Now the weight limit rule has been ratified, approved and signed in fourplicate, the twins are limited to 175kg and everyone should be happy. The Ducatis are now safely-but-grudgingly carrying the ‘success ballast’ and we can look forward to closer racing at Snetterton this weekend like we had at Donington. Where Shane Byrne won. Twice. Again.

There has been much talk of why the Airwaves Ducatis are ‘faster’ than the four-cylinder counterparts. The simple fact of the matter is they don’t have an advantage at the top end at all, so aren’t ‘faster’ in the common use of the term.

We can only get figures for top speeds from speed traps at circuits, or from teams’ datalogging. Some hope. Trouble is, speed traps can only be used as a very rough indicator of a bike’s top end performance, so the evidence they produce, and the pub commentary that goes with them, is unreliable.

Snetterton has the longest straight on the British Superbike calendar but that doesn’t make the Norfolk track the fastest in the UK.

That accolade belongs to Thruxton which doesn’t actually have a long straight per se. The most useful speed trap at Thruxton is between Village and Church corners, where the bikes are still accelerating and turning right.
Snetterton’s speed trap is in the braking area for the Esses. It is set up for cars which brake later and harder than bikes.

Thruxton’s fastest race speed this year was by Cal Crutchlow at 111.08mph, just 0.18mph faster than Shane Byrne, and they has identical fastest lap times of 1’15.758 in the second race.

However, Crutchlow’s HM Plant Honda broke the beam at 156.1mph, whereas Byrne could only manage 154.6 in comparison. Considering where the trap is, you could read into this that the Honda is accelerating faster than the Ducati, which it shouldn’t be. What you do have to take into account that Crutchlow weighs about three stone wringing wet and Byrne is considerably bigger than than.

At Thruxton, this is borne out by the fact that Stuart Easton’s ZX-10R also managed 156.1mph and there is no way the MSS Kawasaki is able to pull what would effectively be yards on a full works Ducati in order to be two miles an hour faster. However Easton, like Crutchlow, is the size of a small boy.

So we can take from that speed traps are unreliable in giving exacting indicators of absolute performance but we can use them to make comparisons with how the bikes are using their power in order to gain speed.

The Ducatis should get to the first speed trap at Thruxton quicker because they should be faster out of the turns. The extra extra capacity and power delivery will give them grunt but they will also run out of pull earlier as they are only revving to 10,500rpm (and not breaking), and you have to factor in aerodynamic drag at speeds over 120mph.

Ducati and Yamaha in MotoGP is an example of that. Yamaha copied Ducati’s front end design in order to achieve a more slippery bike to keep up with the Desmosedici in a straight line.

The four-cylinder bikes are being howled at more than 14,000rpm but are they having to be revved so hard just to keep up with the lazy twins? No, there are other ways.

BSN.com’s technical guru Scott Smart says: “As far as 1000s go, with standard lift cams they stress the valve train less allowing them to rev higher without top-end failures. The new weak point is therefore the bottom end with its standard rod and piston.

“Supersport bikes used to break and people learned how to make them fast and reliable (eventually). Logically, you should keep the rpm down and maximise breathing efficiency. Some teams have used the faster, simpler route to power – rpm.

“Now, that’s fine if you keep on top of maintenance, seemingly the most visible failure this season [Tom Sykes at Brands] was with a motor over 2000km old. Hawk run the Kawasakis to only 14,000rpm and changed motors at 1200km, before the other problems literally ‘blew up’ for other teams.

“It’s always a balance, there will always be a weak point in the motor when you push the rules to the limit, the Ducati seems to be the least tuned with the best con-rod so its worrying just how much more they can get from the bike within the rules.”

The rules say cam or cam profiles can be altered, so long as the amount of lift doesn’t change, to help make peak power lower down the rev range. That would be safer, surely….

In 2007, Smart was clocked at 173.4mph through the trap at Snetterton on a Hawk Kawasaki. Smart, although not as a big a man as Byrne, is still six feet tall and more than ten stone in weight.

How did Smart, who was 14th and eighth in last year’s races with a fastest lap of 1’06.227 in comparison with race two winner Ryuichi Kiyonari’s 1’04.777, manage to get such a high speed figure?

It certainly wasn’t down to more power or revving the hell out of the Kawasaki’s motor so it was on the verge of spitting a con-rod. His bike wasn’t giving him an unfair advantage that day. He was just the best, and last, man on the brakes.

There is a school of thought which says the Ducatis are running in last year’s championship or this year’s WSB championship with regard to rules as everyone else is using supersport-spec motors, and that they haven’t sold the minimum amount for homologation purposes so should be thrown out anyway. Has Ducati UK pre-registered enough to make them legal? We will find out in a matter of days.

If gossip and scuttlebutt from Italy is to be believed, Ducati Corse don’t care anymore and won’t be playing in BSB with works bikes anyway, and that GSE will be off to ply its trade on the world stage once again.
Ultimately, the only people that will lose out when Ducati takes its ball home are the paying public. Despite all the allegiances and Honda flag waving, most race fans would agree that BSB will be a much less atmospheric affair without the sound of some Desmo valves around the place. Whether they are at the back or the front is immaterial – but Ducati, like John McEnroe, only play to win. They don’t like losing.

The point to all of this is, of course, that the Ducatis have been penalized for not being faster, top speed-wise, than anything out there. They have been given extra weight to compensate for they way in which they make their power. Whether that’s fair can be argued one way or another until the season finishes. And probably will.

Personally, I think all this a bit like telling Roger Federer he has to play at Wimbledon with one leg missing because he holds his tennis racket differently to everyone else.