Motorcycle Sport & Leisure

Every so often, we are given stories that we're simply not able to squeeze into the magazine.

DUCATI 848 FORMULA EXTREME – Destined For Daytona

Designing a dohc Ducati desmoquattro with no intention at all that it should ever be raced, is a bit like saying you can’t have a red one - it goes against the grain. Yet it was a totally streetbike strategy which drove the development of the new 848, with zero racetrack credentials at R&D stage, says engine design chief Marco Sairu. “We worked only to create a user-friendly sportbike, with accessible performance for a wide range of customers,” he insists. “Once we chose 849cc as the engine capacity (see Technical section - AC), we thought there was no class of racing this could fit in to, so we focused on making it a super street bike. Anyway, Ducati Corse is quite small in terms of people and resources, and for obvious reasons they had to concentrate completely on the D16 MotoGP project, and the Superbike and Superstock classes with the 1098. So there was no capacity to develop even a customer race kit for the 848, let alone an evoluzione version that could be raced, like we did with the 749R. All we can offer is a Termignoni aftermarket exhaust, with matching EPROM chip which produces about six more horsepower, and a lot more music!”

OK - so leave it to Larry, and he’ll do the job for you, amici. As in, American Larry Pegram, the experienced Ohio-based AMA Superbike rider whose lengthy mainly Ducati-based CV includes a spell in World Supersport a decade ago racing the factory-backed 748 for NCR, as well as AMA Superbike with the Team Ferracci 996. 2007 saw LeoVince Pegram Racing competing in AMA Nationals in the Formula Extreme class, with Larry Pegram ending up fourth in the championship with a second-place finish in the final round at Laguna Seca aboard – what’s it say here? A Ducati 848? Surely not?? OK – FX rules allow 850cc multi-valve overhead-cam twins to race against ditto 600cc fours and 675cc triples, not forgetting 1200cc air-cooled multi-valve twins (hi, BMW) and 1350cc two-valvers (howyadoin’, Buell/H-D), in what started out as a place for Honda to race the CBR600RR and not get beaten by much lighter rival Supersports. But surely Ducati didn’t do pre-launch on-track R&D in the USA of a bike they insist was never meant to go near a race circuit??

“The bike we raced this season was a 749R which my engine guy Dave Weaver punched out to 848cc with 100mm bore pistons,” says Larry Pegram. “Revlimited at 13,400 rpm, we got a true 150 bhp at the rear wheel on a Dynojet just before the final round at Laguna Seca, but because we started late, we didn’t get a clear shot at the championship. But we’ve inked a deal with Ducati North America to sponsor us in 2008 for a full run at the FX title, starting with the Daytona 200 in March. We already have two of the first 848s off the Bologna factory lines, and we’re working on prepping them up to go testing in January, ready for Daytona. I KNOW we can win there!”

Scoring Ducati’s long awaited debut Daytona victory with a bike that was never intended to go racing in the first place, would be a delicious irony – but a lot of work is needed to get the 848 dialled in to last 200 miles at race-winning speeds. “We were kinda surprised when we discovered that in creating the 848, Ducati didn’t opt for the same 100 x 54 cc dimensions as our bored-out 749R,” says Pegram. “But they obviously decided to go for extra torque by keeping the same bore and stroking it to 94 x 61.2 mm, rather than the other way around. This means we’ve had to source our own pistons, conrods, cams and valves to build the new race engine, but for sure we’ll have the same power or better than this year, but with an extra spread which probably means we won’t have to rev it so high to be right at the same power level as the good 600 fours. But the big difference will be weight – this year’s bike came in at 375 pounds, which is 25 pounds over the class limit. For sure we can get the new 848 in right on 350 pounds, and we’ll be using the same Ohlins suspension and Brembo radial race brakes as the factory 999 F06 Bayliss raced this season. We also have the same Magneti Marelli Marvel 4 engine management as he had and Stoner has on the Desmosedici GP bike, with traction control and launch control and all that stuff - the full electronic package, plus a Marelli engineer to take care of it for us. This is serious, man!”

Pegram Racing will also have a factory race transmission for the 848 FX, complete with the slipper clutch missing from the street model, and will be lengthening the wheelbase as far as possible within the rules from the stock 1430mm stride, in the interests of extra stability on the Florida bankings, plus if possible to throw more weight on to the front tyre than the streetbike’s 49/51% rear wheel bias allows. No decision has yet been taken about tyres, with the team set to test both Pirelli and Dunlop rubber in the coming weeks. ”The issue may be whether we can run Dunlops at all with the stock swingarm we have to keep under FX rules,” says Larry. “Their rear is 25mm wider than the Pirelli for extra side grip, but it’s gonna be real tight to see if it’ll fit.”

If Pegram Racing delivers the results with the new 848 in AMA FX racing, expect Ducati to reconsider its strategy of not at present supplying any race kit for the new model, other than bolt-on parts out of the Ducati Performance catalogue which are common to both it and the 1098. With the importer-backed Ducati race effort matching the two-man BMW factory team, and Triumph believed to be supporting a 675 triple for the race against all the Japanese 600 fours, the 2008 edition of the Daytona 200 looks set to be the most varied and interesting in years. And with a Ducati 848 right at the front of the field, perhaps – albeit quite unexpectedly. “I have to admit the Formula Extreme racing has been a complete surprise to us,” says Marco Sairu. “But you know Ducati – any time we go racing, we do it to win!’

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DUCATI 848 TECHNICAL: Smaller and Svelter

In creating the new 848 middleweight desmo V-twin sportbike. the Ducati development team headed by Cristian Gasparri focused on delivering more power for less weight compared to its 749 predecessor – and succeeded spectacularly well.

How well? Punch these numbers: in delivering a claimed 134 bhp at 10,000 rpm, with 9.8 kgm/96 Nm/70.8 ftlb of torque at 8250 rpm, the 848 measuring 100cc bigger in capacity and scaling 168 kg./370 lb dry, produces 26 bhp more power than the smaller-capacity bike it replaces, while at a claimed 168 kg. dry, weighs 20 kg. less – 5 kg. lighter even than its 1098 big brother. That’s already a lot more performance than before, just on paper – but the way it’s delivered was also considered important, too. “We wanted to produce a more user-friendly smaller-capacity desmo V-twin sportbike compared to the 1098,” says Gasparri, “one that less experienced riders would find easier to ride, that was still stimulating yet without being threatening. You must not feel you have to be Troy Bayliss to ride it effectively!”

As with its 1098 big brother, the 848 model designation is actually a misnomer, for the new bike’s 94 x 61.2 mm 90-degree V-twin desmo engine with belt-driven dohc in fact measures 849cc. “This is a new member in its own right of the Testastretta Evoluzione family, which we don’t want to be regarded as a simple displacement reduction exercise compared to the 1098,” says 848 engine designer Marco Sairu. “It’s a new design from the ground up – we started from a clean sheet of paper, only considering that it should have the same generic layout as the bigger engine. In fact, the 749R gave us some indicators, because since we didn’t have to tailor the bike to fit in to any racing class, we had freedom in deciding what its engine dimensions and capacity should be. We had lots of experience from the 749R in terms of thermodynamics with a 94mm bore, so we chose to retain that - and then in keeping with the same average piston speed as before, we settled on a 61.2 mm stroke. That resulted in an 849 cc capacity, and it was honestly just by accident that this fitted into the American Formula Extreme racing class. We had no idea of that until after we’d designed the engine!”

Weighing 58.5 kg., the 848 motor is 5 kg. lighter than the 1098’s - which itself weighed 5 kg. less than the previous 749/999 Testastretta power unit, so that’s a 10 kg. saving over the 848’s direct predecessor. This comes mainly thanks to the new Vacural vacuum die casting technique used in constructing the 25% lighter aluminium crankcases, resulting in a 3.5 kg. weight saving over the 1098 cases thanks to material  in some areas reduced from 6mm to 3 mm in wall thickness. The crankshaft is 13% lighter than on the 749R, in spite of carrying forged pistons with the same 94 mm bore running in Nikasil chrome bore cylinders, and delivering a high 12:1 compression ratio aimed at providing good acceleration out of turns. “We worked a lot on the torque curve, which was another reason for essentially lengthening the stroke of the 749R,” says Marco Sairu. “We wanted to make this as flat as possible, because we knew this would be a key ingredient in making the 848 easier and more forgiving to ride fast. We did this with new camshafts, and by redesigning the cylinder heads with a new combustion chamber design based on the 1098, to optimise thermodynamic efficiency.”

These new desmo cylinder heads offer an 8.5-degree steeper angle of downdraught than on the same-bore 749R for the new elliptical-choke throttle bodies that were first used on the title-winning Desmosedici MotoGP bike, which are equivalent to a 56 mm round-slide unit (against 60 mm on the 1098). Each features a single top-mounted shower-type injector, of the new optimised 12-hole variety delivering a finer spray that enhances combustion. The bimetallic alloy 39.5 mm inlet valves and 32 mm exhausts are set at the same slightly narrower 24.3-degree included valve angle as the 1098 (down from 25 degrees on the 749R/999)), operated by the same rocker arms as the bigger engine.

The 848’s extra power this all helps deliver is harnessed via a six-speed gearbox employing straight-cut primary gears, matched for the first time on a Ducati sportbike to a modular oil-bath wet clutch that’s 29% lighter than the dry unit on the 749R, weighing 1.6 kg. less as well as being quieter and lighter in operation. However, as with the 1098, this still isn’t a slipper clutch, as is now becoming standard wear on the new Ducati’s four-cylinder 600 Supersport marketplace rivals. The same Euro 3-compliant 2-1-2 exhaust layout as the 1098 features Ducati’s trademark twin oval-shaped underseat silencers each carrying a catalyst, replacing the 749’s unloved single car-type can, yet weighing 1.7 kg. less thanks to reduced wall thickness of the pipes.

This more powerful new motor is housed in the same traditional heavily triangulated Ducati tubular steel chassis as the 1098, made from significantly larger diameter 34mm tubing rather than 28mm on the outgoing 749, which at 9 kg. in total actually weighs 1.5 kg. less than its predecessor thanks to thinner-walled tubing, down from 2mm to 1.5mm. The result is a structure that’s slightly less rigid torsionally but has 14% more bending stiffness, while actually 17% lighter. As on the 1098, there’s a single-sided aluminium swingarm pivoting in both frame and engine cases, employing cast sections for the pivot and axle hub, allied to fabricated sheet alloy parts in the centre - although unlike on the bigger bike, the ride height isn’t adjustable independently. The result is a 50% increase in torsional stiffness compared to the twin-sided 749 swingarm, but with the same unsprung weight - so including the wheel, axle, swingarm and brake together. All 848s have a passenger seat mounted to a tubular seat subframe weighing 2.8 kg. which is actually 50% lighter than on the 749, while up front there’s a cast magnesium subframe inside the fairing scaling 0.61 kg., that offers a similar saving.

Fully-adjustable Showa suspension is fitted at both ends, although the 43mm upside-down forks are a lower spec than the same-size 1098’s, without the benefit of TiN-coated stanchions. These are set at a fixed 24.5-degree head angle offering 96mm of trail, with a 1430mm wheelbase resulting in a slightly rearwards 49/51% weight distribution. Cast aluminum Marchesini wheels, featuring the Brembo-owned Italian supplier’s distinctive construction with five bifurcated Y-spokes, come as standard, the front 0.25 kg. lighter than on the 749 and the rear more than a kilo less, resulting in a more than 40% reduction in unsprung weight compared to previous single-sided designs. The front wheel measures the usual 3.50 in. in width, mounted with a 120/70-17 front tyre, while the rear features a narrower 5.50 in. rim shod with a 180/55 tyre, compared to the wider 6.0 in. rim and 190/55 combo on the 1098. As on the 1098, Pirelli Dragon Supercorsa Pro tyres are fitted as standard, which is essentially race rubber for the street developed on an ongoing basis in the World Supersport series.

Equally downsized compared to the 1098 are the 848’s front brakes, featuring twin 320mm Brembo front discs compared to the bigger bike’s 330mm soup plates, gripped by radially-mounted Brembo Monobloc four-piston calipers machined from a single aluminium billet. Unlike on current bolted-up four-pad calipers, the Monobloc version employs just two pads, since the structure is so stiff, you don’t need the extra grip offered by four pads, one for each piston, else you’d risk locking the front wheel. At the rear there’s a small 245mm disc with two-piston caliper.

The 848 features the same advanced Digitek digital dash as the new 800cc Desmosedici GP7 MotoGP racer, which contains no switches or press-buttons on the display itself, but instead is controlled via a switch on the left handlebar, offering a wide range of readout options. Some of these come in both bar graph and/or digital mode, and include engine rpm, speed, lap times, temperatures, etc., as well as, at extra cost via the Ducati Performance catalogue, an optional DDA/Ducati Data Analayser downloadable telemetry system. This memorises up to 2Mb or 3.5 hours of data, which you can download by detaching the memory stick located under the rear seat and plugging it into a laptop - it records lap times, water temp, road speed, rpm, gear selected, throttle opening and distance covered.

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