I’ve been reading a lot of books and studying motorcycle suspension tuning. I’m an Analyst by profession so I decided to turn those skills to learning motorcycle suspension tuning so I don’t have to call somebody every time I have a question, or need to make adjustments as I lose weight and my pace improves.
One of the things is that generally speaking, the stiffer the bike’s chassis the more ‘flexible’ you want your tire to be, the more flexible your chassis is the more stiff you want to tire to be, to balance the bike overall. Stiff chassis with stiff tire you lose grip quicker and get less progressive and controllable slip, flexible chassis with flexible tires you feel less in control and less confident, and can’t feel the contact patches as well to be able to quickly respond to and manage slip.
The Ducati’s in general are a much stiffer chassis than say the Yamaha’s or Suzuki’s, so generally speaking Ducatis are more suited to a tire that has more flex built in like the Pirellis and Bridgestones, whereas the Yamaha’s and Suzuki’s are more suited to a stiffer tire like the Dunlop’s.
All generally speaking of course, but born out anecdotally in the top race series when you see racers try to cross over to new tires in a different race series without the bike chassis being dialed in for that tire, think Petrucci’s at Warhorse struggling a bit with Dunlaps on a Ducati the 1st several races of that season. Or Gagne struggling on new tires when going to Europe after dominating MotoAmerica on a bike set up for Dunlaps in the US series.
Granted, all that probably matters way less to non-top level professional riders, because most of us aren’t riding these bikes at and beyond their limits for a 45 minute race. But I do believe in executing on the fundamentals at any level in any sport.
And a core fundamental of bike chassis setup is stiff chassis bikes match better with a more flexible tire, and a more flexible chassis’d bike matches well with a stiffer tire.
Ducati’s, by nature tend to be on the stiffer end of the spectrum in terms of designed chassi setup, and would therefore tend to ultimately favor a more flexible tire, meaning Pirelli and Bridgestone versus Dunlaps. Although you can adjust your suspension to some extent to fit any tire better.
Is that super relevant versus your own individual preferences and what makes YOU more confident going faster on your bike at most of our riding levels, probably not, but I do believe that it always pays off in the long run to execute consistently on the fundamentals.
Stiffer chassis paired with more flexible tires with most modern Ducati’s.
