Ultimate MotorCycling Special

Maybe you're too young. Or perhaps you are not intimately acquainted with automotive racing history. Whatever the reason, if dark and light blue stripes with red fail to make your heart go pitter-patter, you might miss the inspiration for the Ultimate MotorCycling Ducati 1098 Special.

An homage to the Martini Racing livery of late 1960s and 1970s, the design recalls an era when untamed Porsches and Lancias dominated everything from the 24 Hours of Le Mans to World Rally Championships in North Africa. Martini's four-wheeled thoroughbreds represented unbridled excess to the point where their racecars—whose engine outputs sometimes exceeded 1,000 horsepower—were banned because they were simply too successful at obliterating the competition. (Click image to enlarge)

Outfitting a stock Ducati 1098S with Martini livery might supply an apt visual representation of its impressive off-the-shelf capabilities, but to elevate the bike to become a true wolf in wolf's clothing we exploited the Ducati Racing Accessories catalogue; a factory sanctioned guide to transforming an already powerful, sharp handling motorcycle into something altogether more wicked.

Starting from the inside out, the Ducati's 1,099cc engine—already the world's most powerful L-twin—was endowed with Ducati racing accessories for deeper performance. Titanium connecting rods not only add strength, they reduce rotational mass for quicker revs without a loss of top speed. Incorporating upgraded con-rods saves roughly half a pound where it counts the most—on the engine components that experience the most extreme amounts of rapid acceleration and deceleration. Crankshaft balancing is recommended, per factory specs, to accompany the upgraded con-rods, and an Ergal split belt roller kit saves another pound and a third of engine weight. A quick-response throttle condenses the handgrip's twist into merely one-quarter turn, and the Martini 1098 engine responds nicely to this simple modification. Not that the stock motor is slow to rev, but the quick-turn throttle and the lighter motor internals, have combined to give absolutely instantaneous engine response—almost two-stroke like—when the throttle is blipped.

More weight is shed with the racing gearbox. Close ratio gears have been machined to reduce mass. First gear is very tall requiring some clutch slippage off the line, but the lighter cogs swap easily at the lever with Ducati's usual precision. It is noticeable how acceleration response is improved without affecting the throttle connection as the lighter drivetrain works in concert with the modified engine particularly in the lower gears.

Engine braking and wheel-hop is managed with a light-alloy, hard-anodized racing clutch featuring titanium fasteners for roughly a half-pound weight cut. The clutch is capped with a windowed billet cover allowing a glimpse of the interior mechanism—a feature almost as strongly associated with the Ducati name as their Desmodromic valve mechanism.

In the interest of creating a bike that sounds and breathes as freely as the engine design dictates, the 1098 Special is equipped with a complete racing exhaust system which was developed in collaboration with Ducati Corse. The 70mm 2-1-2 stainless steel manifolds combine with a dedicated electronic control unit and racing air filter to increase engine performance by roughly 8%, and although with a much louder bark—especially under hard acceleration—the powerplant breathes better and performs the way it was originally intended.