Video Commute - 2016 Ducati 959 Panigale

Ducati’s baby Panigale on the daily commute.

It’s no secret we’re always trying to get our staff to work a little harder. Especially the ones that always seem to have too much to say. “Write it down!” the boss yells, exasperated. Senior Editor Zack Courts is a classic case, always arriving to office after his commute with a bunch of opinions about the bike he’s riding. Too much this, not enough that, and occasionally has some decent insights that we thought might help consumers or entertain enthusiasts.

So we strapped a camera and microphone to the side of his helmet and told him to turn it on when he leaves his house. A lot of him talking in his helmet is complaining about drivers, yelling at red lights, and wondering why billboards aren’t more expensive. But sometimes he actually talks about the bike, and those are the parts we keep. Got a bike you would like to see discussed? Let us know and we’ll send him home on that one next.

This is one of the dyno comparisons Zack mentions in the commute: The Ducati 959 Panigale (red) shown against a Triumph Thruxton R (blue), a Suzuki V-Strom 1000 (yellow) and a Yamaha FZ-09 (green). Pale color lines are torque (scale on right side) and the full color lines are horsepower (scale on the left). See the paragraph below for the breakdown.©Motorcyclist

Proof positive that Zack wasn’t full of it when he said the Ducati’s engine is a little peaky. This graph above show the dyno data we review at the magazine, and it shows clearly Ducati’s Superquadro concept. By tuning the engine for maximum top-end power, Ducati was able to get 131 horsepower out of a 955cc twin. As you can see, it comes at a bit of a price lower in the revs, where it loses out to Yamaha’s 847cc triple, Suzuki’s 1,037cc V-twin, and Triumph’s 1,200cc parallel twin. For a racetrack, it can be good. For the daily commute, maybe not so much. It doesn’t damage the sex appeal though!