916
I'd been a Ducati fan for many many years. As a child I had a picture book of motorcycles. In it were various British and Italian brands, including MV Augustas and bevel drive Ducatis. As a young boy I knew it would be years before I'd be able to ride, much less own, one of these machines with such magnificent sounding names. Years passed and I graduated from minibikes, to dirtbikes, to scooters. I remember vividly the first time I saw a Ducati 750 Paso for the first time. It was on the cover of a magazine next to a Ferrari. Not long after a friend of mine got one and I was completely seduced by its lovely shape and wonderful sound. A few years later, after owning two or three Triumph Bonnevilles and TR6s I became a Ducati owner, fulfilling a dream I'd had for years. That first 900SS that I bought in 1993 would be set the stage for what has become total devotion to the brand. As an avid race fan I loved watching the big red bikes from the little factory in Bologna soundly beating the best Japan had to offer. The 900SS was and is a great streetbike, but as my riding migrated from street to track I began realizing their limits. I'd watched Doug Polen and Troy Corser race Fast by Ferracci 851 and 888s but their performance seemed so out of reach for me as a budding track racer. Rumors of the Triple 8's replacement ran rampant among the motorcycling press and everyone wondered what the new Ducati would look like. And then one day in my mailbox this arrived. The motorcycling world was turned upside down and it would never be the same.
This is the scanned image of the cover of Cycle World from 1994. You can't see it but if you held the original in your hands you'd notice that the pages have taken on a character that only comes from having been handled and turned hundreds, maybe thousands of times. I've probably read and looked at this magazine more than any single magazine I've ever owned. The pictures and story inside were magicical and I read, and reread them time and time again. It seemed like more motorcycle than any mortal could ever use and I was particularly mortal as a sport motorcyclist at that point. Regardless, I promised myself that someday soon, I would own one.
I put down a deposit on one shortly after that but I'd go through another Ducati 900SS before I'd get to my Holy Grail. And then in the Fall of 1996, after nearly 2 years of waiting, and over 20,000 miles on my two 900SSs I finally became the owner of a 1995 916 Strada. It's hard to believe that it's been nearly 6 years. Ducati has made changes to the engine but it's only been very recent that they've designed its successor. When the bike was first released the press hailed it as a benchmark motorcycle, a design for the decade, perhaps of all time. Time has shown their words to be true as the outward appearance of the 916 did not change at all over its 9 year lifespan. And there was certainly no lack of results in Superbike competition as the race version of the Ducati 916 would win World Superbike Titles in 1994, 1995, 1996, 1998, 1999, 2001 and 2002 is looking like a lock too.
As for my own 916, we've been through a lot together. I've covered nearly 14,000 miles on it, many of those miles on a racetrack. We've run together at Sears Point, Thunderhill Raceway, Buttonwillow, and Laguna Seca and more times up and down Highway 9 than I can count. I began racing it with AFM in the OpenTwins class in 1997 and managed to finish my rookie season with no race crashes. I did have a pretty big get off in Turn 6 at Thunderhill that year but miraculously the bike was not damaged too severely and I was able to race the following weekend and finish in the points! In some of the pictures below you can see the road rash on the right side of the bike following that crash.
