If you are going to race at the Pikes Peak International Hill Climb, you might want to bring something a little bit more peppy than a stock Ducati Hypermotard – not that the Italian street bike isn’t tons of fun, but its now-rated 110hp is going to be robbed blind at it approaches the 14,000+ foot summit.
That is where Michael Woolaway’s latest project for Deus Ex Machina comes into play, as Woolie has taken the Hypermotard, dropped massive amounts of power into its chassis, and then stripped every last bit of unnecessary weight off the machine.
With 200hp on tap, and a paltry 345 lbs measured when fully fueled and on the scales, Woolie’s Pikes Peak Hypermotard is the ultimate in function before form. Of course, the minimalist technical requirements play into Woolie’s bare-bones design as well.
At the core of the Pikes Peak racer – Woolie aims for a 2018 campaign at the Race to the Clouds – is a race-spec Ducati 1198RS engine. Optimizing the power-to-weight ratio even further, 88 lbs of bulk have also been removed from the stock machine, which now features a 2.5 gallon custom fuel cell.
The bodywork is carbon fiber, hand-formed by Woolie and laid up by Paul Taylor of Taylor Made Racing. The wheels too are carbon fiber, courtesy of BST.
While the traction control has been removed from the 1198RS system (don’t try this at home with a 200hp superbike engine), Woolie has crafted his own way of keeping the front wheel down, using a modified carbon fiber F1 ca spoiler as an improvised winglet.
Lowered by 1.25 inches, and with Andreani drop-ins for the suspension, Woolie’s Pikes Peak Hypermotard should handle better than the stock machine, especially when racing through the 156 turns that await in Colorado.
With the project still under development, it will be interesting to see what rolls up to the starting line at Pikes Peak. We are certainly intrigued.
Source: Deus Ex Machina
