FIRST RIDE: DU CAT I SUPER L EGGER AV 4
Yes it’s another monstrously expensive exotic. But…
Let’s face it we all know how the exotic superbike test thing goes: the new Ducati Superleggera V4 will be lighter than a world superbike and lap Mugello almost as fast. It’ll accelerate like a wild thing and prompt gushing about how it corners…
It’ll also be expensive and irrelevant to most of us. And for the few who’ll own one of the 500 made who’s really going to ride it as Ducati intended? It’s too quick for the road and on a trackday you’ll be a rolling target for R1 man.
Of course, all of the above is true, but the £90,000 Superleggera V4 has another trick up its sleeve. It may look like it’s spoiling for a fight, brandishing four knife-like wings and it assaults the ears like Dovi’s Des at full chat, but this is the easiest to ride, most flattering road going superbike ever produced. Its secrets are its lack of weight, flexy carbonfibre frame and swingarm technology, friendly engine mapping and even friendlier rider aids.
The only other bike that’s ever come close to the Superleggera’s easy brilliance is the carbon-framed BMW HP4 Race, but that’s even more irrelevant because it doesn’t even have lights and indicators. Ever since Ducati started squeezing serious power from their V-twin superbikes, they’ve been feisty buggers. The 1098 and 1198 had so much torque they twisted themselves inside out, and back again, out of corners and the 1199 and 1299 Panigale would weave all the time they weren’t braking. Even the new Panigale V4 isn’t averse to the odd wiggle and it’s so stiff you can’t ride it hard enough to get it working properly, unless you’re Scott Redding.
The Superleggera V4 is different and exudes the purity only a bike weighing next to nothing can achieve; Ducati claim 159kg dry, which doesn’t mean much in the real world, but to ride it has the kind of delicate, hollowed-out feel you won’t find on a 20 grand superbike.
There’s no white noise between you and the tarmac, so everything it does is crisp and direct. Acceleration, braking power, steering and feel are unfettered by stodge or bulk. But it isn’t one of those lightweights that jumps and skitters like previous 1199 and 1299 V-twin Superleggeras. Instead the Superleggera V4 manages to have the well-damped, reassuring solidity of a tourer. Riding it fast or slow is laughably easy, like discovering all the cheats to a video game at the same time.
On track the Ducati sticks to the tarmac with implausible force, so your only limit is imagining what it would be like to bury £90k’s worth of carbon, titanium and magnesium into a tyre wall. There’s an obscene amount of power from its tuned V4R engine (it’s a 1000, not 1100) and there’s extra theatre provided by its Kalashnikov blipper and jangly dry clutch. But the V4’s delivery is evenly spread from walking pace to its 16,000rpm redline and never gets unruly, even with a titanium race exhaust that ups power from 221bhp to 231bhp (and saves 6.8kg). While this V4 was not conceived to be used on the road, it does so with surprising grace. It rides over any surface with delicious poise and the engine is so friendly you’ll make a CBT instructor swoon with your smooth low-speed getaways. It’s more spacious than any rival superbike and has a proper screen. And then there’s the sheer decadence of the thing: the carbon frame, wheels, bodywork and those double decker wings that produce a monstrous 50kg of downforce at 170mph. There’s Öhlins gas forks, titanium-sprung shock, red-walled Pirelli Super Corsa SPS, slotted billet top yoke, fuel tank gills and satin red Motogp paint.
It’s at this point we would usually tell you the tech here will filter down to normal bikes, but we can’t. What makes the Ducati Superleggera V4 such a wonderous object is its lightness and collection of high spec parts, which will never come cheap.