Have your cake and eat it
Superbike style meets road bike riding position 113bhp V-twin with bags of low-down torque S version gets Öhlins and a quickshifter
THE FIRST THING you notice about the new Ducati Supersport is its looks. It’s beautiful. From the front, it has the face of the Panigale superbike, with trick daytime running lights and no hint of road bias. But as you walk around it you begin to notice details that suggest it’s not the bike you might expect from the front view. There’s the adjustable screen, the high bars and sensible seat height – and what even looks like a pillion perch actually designed for carrying a human being.
The Bologna factory calls the Supersport and Supersport S ‘road sportsbikes.’ It admits the flagship Panigale range has, through evolution, become more extreme and less friendly for everyday riding. The new Supersport range is designed to cope with everything from two-up touring to trackdays to commuting.
Settling onto the standard Supersport, first impressions are dominated by the relaxed upper body position from those high bars. Peg position isn’t as relaxed but the bike is so narrow where the tank meets the 810mm-high seat that your legs are hardly splayed at all so it feels like a really natural sitting position. Optional seats can raise the height by 25mm or lower it by 20mm. Coupled with a light 210kg weight, the low seat could make the Supersport a good bike for those short of leg.
Our route climbs quickly up into the mountains on roads riddled with all kinds of corners, from hairpins to fourth-gear sweepers, mixed with some terribly surfaced back roads. Potholes, debris from heavy rains, gravel and broken surfaces should have a sportsbike hitting your wrists with a mallet but you’re spared all that by the Supersport’s more upright riding position – even though the suspension is on the firmer, sportier side. Forks are fully adjustable and there’s preload and rebound adjustment on the Sachs rear shock.
The bike is powered by a revised version of the 937cc 90° V-twin used in the new
Multistrada 950 and the Hyperstrada – though it has new crankcases and cylinder heads to mate with the new frame. It makes a claimed 113bhp (at 9000rpm) and Ducati say there’s 57lb.ft of torque (80 per cent of the claimed 71lb.ft peak) available from just 3000rpm.
The Supersport has a ride-by-wire throttle with three modes. Sport and Touring have full power, with differing throttle responses, while Urban has power output limited to 75bhp. These modes also control the default settings for the traction control and ABS (which includes an anti-lift system) though you can adjust the eight levels of traction and three levels of ABS independently.
As we climb up into the hills it’s clear the engine is really flexible. I find Touring smoother than Sport but it feels like it runs out of puff earlier. But on damp roads the more aggressive Sport throttle response isn’t so welcome. As we cross a small town, the Supersport takes little of the attention you’d need to keep, say, a Panigale in check. The low centre of gravity, decent turning circle and light clutch make mini-roundabouts a cinch. You could use the Urban mode, smoothing the throttle response out even further, but frankly I can’t see the point – Touring is fine.
Speeds begin to rise as the roads open up again. The gearbox is precise, with close ratios allowing a choice of gears for corners. The S model has a quickshifter as standard and it’s an option for this base model, but the action is smooth anyway. Even if it’s left in too high a gear for a tight corner, the engine will still chug out of it - though you can feel each revolution of the huge pistons as it does so.
I love the way you adjust the screen, just by grabbing it and yanking it up or down. As a system it works brilliantly, though I found it made only a little difference and generally preferred to ride with it in the lower position. If you’re taller and ride in all weather you might want to fit the optional taller touring screen.
Despite this I found the Supersport a comfortable place to be. In a two-hour
“The Ducati Supersport is in a league of its own”
road ride I felt the need to stretch my legs only once and the seat could have been moulded to suit my bum – comfortable but still with room to move around. The tank is a good shape for comfort and control – but it holds just 16 litres of fuel. That’s not much for touring, but with a relaxed sixth gear spinning at just 4000rpm at 70mph, it
should give an acceptable range if you can resist temptaion and keep to legal speeds.
The Supersport is a great sports tourer with the emphasis more on ‘sports.’ It’s a machine that blends the traits of a great road bike with those of a sportsbike. Better still, it wraps all this ability up in a very pretty package – which is what you’d
want, for the price. The standard Supersport is £11,631 and the S is £12,931 (add another £200 for a white S). But that balance of road and sports is a very difficult compromise to strike and I can’t think of any other current machine that manages it so well. In that respect, the Supersport is in a league of its own. MATT HULL