CHAZ’S TAKE…
Our very own Chaz Davies (and Factory Ducati racer) is one of the lucky few peeps on the planet to have clocked a few laps on the new Final Edition. We asked him for his take on it…
How does my bike compare to the FE? Well, I’d say it goes quite similar to it engine-wise, obviously it doesn’t rev quite as hard as ours but in terms of overall power the FE, with the extra 100cc compared to the souped-up 1199cc race bike, is really good, quite comparable on power, in fact – especially in torque more than anything else, it may even have a bit more than ours, at least that’s the way it feels to me.
I didn’t have a chance to rag the FE on proper slicks, but the impression I got from it was that it felt as though with slicks on you could ride it really hard. We rode it out of the box, completely standard engine and chassis settings, and it didn’t feel particularly soft to me, the way road bikes often do. I had a good play with the electronics, I can’t remember what lap times we were doing but they were respectable, and I had turned the traction control down to setting ‘1’. For me, being used to a race bike, the minimum TC setting is the most comparable to my race bike, so if you get kicked out of the seat it’ll help you out but without being too invasive; it doesn’t kill the power too much. It reminded me of my race bike a bit, but then my race bike lights up a hell of a lot more than people may think, funnily enough! It’s a perfect indicator of exactly how the work we do in WSB filters down to road bikes like this.
Thinking from a safety perspective though, especially on the road, having all those other more intrusive TC settings to activate is really handy. I liked the FE a lot; it’s a really fun bike.