Ducati Desmosedici RR

One of the past weekend's highlights was spotting a rare bike... Alice.

Alice is a Ducati Desmosedici RR: a £40k road legal MotoGP motorcycle replica. This is a rare find, particularly due to its price, but also because of scarce availability.

There's a lot special about this bike from an engineering point of view.

• Desmosedici RR is the road legal Racing Replica of the MotoGP Ducati Desmosedici GPn;
• Desmosedici GPn is the n'th season motogp racing bike developed by Ducati. Currently in the MotoGP season of 2011, Ducati is running the Desmosedici GP11;
• The term "desmosedici" is a contraption of 'desmodromic' and 'sedici' (sixteen in Italian) that would translate to something like '16 valve Desmodromic valvetrain';
• Desmodromic distribution is a solution devised to overcome problems related to spring actuated valves at high engine rpm first implemented around 1910;
• (All current Ducati engines employ the desmodromic valvetrain system: desmoquattro, testastretta, testastretta evoluzione);

Here's a detailed technical description and comparison between a Desmosedici RR and a GPn: http://robotpig.net/__automotive/ducati_desmosedici.php?page=1
And this is a very good succinct 3d model of a desmodromic valve: http://www.seastarsuperbikes.co.uk/ducatiengines.html

From a rider's standpoint this is probably as close as one can get to a road legal motogp bike. And that's ~200bhp at the rear wheel, slipper clutch, 171Kg (== over 1000 bhp per 1000Kg), a beautiful growling Ducati V-4 engine attached to a glorious - barely legal - exhaust and handling manners of a race bike.
This is _not_ my type of bike, but it's as exciting as a GT1 racing car. Like such, I would not pass the opportunity to try it out. :-]