Borgo Panigale. Monday, September 24th. The day after. I arrive at the gates of the Ducati factory, just two short streets from the main freeway which circles Bologna, at around 5:30pm, just as the day shift starts to head for home. I know I am close to the factory, as I see a grown man in a Ducati cap hurrying round a corner with the look of a child on Christmas morning on his face, his wife trailing indulgently behind.

The groups exiting the factory gates in twos and threes look content, satisfied with another day's work done. No one looks frustrated, no one looks drained, and almost everyone is wearing or carrying something bearing the word DUCATI on it: A cap here, a shirt there, elsewhere a laptop bag. The name Bayliss features prominently, but some items, the colors faded with age, have the name Fogarty faintly legible upon them.

Watching them leave, it's hard to believe that just the day before, together they had won the MotoGP World title, smashing the stranglehold the Japanese have had on the championship for the past 33 years. The only sign of that astonishing feat is the vast banner on the factory wall, the words "Ducati and Stoner, Champions of the World" in bold face, sat against a sea of signatures, seemingly of everyone who works at the factory. But what marks out every single person leaving the factory gates on Monday is passion: A passion for motorcycles, a passion for racing, a passion for success.

The day after winning the world championship, the few hundred people responsible for that remarkable achievement were hard at work once again, in a handful of buildings in a nondescript suburb of Bologna, already working out how to repeat what they had done. That quiet commitment and sense of dedication impressed me more than any lavish, exuberant display of bragadoccio. The massed might of Japanese motorcycling manufacturers had better take note. Ducati have arrived, and don't intend to leave any time soon.

On Wednesday night, as we lay in our tent in Mugello, a few miles from Bologna, a storm rolled in, the thunder echoing through the Tuscan hills. All the while, I couldn't escape the thought that it sounded a lot like the rumble of a 90 degree desmo twin.