Jerrys worlds: 50/50: more 749F04 or 999F07?

Tough call, but on balance, I think F07.

A couple of weeks ago, I had the opportunity to visit the Barni Racing team in Bergamo.

Barni won the Italian Superstock Championship on the 1199 Panigale with Ivan Goi on board. Barni runs a well respected race team and has provided race services to privateers for many seasons.

I was there to look over a Ducati Corse built 999F07.

The bike is an exact replica of the bikes raced by Troy Bayliss in 2007. The factory built two bikes for each rider, but at the end of the season, they built five bikes from parts and sold them to race teams. This is one of the five. The F07 bikes are largely the same as the 2006 bikes, but vastly different to the F05 bikes, largely in engine internals and the electronics package. The 999 was raced from 2003 until 2007: the earlier bikes are much simpler.

BTW, I'm not sure if I've covered this previously, but bikes produced in the factory for factory backed teams are known as (for example) 999F0(year): customer bikes are RS'. Certain parts are even marked with their designation - 'F04'.

This bike represents the pinnacle of Ducati WSB development: every part is specific to this bike and it shares many parts or features with the motoGp bike. The 1098/1198 bikes use many parts from the road bikes and certain parts are produced in plastic. Unthinkable for the 999.

Here, we can see the oil breather tank (repaired) with the belt cooling duct. The radiator shroud funnels cool air past the rad directly into this duct and up to the vertical belt.

Oil cooler lines are kevlar covered and are secured to the oil cooler using slip-on clips, in common with most Corse bikes from that time.

The ECU is mounted under the front of the tank in this recess. This is the same ECU as used on the race Desmo. I'm told that they were 80,000 euros new. The customer bikes didn't always use this ECU for that reason. It allows switchable maps on the fly and a pitlane speed limiter (the LIMBOX switch on the yokes - picture below).

This also shows the tanks front mounting points.

On the fly map switch.

This is something to do with the cooling system. It allows water to be added or removed, but my Italian and their English wasn't enough.

This is cool: the throttle bodies and velocity stacks are CNC'd from billet titanium. Note the air filter directly in front of the airtubes and the ECU behind the steering damper

Telemetry. EVERYTHING plugs into this. There are sensors all over the bike and all the information is captured here.

For some reason I can't find a decent pic of a potentiometer, but you can just make out a rear here.

It measures what the rear shock is doing. Another does the same at the front. The connectors at the extreme left of this picture take signals to the telemetry ECU. The factory shock is noticeably different to the customer versions, having two adjusters.

Note the two mounting points on the rocker - linear and rising rate.

Telemetry extends to the rear brake pressure: this one is disconnected.

This is a rubbish picture: behind the subframe mounts (the silver thing) are the gyroscopes for telemetry and traction control. One each side of the bike.

Dry break lines, front and rear (the rear runs along the top of the swing arm).

All loom connectors are mil-spec on the WSB bikes. These are ferociously expensive!

This is interesting: the preload on the shock is oil-actuated: oil is pumped into the preload adjuster, which takes the tension off the spring. The knurled adjuster can then be adjusted by hand to set preload.

Everything has part numbers. This shows the carbon heat shield at the read of the fuel tank (the exhaust runs very close).

The front axle is very trick. Mudguard mounts bolt to the fork - not integral. The wheel speed sensor wire can just be seen at the bottom of the left calliper mount (pic on the right).