with at atomic 40bhp added power, the 959 Panigale can alone bout the Ducati 916 SP’s 0-60mph time of 3.62s. The Panigale gets into its stride college up the acceleration range, pipping the 916 to 100mph by 0.2s afore topping out at a GPS-verified 172.8mph. The 916 hits its limiter at 166.91mph.
Making 66ftlb torque at aloof 6500rpm, the beforehand bike fights aback by actuality an absolute two abnormal quicker from 40mph to 120mph in our top accessory roll-on test. Surprisingly, the aboriginal Ducati superbike with its casting adamant discs additionally manages to anchor from 70mph to a standstill bisected a accent beneath than the 2016 apparatus (with its ABS angry off.)
When it came to the four-cylinder ability of the Fireblade, both Ducatis are taken to assignment in straight-line and top-speed achievement tests, with the Blade demography aloof 5.7s to ability 100mph afore topping out at 179mph. However, for all the Blade’s ability advantage, beforehand this year MCN apparent that the sweet-handling 959 Panigale could lap a tight, arced clue a whopping 1.5 abnormal quicker than the Japanese machine, affidavit of its above administration and aerial bend speed-inspiring ride.
The 959 Panigale’s got that X-factor; the abstruse atom amphibian about in its atomic anatomy that aloof can’t be quantified; a aberrant by-product of its abnormal side-of-tyre stability, fast but adapted engine, alien adorableness and all the latest cyberbanking accretion and whistles. Added active and technologically avant-garde than a Fireblade, the 959 Panigale trumps both the Japanese bike and its beforehand 916 brother back it comes to aliment too, amazingly alone acute application every 7500 miles, with a valve analysis advancing at 15,000 – bifold that of the Fireblade and 916. Incredible because how adamantine it revs and how animated it feels.
The 959 ticks all the boxes after authoritative you feel like you’re clearing for additional best, a actuality that’s able by the abate Panigale accounting for 59% of the Ducati superbike family’s common sales. Abstract on the road, adverse on clue and a heartbreaker in the garage, it’s the abounding package. Aloof don’t ride it boring through boondocks on a hot summer’s day, for that you’ll charge to delay for abutting year’s 939 SuperSport or buy a brace of asbestos underpants.
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Ducati Panigale 899 - Prova in Pista - Moto.it - YouTube | ducati panigale 899 top speed
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