Head-to head
We found an empty stretch of tarmac, marked a distance of 400 metres and decided to let all the three machines loose to figure which one accelerates the fastest. Stacked against the Ninja, the RC came out victorious on all occasions. We tried multiple combinations of riders on both the motorcycles, but every time, it was the RC which would take the lead and finish 20-25 feet ahead of the Ninja. The way the RC 390 takes off from standstill has to be experienced to be believed. Keep the revs around the 5k mark, dump the clutch, and the motorcycle wheelies away to a raucous note. It gave us such a rush, we would’ve done it all day long.
Against the Duke 390, the RC would lag behind initially by a few inches, but a few metres later, in a crouched position, the faired KTM would stamp its authority. In a one off instance though, one of our feather weight staffers, whose ride until sometime ago used to be an RX-100, perched himself on the Duke 390 with an evil grin on his face and ordered one of us to bring the RC 390 alongside. We knew he discovered something about the Duke which would make things interesting. Alongside the RC 390, the ‘Stick’ just took off into the distance on the Duke and opened up a gap so large initially, it could not be covered, even with the aerodynamically aided KTM. As he came back, we made him believe in our story that the Duke we had was a modded motorcycle fitted with a smaller rear sprocket.
I agree that the Duke has the initial pull, or its atleast equal from what I could make out at the BIC trackday, Noida.
However, I did ride the Duke 390 (road+track, I own one) and Ninja 250 (on the road), and I believe that an important point is that the Ninja has a wider powerband.
That means if you get distracted or have a corner ahead, and over rev the Ninja beyond its max power point, there’s still a long way before rev limiter…. So, no problems here.
But should the Duke miss the Max power gearshift, its rev limiter right away. And you go back by 3-4 bike lengths normally….
For racing, more cylinders are always better. On road, I believe its Vice Versa, seeing the SuperDuke 1290 and the Duke 390 too.