DUCATI DRE - RACETRACK ACADEMY

Some days just start better than others... like when you open your bedroom curtains and stare down at one of the sauciest racetracks in the world – Silverstone.

If the day had ended there, then I wouldn’t have been too disappointed. But as it happens, this was but a warm-up act to the kind of prestige to be expected on Ducati’s inaugural DRE Race Academy event.

What’s DRE, you might wonder? And rightly so. For the likes of myself, who all too often has to search down the back of the sofa for loose change in the week before pay day, it’s a world far estranged from the one I can afford, providing motorcyclists access to Ducati’s finest machinery on track, tours, and even off-road.

The Ducati Riding Experience, to give it its full name, is a proven formula that sees amazing trips on amazing machinery… and, for the first time ever, it’s migrated over to the UK. While tours and adventure gigs are set to head to our shores, I wasn’t complaining when Ducati decided to dip its toe into the British scene with a track riding spectacular on the aforementioned legendary circuit. The plan was simple: release a limited number of places for a closed-track exclusive experience, guided by World Championship riders, kitted out with immaculately prepped Ducati Panigale V4s and V2s. And they’d even pre-ordered the weather, meaning that from the outset of this escapade, we were graced by that rarest of sights – blue skies and sunshine.