Asphalt & Rubber spent the last week waking up at 2am everyday to muster up to the staging grounds for the 89th annual Pikes Peak International Hill Climb, and upon arriving at the second oldest running race in the United States (the Indy 500 being the oldest), we were surprised to see our old friend Carlin Dunne, owner of Ducati Santa Barbara, pitting in the motorcycle paddock with a Ducati Multistrada 1200 race bike.

Now, we’ve always known that Carlin was a wicked fast rider, as this humbled author recalls that at his last track day with Dunne just a year ago, the 28-year-old dirt and street racer lapped him about every third lap at Big Willow. Despite this fact, the hard part has always been describing to other people how fast Dunne truly is, that is until now.

Riding Pikes Peak for the very first time, Carlin Dunne not only stood at the pole position on Sunday’s race to the clouds, and not only did the Santa Barbara native also win the checkered flag in the 1205cc motorcycle class, but the Desmo Devil himself dropped some two-wheeled knowledge on Pikes Peak when he set the outright fastest time ever for a motorcycle on the fabled mountain road and its 156 turns.

Here’s a type of recall that we’ll begin to see more of in the coming years, Ducati North America is recalling 1,051 Diavel and Multistrada 1200 motorcycles because of a faulty software issue. A certain version of the hands free software package may cause the electronic steering lock to fail to disable during the “key on” process.

The result is that a rider would be unable to move their motorcycle, at least not beyond a small radial path. In the eyes of the NHTSA though, this could mean that a rider could start the motorcycle and attempt to ride off, and then realize they lack the ability to steer (read: not good). While the safety issue here seems fairly benign, the idea that one couldn’t get their bike moving because a 0 should be a 1 would be fairly frustrating to us if we were owners of either machine, hence the recall.

Ducati News Today must have gotten the same news tip as us, as a IT security blog is purporting to have information on how one can steal a Ducati Diavel (and presumably a Ducati Multistrada 1200) via the bike’s keyless ignition system. It should be stated up-front that the pos referenced is dated April 5th, with the writer of the blog supposedly discovering this information on April 1st…and well all know what sort of Tomfoolery goes on during that time of the year.

According to the post’s author, the Ducati Diavel can be started not only without having the key in the ignition, but without the key at all. While anyone who has ridden the Diavel knows that you only have to have the key in the proximity of the Diavel while you’re riding, the idea that one can start the bike without the key comes from a default code that comes up when such an act is attempted. Where things get sticky though is that the author claims that this four-digit PIN is set from the factory to be the last four digits of the Diavel’s VIN, and that few owners know of security feature.

Ducati is issuing a recall notice with the NHTSA for the 2010 Ducati Multistrada 1200 adventure-tourer motorcycle. Affecting 1,196 units, the MTS 1200′s recall stems from an ECU problem that could see the motorcycle stall while idling with the clutch disengaged (something we experienced when testing the Multistrada 1200 last year). To fix the problem, affected owners must take their bike to a Ducati dealership, where the ECU will be re-flashed with a modified firmware package.

Amidst all the fanfare over seeing Valentino Rossi wearing Rosso Corsa and sporting his new Dainese leathers, which surprisingly aren’t being sponsored by McDonald’s, one announcement has gotten little attention (and no, we’re not talking about Nicky Hayden). The 2011 Wrooom event signals the end of a three-year strategic plan that’s been going on internally at Ducati, which has seen the Italian company release 12 new models, increase sales across the board, and ship 36,200 motorcycles in 2010 alone.

Dubbed the Best Motorcycle of the 2009 EICMA show, the 2010 Ducati Multistrada 1200 S Touring has a lofty title that we’ve been itching to test since we saw the bike debut in Milan last year. While the new Multistrada 1200 comes in many flavors, we somehow managed to get our hands on the Multistrada 1200 S Touring version, or as we like to call it: “King Duc”. The Multistrada line has been Ducati’s attempt to be more than a sportbike-driven brand, and with this latest incarnation we can see that the Bologna-based company has taken a serious stab at making a go-anywhere GS-killer, with Italian style of course.

We were anxious to bring the Multistrada 1200 to our happy hunting grounds in Santa Barbara, CA where we had just recently test ridden the groundbreaking Honda VFR1200F a month back. Our adventures with the new Multi actually began with a very long and boring two-hour drive into Brea, CA on four wheels. Traveling on four wheels in Los Angeles is the stuff suicide notes are made of, and naturally the return trip from Brea was a more pleasurable experience for a certain test rider, than it was for one editor stuck in LA gridlock. Of course that didn’t stop me from having the pleasurable experience of becoming acquainted with the Multistrada 1200 in its natural territory, the open road.

Knowing the sporty nature of Ducati motorcycles (and the seemingly inverse relationship between sportiness and comfort), we were skeptical of how enjoyable the 150-mile ride back from Brea would be on the Ducati Multistrada 1200 S Touring. Suffering through the almost endless miles of parked cars on the highway that laid between Los Angeles and Santa Barbara, I pulled over and sent the first text message back about the bike, “So much fun!!!!” it read, along with a picture of the Multistrada sitting on the side of dead-end road.

Before anyone cracks the joke, no Ducati is not recalling the 2010 Multistrada 1200 for it’s bird-beaked appearance. Instead, the Italian manufacturer is recalling the sport-touring motorcycle for some faulty screws in the bike’s center stand and steering head, and also for faulty throttle cable routing that causes the cable to rub against the bike’s radiator. Issuing three separate recalls for these problems, the screw recalls affect all MTS 1200 models, while the center stand issue is related only to the Multistrada 1200 S Touring model.

Ducati has reported that the first 500 initial pre-orders for the 2010 Ducati Multistrada 1200 have been filled, and there is now a 60 day waiting period for the new sport-tourer. Citing a strong reception to the Multistrada’s “four-bikes-in-one” capability, Ducati sees an additional 500 units to be sold in the coming months. This last statement seems sort of like a no-brainer, after-all another 500 bikes will be sold eventually, right?

Actually, the entire statement is sort of strange when you consider what 500 pre-sold orders really entails in a markets like the United States & Canada. With a plethora of dealers in these countries, the reality is that this statement amounts to dealerships pre-selling their initial inventory, which consisted of one or two motorcycles. Yes, the Ducati Multistrada 1200 is sold-out for the next two month, but when you ship only 500 units to the entire North American market, you can almost guarantee being sold out on a bike during its release, right?

Why, a lot like this of course. We love the sound of v-twins in the morning.

Source: Ducati News Today

How important is the 2010 Ducati Multistrada 1200 to the Italian company? Consider this, despite releasing a bevy of new and revised motorcycles for the 2010 model year, only the Multistrada 1200 has seen the Bologna company bend over backwards to market its sport-tourer with a bevy of videos. Part of this is due to the extra pocket change seen in the adventure segment of motorcycling, but an even more important reason for Ducati’s aggressive media push is the need for the Italian brand to stand for something more than just expensive sport bikes.

Before there were Hypermotards and Multistrada 1200′s, Ducati still saw the lion’s share of its sales come from the Monster line, despite the company being better known for its Superbike line. Unlike some other companies, Ducati was fortunate enough to realize that you can’t play in only one market segment, and began looking for new ways to expand it’s product lineup…thus the Multistrada 1200 was born. In an effort to keep up with all the marketing around the beak-nosed bike, we’ve compiled all of the Ducati Multistrada 1200 videos we could find, so sit back, grab a beverage, and enjoy them after the jump.