PRE-WSB DUCATI POWER

Though this year’s festival put the spotlight on 30 years of the World Superbike Championship, there were two bikes nestled in a garage that celebrated the era immediately pre-superbike.

Marco Lucchinelli took a factory Ducati TT1-F1 to victory in Daytona’s Pro Twins race in early 1987, and a year later repeated the effort on a prototype version of what would become Ducati’s celebrated 851. At the International FOS, Ryan Mclauchlan was very competitive on the TT2 his father Robert has owned for seven years, which in homage to ‘Lucky Lucci’ even wears his famous 618 race number. The TT2 had history with Epicycle, Pete Smith’s famous 1980s Ducati-tuning operation in Sydney. After turning up as a road bike, it’s back where it should be – on track.

At the same time as Ducati had the TT2, Italian frame-maker Bimota used 750cc Ducati power for their DB1, and it was the privateers’ choice before they turned to Yamaha’s FZ750 engine for WSB. Warren ‘Squeak’ Mcwhirter was running around on his DB1 at the FOS. Its history dates back to the era of Gowanloch DB1S (they were the Australian Bimota importers), which even saw Chris Oldfield competing on one at Bathurst. Squeak’s bike has an engine that’s a combination of parts from several years of Ducatis, mixed with parts from Gowanloch’s original race programme. “It’s a bitsa, for sure,” he said.