Feed the habit: Living with the Ducati 1098R

I’m a manic-depressive. I’m either tremendously happy or wretched, and there’s very little in between. The highs are stratospheric, I go right up there as the serotonin floods my system and we’re on cloud nine; me, my mood and I. Nothing is a problem, everything is great, bring it on. And then, quickly as it poured in, the endorphins hit the plug-hole and we’re left with a bleak emptiness that nothing could possibly fill. Bollocksed, all over, total blank. Up and down we go; life is a constant see-saw.

That means I need a bike to suit my moods, and right now I’m so happy I could shit. I just clicked into top gear at 176mph on the speedo and am well on my way to an indicated 190mph in the fast lane. My jeans are flapping so hard they’re stinging my ankles and my helmet is doing its best to strangle me as the wind blast gets under it and shoves it backwards. And still we’re accelerating. Jesus, doesn’t this thing ever slow down?

20 minutes ago I was scything through the B-road that leads to the A3, cutting perfect apexes on warm tarmac, wheelying past lines of cars and generally behaving like the sort of hooligan who’s personally doing his best to get motorcycling banned forever. And maybe I am. Because when you’re commuting to work on a Ducati 1098R, you honestly don’t care what other people think. You’re living in a special place called Me Town, population: one.

I’ve ridden everything from jet-bikes in Arizona to Valentino Rossi’s RC211V in Malaysia, but the Ducati 1098R is as special as they come. It’s the most extreme production sportsbike yet made, a homologation special refined over the years into something akin to a work of art. Silly, overpriced devices like Ducati’s Desmosedici can’t see which way a 1098R went on the road, it’s a sluggardly curiosity by comparison.

If you just want to show people you’re rich, a Desmo will do perfectly. But if you want to ride properly and need a bike that doesn’t suffer fools, the 1098R is the machine for you. Ducati make V-twins, it’s what they have and always will do, and this is the fastest, most glorious V-twin ever to be seen in this country. Or the next.

180bhp is delivered to the magnesium back wheel through a 102db set of Termignoni exhausts with such girth they look like drainpipes. Carbon fibre is used for everything, saving 16kg over the stock 1198S and giving the bike a claimed dry weight of just 165kgs. Öhlins suspension graces the front and rear ends, while Brembo monobloc brake calipers bite on massive 330mm discs.

Ducati have taken their best sportsbike, thrown all the most expensive component parts in the world at it, tuned the engine for racing, hand-assembled it and set the final thing up to perfection. But surely, such a creation can’t actually be practical or usable in the real-world - a Honda CBF600 is a much better bet day-to-day? To find out, I lived, slept, ate and breathed the 1098R for three weeks, using it as my sole form of transport. This is what is was like.