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Old 17-Oct-2006, 09:01
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749er 749er is offline
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Ducati Meccanica
 
Posts: 2,896
Join Date: Mar 2005
Mood: Auto racing, bull fighting, and mountain climbing are the only real sports ... all others are games
Quote:
Originally Posted by Monty
Dam right, I do remember that, and didn't Vauxhall capitalise on it-the Cortina was the de-facto company car, when they brought out the Sierra Ford lost most of that market overnight to the Cavalier-which in all honesty wasn't a bad car anyway. Now Sierra's are considered a classic-whereas the Mk4 Cortina was and IMHO still is a shed-MK1 and MK2 Cortina's though-now that's a different proposition, even the 'coke bottle' MK3 was a stylish car.

John-showing his age.


I think you are right John and I think time will do the same for the 749.999. its ahead of its time. Dunno if this is correct but I heard that the shape of the 999 came from a few things but mainly the wind tunnel and the need to improve rider comfort, both for the purposes of winning races, as the engines were at their limit. This seems to have been borne out by recent events

1) Bayliss being 9km/h straight slower than the Hondas down the straight at Silverstone
2) Ducati wanting to run larger engines
3) Yet, Lavilla, Bayliss and Haslam were all competitive on most circuits

Ducati need to be winning races, 10% of their staff are employed by Corse.

There are other factors of course and racing is not that simplistic, but the design is very much "form follows function" to enable them to compete with the clout that Honda etc have. For me the design represents the kind of ingenuity that has seen Bayliss win and Haslam come very close.
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