remember when you had a 120k Ducati V4 916 special edition and you couldn't stop typing that you spent 120k on it?
And….lesson learned….i specifically built what I’m saying Ducati is now…a Ferrari…I wanted a bike that was sexy in every possible way, I wanted it to stir emotions on every level…just sitting in the garage looking at her, cruising through some canyons, and very capable on track despite looking like an expensive tart…it was exactly what I wanted.
But something happened along the way…that Ducati was a gateway drug for a guy with a few bucks to spend to get full on addicted to track. As such, doing 20+ track days a year and thinking I’m going to start racing a bit next fall the Ducati is no longer the bike for me.
It’s an absolutely wonderful bike in every way. And extremely capable at track. Capable enough that DucatiDetroit podiumed on it many times….although it was probably Fireblades that beat him lol
My point is that the audience Ducati is going after with the new bike and its pricing is the same audience that Ferrari goes after…an audience that doesn’t care about cost, in fact the cost is part of the cache, the feeling of exclusivity and specialness. But, despite being a car that with few modifications will perform beyond the skill of all but professional drivers at track 99% of Ferrari buyers would never dream of taking that car to track…and if you are really a track junkie the Ferrari is about the last car you’d think of getting for the track. Again despite it being extremely capable at track. Why, because for a 3rd of the money you can build out a Corvette, BMW, or Porche to be faster than anyone can reasonably turn a Ferrari into a real track weapon.
It’s exactly the same with the Ducati V4S…there is a reason that unless you have a direct pipeline to Ducati Corse you RARELY see Ducatis doing very well in Superstock. Try to actually order ANYTHING from Ducati Corse…IF you can wait to see how many YEARS it takes to get your parts and how much they cost…it’s FYou pricing. Ducati, like Ferrari builds a very good bike, but they don’t want you tuning it or improving it beyond what they want their bike to be.
If you want a very sexy overly expensive bike whose price itself is set to make you feel special buying it, that is fast at track for most people then the Ducati V4S is the right bike for you.
If you want a REAL track weapon with accessible factory race parts and a higher upside on performance then the best bike out there right now, regardless of price, is the 24-25 Fireblade. Oh and by the way you can field a Superstock version that can and DOES win every major Superstock 1000 class everywhere in the world for less than half the cost of a similarly built Ducati.
I’m a Ducati Fan boy, make no mistake…the problem is, there is a BETTER track liter bike out there now that happens to cost half the money. Kinda hard to ignore that, unless you’re a good lil consuming “Ducatista” fan boy who buys the bike solely based on its Brand image and the FEELING of exclusivity associated with its price tag.
The new V4S seems to fall between say a Fireblade which is a true track weapon, and an MV Agusta which is a beautifully sexy Italian sports bike. It’s not as good a track weapon as the Fireblade, and it’s not as sexy as the MV Agusta…it’s right in between with being almost as good as the Fireblade at track, but not quite there…and almost as sexy as an MV Agusta…but not quite there. So as much as I love the Ducati, I think I’d rather buy two bikes that each do what they are meant to do, an MV Agusta as my sexy feel good street bike, and Fireblade as my track only bike.
Just my two cents…we’ll see what the new V4R has to offer….because to be fair, we are comparing a V4S to an HRC Fireblade SP…it’s really not a fair comparison, the V4R is the more fair comparison, but we don’t have a new one of those to compare.
That bike will probably bring me back to Ducati. But until then…the Fireblade is king of the track only liter bike mountain.
