A 3100-mile V4 odyssey
Razor-sharp superbike morphs into effortless sports-tourer
Our 550-mile, 12-and-a-half-hour schlep north from Ronta near, Mugello, to Strasbourg in France, is the longest riding day of our tenday Croatia trip.
It’s our penultimate day, so keeping motorways to the minimum we greedily hoover-up as many of Europe’s great roads as we can. We whip through Tuscan mountains, shimmy over the Gotthard Pass in Switzerland and bask in the glory that is the B500 in the German Black Forest. Taking our day in 100-mile chunks (the Ducati’s fuel light comes on around 110 miles) there’s a late-afternoon stretch in northern Switzerland where my Panigale V4 S finally breaks me. The heat around my gentleman’s parts from the engine and my sore wrists, bum and neck are all too much, so I jump on my mate’s Streetfighter S for a stint. Ah… the relief. To be fair, my V4 only really gets painful on long jaunts like this and anything under three hours it’s perfect. It has first class legroom, for a superbike, an acceptably comfy seat and for most part, the weight on your wrists can be relieved with a cushion of wind speed and by leaning on the Ducati Performance tank bag I’ve fitted for the trip. In any case, it’s worth taking a bit of discomfort to marvel at the V4’s good bits. I never tire of its incredible corner-entry poise and grip, or the bassy growl from an engine that started life in Dovi’s 2014 racer and the way it delivers its power. It has a multitude of characters: soft at the bottom, bursting with grunt in the middle and topped off with such a ferocious top end it’s hard to hang on if you’re carrying a heavy rucksack. Of course, superbikes aren’t designed for touring, but exploring Europe on my Ducati has been a gift. Riding with my brother and good friends, it’s been a whistlestop tour of some of the best roads on the continent - Croatian countryside has to be seen to believed. We stay at Reims, Stuttgart, Lake Como, Rijeka and Split, an overnight the ferry to Ancona, Riccione, Ronta and Strasbourg. We take in the Porsche and Ducati Museums, Rossi’s café, a DRE at Mugello and more bends than you can shake a set of Öhlins forks at. My 3100-mile trip is powered by 31 tanks of fuel, Snickers, coffee, fizzy water, Morretti, Google Maps and lots of V4-induced smiling. Can I turn back and do it all over again?