Ducati's V4 R: Brave new world (SUPERBIKE)

So why is this motorcycle so special? Well, put the pipe on it and it belts out 234bhp. It costs a bucket-load of cash. Essentially, it's a World Superbike and you can ride it to the shops and back. Nothing has come close to this sportbike yet. Here's the

Okay, so this is the state of the art. It’s the big cheese from Ducati this year and it’s the bike the Italian factory has built so that it can go V4 racing with a 1000cc motorcycle in world and domestic superbike championships. It’s pretty exciting stuff.

Throw into that mix the fact that, with the official exhaust system fitted, this motorcycle makes 234bhp and that booming V4 motor revs to a dizzying 16,500rpm – all delivered through an entirely clutchless up-and-down gearbox – and you appreciate what a thing this bike is.

It’s game-changing in the sense that yes, there have been ‘WSB’ homologation specials before, but none of these were really bikes to be sold on much of a scale. Ducati openly admits that it wants to sell 1000 V4 Rs around the world. It may end up selling even more as time passes. The point is, this isn’t a bare minimum number of high-spec specials being turned out for an on-track advantage in various superbike championships both global and domestic.

What does that mean? It means that this really is a WSB racer on the road. It’s got lights, it’s got indicators and it’s got a factory warranty should that grommet or doodah go wrong when you’ve been out on the motorway or bumbling around the shops.

And what it’s also got is a full-on WSB-spec chassis and motor that’s absolutely exquisite to ride.

So here we are then at the world launch of the 2019 Ducati Panigale V4 R. There were just 12 testers from around the world invited to this – the select few hand-picked by the factory to be the conduit between WSB pitlane and interested larger audience.

It’s three weeks after the bike made its global debut at the EICMA show in Milan, Italy. Today at the Jerez circuit in the sunny south of Spain we’re joined by Chaz Davies and Alvaro Bautista, the pair who have had more than a mere say in how the bike has been developed. The duo are, after all, taking the V4 R into the white heat of WSB competition this year.

The day did not start well, with rain, mist and a wet track. But soon after midday the circuit dried up and that afternoon I managed to spend 35 laps aboard the V4 R gradually becoming more and more impressed by it. This is quite some motorcycle, as you might expect.

The V4 R shares the same technical basis as its more commonplace (but still red hot) V4 S sibling but there’s little to compare the two to each other. The V4 R is a very different motorcycle to ride. Firstly, because of the engine which, thanks to its shorter-stroke format measuring 81 x 48.4mm – instead of the S model’s 81 x 53.5mm – means that the R has a greater appetite for revs. Then add in the R’s 1.1kg lighter backwards rotating forged steel crankshaft, plus titanium conrods and 34mm intake valves (with 27.5mm steel exhaust valves) and the thing really wants to rev its roof off. Wow. All the tweaks and changes not only lift the rev ceiling to a quite frankly amazing 16,500rpm limit, but also allows the V4 R to pick up revs harder and faster when you’ve cracked the throttle and got well into exiting a turn. As if that’s not enough, all the rush of revs upwards and the leap out of the corner is also helped by the bike having the same Twin Pulse firing order as on the D16 MotoGP bike. Yep, it launches out of turn with gen-u-wine MotoGP tech.

The V4 R’s 70° crankpin, offset together with a 90° V4 cylinder angle, with the two left cylinders essentially firing closely together, followed by the two right ones, make the V4 R sound just like the MotoGP Desmosedici V4.

Add in the same high-pitched hollow-sounding roar from the dual

exhausts, which you’re very well aware of when riding the bike, and it’s the ultimate MotoGP-type experience. Albeit it with the lights, warranty and sat nav mounting points (okay, not that last one) that you’d expect from a modern road bike.

So you might be thinking that all this top-speed chasing, MotoGP tech would mean the V4 R has a pretentious, flighty pedigree and is only good for super-smooth MotoGP circuits and perfect weather conditions right? Nope. Despite breathing through a quartet of huge elliptical throttle bodies (equal to 56mm in diameter), the desmo V4 R motor is highly tractable. Even friendly.

The way it makes power is so nice to get on with that you truly could imagine riding this bike to the shops. It pulls so cleanly from low down, barely off the 1500rpm idle speed, with zero transmission snatch and only a little use of the relatively light action dry slipper clutch.

Yes, this is one for the purists out there but pleasingly so because, for the first time in many years, back is the trademark Ducati rattle of the clutch plates kissing each other at low revs without the oil bath they’d otherwise be sitting in to quieten them down. Let’s face it, it’s a soundtrack many of us have missed when going Italian.

So, low down is very good but some of the cleverest mechanical work happens as you wind the throttle open from those low revs. Power builds in a totally linear way, until just above 8500 rpm – when 80% of maximum torque is already available (it’s worth pointing out, again, that this is only HALFWAY to the redline) and when you hit that magical mark, things start to happen a great deal faster.

That’s when this ‘small’ V4 engine sends you catapulting forward even faster than its big sister does in the V4 S. That spread of power is broad and plentiful, which means you end up holding second and third gear for long stretches at a track like Jerez, where Chaz Davies says he only uses four of the six gears on his race bike.

The race-pattern gearshifter naturally works clutchlessly in both directions, though I had to remember to be quite forceful in selecting bottom gear for the slow Curva Lorenzo final hairpin leading on to the Pit Straight. There, I got a false neutral going from second to first half a dozen times, though maybe this would be less of an issue with more mileage on the gearbox to loosen it up. Either that, or I should have used second gear as Chaz told me he does. It sounds easy when he says it… the reality is somewhat different for us mortals though…

From 13,000rpm onwards, the variable length intake funnels lift to shorten the intake paths, so that the higher-lift race-spec camshafts can start to do their work. You honestly don’t feel this transition and knowing it was there, I did look for it, but there’s no trace of any steps in the power delivery. Instead, there’s just a strong, relentless build of revs and the power they deliver – and this was with the Akrapovič titanium

race exhaust system fitted to all four of our test bikes. I presume that the stock Euro4-compliant street exhaust is even friendlier with what it does. What’s more, this was in Race mode out of the choice of three available – Sport and Street being the other two, all delivering full power, but with different degrees of response. There’s no Rain mode for some reason.

The V4 R motor builds speed very fast, pulling irresistibly rather than explosively, but with a huge sense of purpose until an orange shifter light appears across the top left of the same five-inch TFT dash as on the V4 S at 14,500rpm.

Then a red one flashes on the right of the screen at 15,000rpm, as the second ‘get-ready’ of your romp through the top end. There’s no hard cut-out when you reach the 16,000rpm rev-limiter though – the ride-by-wire digital throttle simply downs tools and stops pulling.

In the chase up to that moment though, the famed nirvana of a direct connection via the throttle pick-up between the rider’s right hand and the rear Pirelli slick fitted for our test is very much present. Despite there being so much power and such extremes of performance on tap, this is a super-controllable motorcycle with a well dialled-in power delivery, even when ridden in something approaching anger on a racetrack.

Then there’s the handling. Basically the V4 R’s black-painted cast aluminium abbreviated twin-spar chassis is the same so-called ‘Front Frame’ design as on the V4 S.

Where the V4 R differs is that it has less metal behind the steering head to deliver a little more flex – this is what the factory calls ‘optimised stiffness’. It’s an interesting aside to mention at this point, but the WSB regulations actually allow the addition of material to the frame, but not the removal of any.

So to the ‘optimised stiffness’ – great name. It is an important thing for the likes of Chaz and Alvaro, but less so for the likes of us. In reality, it wasn’t so tragic that the test bikes weren’t yet equipped with this frame configuration, because the factory hasn’t yet turned out the less-is-more in volume for production. But the geometry is identical between the two – the only difference is in the degree of flex and of course a small amount of weight. The single-sided cast aluminium swingarm delivers a seemingly rangy 1471mm wheelbase, despite which the V4 R likes to wheelie under hard acceleration, and there’s now a choice of four positions for the swingarm pivot in 2mm increments. Dial it in as you see fit. Having been fortunate enough to test ride every factory World Superbike machine from 1988 to

6 – speed gearbox works clutchless up and down

1471 – that’s the wheelbase in mm of the V4 R

8500 – the rpm at which 80% of max torque is available

2015, the new Ducati’s practically dainty handling strongly reminded me of the 750cc Castrol Honda RC45 with which John Kocinski won the World Superbike title in 1997 in the way it steered.

That earlier Japanese 90° V4 Superbike combined two often mutually exclusive traits, agility and stability – and that’s what the similarformat Ducati V4 R also encompasses, but in a much more powerful package. Despite the long wheelbase, the V4 R was easier to change direction on than any desmo V-twin Superbike I’ve yet ridden.

The new Ducati hugged a line really well even under hard acceleration, and because Jerez doesn’t have any chicanes it isn’t an ideal circuit to test a bike’s ability to switch from side to side very quickly except at turns two and three.

So when I tell you that the V4 R seemed both agile and quickly responsive to steering input in that particular part of the circuit, that’s the best flickability test I could find on this launch.

I suspect the reason it steers so well isn’t so hard to figure out – the compact build of the 90° V4 engine centralises the mass of the bike, and having that right-angle cylinder layout means that it’s got a lower cee of gee as well.

That’s because there’s room to sink the throttle bodies down between the cylinders in a way that couldn’t be done on Max Biaggi’s and Stephane Guintoli’s taller three-time world champion tighter-angle 65° V4 Aprilia – and that’s a bike the new Ducati DOES remind me of in terms of power delivery characteristics, with that broad spread of torque on tap. The V4 R’s lower build was surely another reason (besides the super well set-up Öhlins suspension) that it rode the bumps so well on a Jerez circuit that was closed for complete resurfacing just two days after my ride there. With a slightly softer front and a stiffer spring at the rear than on the V4 S, the R-model’s Öhlins suspension package delivers impressive stability and outstanding feedback.

There’s a huge sense of response from the front that gives you extra confidence in keeping up turn speed and thanks also to the 54/46% forward weight bias, this indeed applies under hard braking when the large 330mm twin front discs and the lighter, more sculpted, latest spec four-piston Brembo Stylema one-piece radial calipers do a phenomenal job of stopping the bike hard from high speed. But there’s also a nice degree of engine braking still left dialled in to the settings for the STM ramp-style slipper clutch.

All this means you have heaps of confidence in keeping up turn speed in a corner like the off-camber third-gear sweeping right-hander named after Sito Pons, which leads on to the back straight at Jerez.

Let’s not forget that Ducati has a lot of experience in how to build Superbike racers-with-lights. This is the latest one and by some way the best yet.

I predict that despite the high price Ducati will sell its 1000-plus examples of the V4 R with some ease, in which case just wait for BMW to produce a comparable M-version of its new S 1000 RR, with a power-up WSBK-spec engine package to go with all the carbon fibre M-parts already on offer. Except, the Ducati V4 R is already here, delivering a literally unique level of street-legal performance from a series production motorcycle.

Incredible stuff.