[Jeff Higgins]

I read somewhere that one of the biggest "crossover" segments in motorcycling are the riders who own both Ducati and Harley. Count me in - my touring bike is a 2013 Road King. And, funny, while by no means "fast" by anyone's standards, it is still capable of being ridden at a completely irresponsible pace in the twisties.

So where are we, really? I remember reading a review of the latest 600 Super Sports in Cycle World a few years ago, wherein several staff riders with road racing backgrounds and a few professional road racers hauled them out to Willow Springs for the day. Yes, some bikes were faster than others, some riders were faster than others, and some were able to make different bikes go faster than the other guys could make them go. As a whole, though, all of the bike/rider combinations managed to lap within about five seconds of one another.

That sounds like a big gap, and it is. If you are racing. Their message, however, was that unless you are a professional road racer, or a very talented amateur racer, you could choose the "fastest" bike of the day and still lap ten seconds slower than their slowest bike/rider combination.

So what do those numbers really mean, to us, as street riders? Not a god damned thing anymore. As Ken eludes to above, those numbers really quit meaning anything to us at least fifteen years ago. That probably depends as much on talent as anything else, though - I think my personal threshold was crossed 30 years ago...

The message from Cycle World at the end of that review was, essentially, "it just doesn't matter". Their advice was to "pick like a girl - the color you like best". Performance is moot.

I think that is the difference between these two Ducatis as well. One might be "faster" on paper, but that's about it. They will feel dramatically different, and that is going to be a matter too taste. Neither one is "better" than the other, for our purposes. Just different.