Nicky Hayden for a Day: Ducati 1199 Panigale R

Hero worship is a funny thing.  As I write this, I’m sitting in my office, sipping a beer, wearing a t-shirt emblazoned with a red, white, and blue #1 flanked with two words:  Evel Knievel.  Understand, I’m a 51-year old man who’s not overly prone to nostalgia, but one of the few items I miss from my childhood is my beloved Evel Knievel lunch box, which burned up in a house fire when I was ten.  My Rosebud if you will.  When I found this t-shirt in a shop in New Orleans a few years back, I snapped it up over the bemused chuckle of my wife, and as it's faded over the years, I feel like it’s catching up in wear-and-tear to me.  When I wear it to the grocery store or Costco or some tony shop, inevitably I get knowing thumbs-up from other men of a certain age.  Boys will never stop being boys.  (LATE BREAKING NEWS:  The Evel Knievel Museum opened last weekend!)

But heroes come and heroes go, and since the turn of the century, the motorcycle hero I’ve followed is one Nicholas Patrick “Nicky” Hayden, aka “The Kentucky Kid,” who blew onto the scene after winning the AMA title in 2002 and then transitioned to MotoGP with the Repsol Honda team the following year.  In 2006, Hayden won the MotoGP title outright, beating out Valentino Rossi for the title at the final race.  (For an astounding recount of that season, I highly recommend Rick Broadbent’s “Ring of Fire.”)  Nicky jumped to the Ducati factory team in 2009, spent five seasons there, then moved back to a Honda team before leaving MotoGP for the production-based World Superbike Championship in 2016.

And then this past May, while on a bicycle training ride nearly Rimini, Italy, with other members of his team, Hayden was hit by a car and suffered severe injuries.  He succumbed five days later.  Hayden rode a motorcycle, any motorcycle, from dirt bikes to flat-trackers to road racing machines to MotoGP two-wheeled spaceships, with verve and flair and joy, and by all accounts, he was one of the true gentlemen in the racing paddock.  The Kentucky Kid also happened to be the most successful American motorcycle racer of his era.  He was, as they say, hero material.

And that brings me to this review, of the Ducati 1199 Panigale R, a bike for heroes if there ever was one.

I suppose I should be brutally honest up front.  The Ducati 1199 Panigale R is a dreadful street bike.  It bucks at low speeds, which means it bucks at pretty much anything even remotely legal.  It barks and snorts and makes noise like an Al Pacino outtake reel.  At stop signs and lights, or anywhere that demands civilized behavior, it handles in a tremulous manner.  You sit tippy-toe high.  It’s hot.  It will not flatter you with niceties.

I love everything about it.

The Panigale R arrived in 2013 (the bike tested here is of that generation), and as with virtually all of Ducati’s R-bikes, it was intended as a homologation special to conform to World Superbike rules.  Ducati has released a number of R-bikes over the years, with some notables being the 888SP2, 996R, 999R, and 1098R, all of which went on to significant use and success in the racing world.  The “R” moniker isn’t used exclusively for homologation machines, as you can walk into your Ducati dealer and buy a lovely Monster R at this very moment, but the Superbikes that wear the badge have always tended toward the extreme.

The bike's motor begins life as the standard two-cylinder 1199S lump, but since this bike has racing intentions, Ducati equipped the R with titanium connecting rods and a lighter flywheel, which lets the bike build revs in a manner more closely associated with 4-cylinder bikes (a twin has massive pistons to turn over, remember) with the rev limiter raised from 11,500 to 12,000 rpm.  The engine makes 195-hp at 10,750 rpm and 97.3 lb/ft of torque at 9000 rpm.  At any speed, the bike never wants for power, the low-end torque between 3000 to 7000 rpm providing a visceral grunt virtually unknown to the V4s with which the R competes.

Nicky Hayden showing how it's done.  (Image: GPextra.com.)

Ducati also equipped the Panigale R with numerous chassis upgrades to facilitate fine-tuning in a race paddock, including an adjustable swingarm pivot that allows for several millimeters tunable movement up and down, allowing racers to tune for squat and increased agility (which helps to manage tire wear over a race distance).  This is not a feature with which riders who stick to the roads will ever likely experiment, but it speaks to the racing intentions of the machine.  The bike also gets all manner of carbon fiber goodies, which not only look wonderful (the Italians do matte-finished CF better than anyone) but also save some weight.

To that point, the R tips the scales at 417-pounds wet (meaning full of fluids), which makes it one of the lightest liter-bikes on the market.  The ultra-lightweight forged and machined three-spoke Marchesini wheels and Brembo M50 calipers also add to the significant weight reduction.

The Panigale R also happens to be achingly beautiful, the rolling embodiment of Italian design, powerful and taught and nipped and tucked, an expensive bike that looks expensive.  And did I mention it’s red?  I read an interview once with Flavio Manzoni, Ferrari’s Chief Designer, who happens to collect Ducati motorcycles.  When asked why he collected Ducati bikes rather than Ferrari cars, he replied to the effect of, “Ducatis are Ferraris for people who can’t afford Ferraris.”  I entirely get it (though I'm suspect of Flavio’s veracity about his financial capabilities).  The Panigale R looks exotic sitting still, every component and weld and brake-line fastener lovely and purposeful and exotic.  As a garage queen, it is nonpareil. 

All the info you need and none you don't (except for a gas guage).

On startup, the Panigale R whines its high-tension starter whine then erupts with a bark.  Ducati ships the R with a stock Panigale exhaust, but also includes a full Termignini race systems with a dedicated ECU mapping (the bike you see here was thus equipped).  (Note:  The current year's R bikes ship with an Akropovic race exhaust rather than the Termi.)  To say that it’s loud does an injustice to decibel sensors; this bike will wound a rider not wearing appropriate hearing protection.  But oh, what a sound!  Hikers who have the misfortune to be hiking in Yellowstone at the moment the supervolcano erupts will hear a similar sound as their lives come to an end, a howling, barking, gravely gargle that ebbs and flows with rage and tension; Sam Elliot has likely already signed a retainer to voice the Panigale R in an upcoming Pixar “Cars” movie.  It’s unlike any motorcycle I’ve ever heard.

The electronics are everything you'd expect from a top-spec superbike these days, and Ducati's LCD screen is bright and readable in all manner of light.  (The way the background flexes from black to white depending on ambient light is both cool and useful.) The Panigale R comes with the latest gizmos that Ducati and its OEM partners can conjure, all with the express intent of both making you feel comfortable going faster but also preserving the rider and the bike.  For fun, I opened the throttle more fully than prudent at one mid-corner and the DTC EVO system (think really fancy traction control) lit up the dashboard with all manner of blinky lights while it modulated traction and wheelspin to save me from myself.  The bike never slowed, never jerked, just slid the rear Pirelli Diablo Supercorsa SP tire enough for me to feel it in my ass, then rocketed out of the corner with massive speed.

The sounds planets make when the smash together in the cosmos.

As mentioned, it’s not a particularly pleasant motorcycle to ride slow.  (Ed: The next sentence was originally “So don’t ride slow!” but our lawyers made us take that out.)  Even in Sport mode (rather than the type-A Race mode), the R’s fueling at lower revolutions is unhappy and bitchy, and low-speed handling is ponderous at best.  Plan your rides accordingly, because this bike wants a track or at the very least a winding country road, where it comes alive.  Once there, the race-tuning begins to make sense, the bike becoming flickable through transitions, aided not only by the low curb-weight but by the Öhlins suspension front and back, which provides immense feedback and progressive damping.  The wide, clip-on handlebars aid turn-in and the rider geometry makes steering with your knees on the tank almost telepathic.  The windscreen even does an admirable job of directing the wind at speeds north of 120 mph (or so, um, I guess, cough, cough).  While the Panigale R isn’t as comfortable as, say, the Aprilia RSV4 Factory or BMW S1000RR, it’s not at all an uncomfortable perch (with the proviso that comfort is absolutely relative on superbikes in general).

The Panigale R isn’t for the faint of heart when it comes to pulling out your checkbook.  At a list price of $35,000, the R is almost ten grand more expensive than the 1299S model it sits above in the lineup.  That extra dough gets a bunch of extras, though, and perhaps even more importantly a whole lot of exclusivity.  And since the 1199/1299 line is the end to the era of Ducati twin-cylinder bikes, with the inevitable four-cylinder superbikes arriving soon, collectability is certainly an element with the R.  It’s special, in the way that taming any lightly-broken beast is special.

The Ducati Panigale R rewards commitment and skill; it’s the diametric opposite of the bike for beginners, and maybe most importantly it’s the kind of motorcycle that allows you to scratch your inner Nicky Hayden fantasies.  And I would be massively fibbing if I didn't admit to that being one of the reasons I still wrap my middle-aged self around these kinds of rocketships.  Get one while you can.

“Zip-a-Dee-Doo-Dah”-ing on a Ducati Scrambler Full Throttle

Late last Fall, on one of those stunningly, crisp days we live for here in the Midwest, I was blasting down one of my favorite serpentine country roads on the back of a Ducati Panigale R, the Bologna companies thinly-veiled race bike, the red of its fairings the color of impure thoughts, its exhaust note the sound of guilty pleasures.  As I came up over a small ridge, I spied a 35-mph left-hander about a hundred yards down the road.  I’ve ridden this road a lot and know that while it’s intimidating on lean-in, it opens visually almost immediately.  Gravel and grit are rarely an issue due to the road’s camber, and it had rained the night before so the pavement was perfectly clean.  I was confident that as long as I stayed just to the left of a small asphalt repair patch about two-thirds of the way through the corner, there was plenty of runout to really open the throttle.  This is easily a 75-mph corner on a bike with this much grip.  So I braked, went down a gear, shifted my weight, committed to my lean, looked through the corner to pick my line, began to open the throttle, and…

…just then noticed a dead raccoon splayed right on the riding line mid-way through the turn.

The Panigale R is lots of things but what it most certainly isn’t is a bike that tolerates indecision.  It rewards commitment; it is not a fan of half-assed measures.  There was only one thing to do:  I goosed it, shifted my lean even further, tightened the line as much as I could, let the multi-processor traction control system do some serious ciphering, and aimed improbably for the inside of the unfortunate animal’s squished entrails.  My knee came as close to grazing the pavement as is responsible on public roads.  I swear I felt the bike’s rear tire twitch a little on the slick bits as I went zooming by and over. 

All this happened it about three seconds.

The big superbike handled all of this with barely a deep breath, of course, the limits of the Panigale R being so far above my relatively meager own as to always be humbling (I’m certainly no Casey Stoner).  One of the appealing things about riding sportbikes is the way that any road can challenge a rider’s reactions; it’s those electric moments that make motorcycling so invigorating, so engaging.  But you know, sometimes it’s just nice to exhale.  At the risk of bruising (if not losing) my motorcycle man card, high-test sportbikes just aren’t that comfortable to ride, nor are they…here it comes…really that much fun on the street.  Rewarding, yes; exhilarating, certainly.  But fun?  Not so much.

Which brings me to the Ducati Scrambler, a motorcycle with an entirely different design brief from the snarling, hair-raising Panigale lineup.  It’s a motorcycle designed to do nothing so much as induce grins, a low-maintenance and low-effort machine over which to toss a leg and head off down the street or to the coffee shop or across the field or wherever whimsey compels you.  And did I mention it has a high hipster quotient?  More on that later.

(The bike tested here has an as-ridden price of $10,495.  Thanks to Reno’s Powersports in Kansas City, Missouri, for the extended test ride.)

Ducati first released the Scrambler model back in 1962, a 250cc single sold primarily in the American market.  The bike was an immediate hit and over the next number of years grew into a 450cc machine (sold as the Ducati Jupiter) that ultimately included Ducati’s iconic desmodromic cylinder head.  It was Ducati’s first “lifestyle” machine, an adjective I fairly-well loathe but which well describes the notional idea of a motorcycle as cultural touchstone. Of its many key features, it’s excellent frame was so well engineered that it was used, stock, for flat-track racing in the States.  That’s a clear testament to build-quality right there, folks. And then, as these things happen, the original Scrambler was summarily killed off in 1974.

In 2014, attempting to again tap into the generational zeitgeist, Ducati rolled out a reimagined Scrambler at the INTERMOT show in Cologne, Germany.  Rather than being entirely retro, Ducati sought to capture what the Scrambler might have become if the line had never paused.  Now a few model years on, the Scrambler platform has spawned six differentiated variations, including a bobbed-tail café racer model complete with clip-ons and a recently introduced Enduro model, the “Desert Sled,” that’s equipped with rally rubber and greater suspension travel (and which I find the most desirable of the entire line).

Typical artful Ducati packaging shows off the internals with lots of visual interest.

The bike you see here is the “Full Throttle” model, a bike “inspired” by the flat trackers of old (and not to be confused with the Scrambler “Flat Track Pro” model).  It comes equipped with a burbling Termignoni twin-can muffler, Pirelli dual-sport tires mounted on 10-spoke alloy wheels, a truncated seat, a slightly lowered handlebar, and other visual affectations to differentiate it from its cousins.  It’s flat-black paint and yellow highlights inevitably draw comparisons to a bumblebee, but it’s a purposeful look, simple and not overworked, appealing in a minimal and functional way.  It’s an easy bike to look at, the stylishly-packaged mechanicals supported by a simplified version or Ducati’s classic trellis frame.

Controls are simple, legible, and easy to use.  The simple, circular LCD gauge holds up in even bright sunlight, and the round LED headlight manages the delicate balance of being both retro and modern.    

All Scramblers come equipped with the same engine, a slightly detuned version of the one used in Ducati's 796 Monster.  It’s an 803cc, SOHC V-twin (which Ducati calls an L-twin because Italian), which is air- and oil-cooled and delivers 75hp at 8250rpm and 50-lb/ft or torque at 5750rpm.  The engine is as juicy as a ripe peach, the arrival of maximum torque with so many revs left in the range providing immense flexibility and responsiveness, and it’s easy to ride with both verve and predictable control.  And while 75-hp seems paltry in this age of bruising power, in practice it’s more than enough power to motivate a combined bike-and-rider weight of around 600-pounds.

A simple, legible guage is a lovely contrast to today's typically busy baby-dashboards.

The Scrambler stops as well as it goes, it’s semi-knobby Pirelli tires (110/80-18 front, 180/55-17 rear) hauled into check by a capable Brembo, two-channel ABS-equipped system, four-pistons in the front and a single in the rear.  The ABS system is about as simple as they come, either on or off, but provides protection against overbraking on a wide variety of road types (asphalt, grass, gravel, dirt, free-range farm pastures).

Riding the Scrambler is one of motorcycling’s simple little joys.  Straddling the bike is easy for my 6’ frame, neither too tall nor too wide. At slow speeds, it’s 57-inch wheelbase and general compactness make it nimble as a caffeinated house cat, and riding the bike while standing on the foot pegs feels natural and inevitable.  Every roadside field is an invitation to do the silly thing, jump over the berm and tear off across the grass and dirt with a rooster tail of happiness spraying behind you.  It’s a hoot.

Now, back to that hipster thing.  Ducati has gone close to overboard with marketing the Scrambler to a specific demographic, and if the abundance of “pre-customized” models don’t make that point, the vast catalog of factory accessories does.  And not just for the bike; for the rider, there’s an entire virtual department store of clothing (flat-brimmed caps included), helmets, trinkets, gizmos, gadgets, and frippery available to “curate” (to use the verb of the moment) an individual owner’s experience.  But to criticize the Scrambler as a simple lifestyle embellishment misses the point.  It’s a bike that's just about perfect to introduce new riders to motorcycling; never underestimate the power of “cool” to attract interest, and interest often morphs into commitment and long-lasting passion.  The Scrambler is also unintimidating enough for both men and women to enjoy, and effortless enough for experienced riders to jump on and go, leaving their more bruising bikes in the garage, for a jaunt down to the coffee shop or through the trees or on a trail.  If that makes me a hipster rider, then so be it.

The Scrambler exists in a crowded field, with virtually every manufacturer having jumped onto the retro-modern or “neo-classic” trend in some way.  (My current favorites are the Moto Guzzi V7 II Stornello, the Triumph Thruxton, the BMW R nineT URBAN G/S, and the Yamaha XSR900.)  The shear variety of styles and sizes currently available speak to the diversity of the marketplace, and of course the hunt for a truly vintage Honda CB750 occupies the fever-dreams of many an enthusiast.  In my book, all of that is a good thing.

As much as the original Scrambler was in vogue in the Sixties, Ducati has clearly ginned up another winner with their renewed and reimagined lineup.  It’s no surprise that the Scrambler outsells all other Ducati models by a large factor, and in fact the Scrambler became Ducati’s first bike to slip into the global top-10 of bikes sold for the first time ever in 2015; it continues to lead the way in sales for the company today. And before any purists poo-poo the mass-market appeal of the Scrambler as somehow diluting Ducati’s upscale image, I’ll remind them that the massive influx of cash ultimately results in drool-worthy new bikes such as the XDiavel and revised Monster line-up, to say nothing of the exciting new Supersport.

The Ducati Scrambler is everything fun about motorcycles in one small package.  It’s a simple good time.  Well done, Ducati.