Photo credits: Ducati 959 Panigale Forum
While all our attentions are focused on the new MotoGP season, with pre-season testing and team reveals, there’s also another championship that’s about to start in Australia, at the iconic Phillip Island racetrack: The World Superbike championship. And with teams already sending their race bikes overseas, Aruba.it Ducati, the factory Ducati team in World SBK, has revealed the brand-new Panigale V4R dressed in race colours.
At the Aruba.it headquarters in Bergamo, Italy, the event was broadcasted worldwide via streaming, but not without its problems, since the streaming suffered many crashes. Something not good, considering Aruba.it makes a living by offering hosting and domain management.
But the main focus was the new bike and new team rider Alvaro Bautista.
As for the bike, the Panigale V4R has been under our radar for quite some time now, and we’ve covered its specs on many articles, including the last minute change Ducati decided to do. The race bike is almost like the street version, including the wings at the front to help keep the front tyre on the ground during acceleration, but gets a race-spec V4 engine complete with Akrapovic full race exhaust.
This means that the race-spec Panigale V4R is able to spin the engine up to 16000 rpm, at which moment the power will rise to no less than 235 hp! If we consider that the wet weight for this bike is just 168 kg, this means that the bikes ridden by Alvaro Bautista and Chaz Davies should be the main threat to Jonathan Rea and Kawasaki.
As for the riders, Chaz Davies remains with the Aruba.it Ducati team for another season. This veteran World Superbike rider is the most successful with the Panigale in this championship. With the 1199 Panigale R (two-cylinder) Chaz Davies registered 25 race wins, being the championship runner-up in three occasions.
As for Alvaro Baustista, the Spaniard spent his entire life racing prototype bikes on World Grand Prix racing, and the majority of the time was spent racing the MotoGP bikes. The move to the factory Ducati team in World Superbike is seen as a risk by some fans, but Ducati Corse believes that having a former MotoGP rider on their factory World SBK team is what will allow them to get the championship from Jonathan Rea and Kawasaki.
Bautista as already shown how quick he can be with the new Panigale V4R, but the doubts remain as if he’ll be able to adapt to the Pirelli Supercorsa tyres that these bikes use, since he was used to race Bridgestone and Michelin prorotype tyres in MotoGP.
The first round of the 2019 World Superbike season starts in Phillip Island on February 22 to 24, and we at iMotorbike will be covering everything related to this first race of the year, bringing you all the updates, race results and news.