Hello and welcome to PowerDrift, my name is Shumi and I'm happy to tell you that one of
the most bonkers motorcycles on the planet, the Ducati V4 Streetfighter is now on sale in India.
Ducati India will sell you the V4 and its higher cousin, the V4 S both.
Now if you've been lucky enough to ride any of the motorcycles that go in this class,
things like the KTM Super Duke R 1290, which makes about 180bhp or the legend,
the Aprilia Tuono 1100 Factory, which makes about 175.
You should know that anything above 165bhp is basically asking for trouble because they
are just so so fast and so so impressive to ride.
But the Streetfighter, it raises the bar another level altogether because it's based obviously
on the Panigale V4's Desmosedici Stradale engine.
Now that, it's quite the piece of work because its 1103cc V4, which is smaller than the previous
engine, and it is a lot more powerful.
Get this, in stock form the motorcycle makes almost 210bhp, which for a naked is absolutely
mind boggling.
It also has 123Nm of torque, which is also a lot of torque
and Ducati says it's not designed for horsepower as much as its designed to have a lot of torque
right through the rev range so you should be very excited but you should also be more than
a little bit scared because this thing promises to be nuts.
Now, the whole thing weighs 199 kilos, less than 200 kilos for the V4 S which means that the
power to weight ratio is absolutely off the charts.
And you can do better, if you also get the optional Akrapovic exhaust system the
motorcycle loses another six kilos and the power goes up to 220PS, which is absolutely mind bendingly scary territory.
Now, think about it, a naked motorcycle at 175bhp like the Tuono is already a motorcycle
that is hugely impressive in the way it makes power.
So the Streetfighter is going to be absolutely off the scale.
But let's rewind a little bit and talk about how they built it.
Now initial prototypes are basically the Panigale with the fairings taken off, and Ducati quickly
realised that that was not the optimal way to make the new motorcycle,
so a lot more work was done.
But in terms of the way the chassis is constructed, it's very similar to the Panigale V4.
So the engine is the heart of the frame and almost everything is mounted on to the engine,
either via sub frames or directly.
Now the V4, the base model, it has a Sachs fully adjustable rear shock, it has a fully
adjustable Showa big piston fork in the front
and in that sense it's a fairly well equipped motorcycle already.
But if you pay the price difference to the V4 S, you move on to Ohlins's top of the
line equipment and this time it's electronically controlled semi-active suspension, which means
that the motorcycle actually reads what's going on via the IMU and is able to control
compression damping, rebound damping and other parameters on the fly electronically, without
you actually having to do anything with screwdrivers and spanners.
And Ohlins Smart EC 2 system, the system that governs this, also uses a menu based system
which basically breaks down the complexities of having to remember numbers of click of
compression and clicks of rebound into something simple like saying make the motorcycle sportier
or make it more stable and you can set up this quite well.
Friends of mine who ride at the race track with us on Panigale V4s actually find the system quite simple
and those who move on from the system and find that the difference in damping sometimes
gets in their way, they can simply lock it like old school suspension and not have it change
setting as you ride along.
But, the naked motorcycle's challenge is not just suspension control
it's also aerodynamic control, because they're less aerodynamic than fairings and fairings
allow manufacturers to tune stability at higher speeds, which for a naked is obviously a challenge
and that's why the Streetfighter V4 also has winglets.
Ducati says at 270 kmph those winglets are worth 28 kilos of downforce, which will reduce
its tendency to wheelie and 200bhp bike weighing about 200 kilos is going to wheelie a lot if you'd
let it, but the winglets do help
and Ducati says they also discovered as their winglets worked and were fine tuned, that there
is a difference in the way the motorcycle turns in and feels stable in the middle of
the corner, thanks to the winglets.
Do you think we should take the winglets off when we test it and see what happens with
the winglets on and off when we get the Streetfighter test bike?
Let us know in the comments.
Now, let's talk about the suspension for a bit.
You've got Sachs and Showa on the V4, you've got Ohlins on the V4 S, you've got the
Sachs steering damper on both of them and you've got brakes now from Brembo.
Now Ducati has not skipped on the equipment here so you've got the Stylema callipers
running on 330mm rotors, that should tell you how serious the performance is because
the Multistrada is the only other Ducati they used to put 330mm rotors on until
the Panigale came along.
At the back is a single disc obviously, all the electronics that you can imagine have
been packed into the Panigale V4 and those are moved on to the Streetfighter as well
because obviously these are Ducati's flagship motorcycles.
So the IMU, it talks to the control system on the Ducati and you're able to do up and
down quick shifts, you're able to do cornering ABS and remember the up and down shifts are lean sensitive.
You also have the control over the riding modes and on the V4 S, the riding modes also
control the suspension setup, also the ABS settings, there's also engine brake control.
The feature that we do need to talk about is Ducati Slide Control, which is an incredible
little idea, because what it basically says is that a new rider can set it up to have
no slides at all, which means as soon as the Ducati goes sideways, the Streetfighter's
control system will bring it back into line.
But a slightly more advanced rider might be able to set it up to slide a little bit before it stopped.
So you could look like a hero but have a safety net at the back.
An advanced rider might set it up to be even more lurid allowing much bigger slides,
and the idea of that is that you can tighten a cornering line and make the corner shorter
and get through the corner faster.
And all of this magic, it's passing through Ducati's usual tyre partner Pirelli, which is
equipping these motorcycles with the new Diablo Rosso Corsa 2 tyres. The Rosso Corsa,
I've used it on my Street Triple and it was already a very impressive tyre.
The Rosso Corsa 2 is supposed to be a massive improvement over that, I'm very happy to see
that the Super Corsas are not on the Streetfighter as standard because I love the Super Corsas
they are such great tyres but,
for India, they're primarily track tyres and they run out really quickly, they wear out so fast
because they're so soft and so grippy, that honestly a street motorcycle
with Super Corsas says is either a rich man's plaything or you're just going to have to go through
life replacing tyres really quickly so a Rosso Corsa 2 I think is a very, very reasonable choice on that front.
So in sum, the Streetfighter V4, it's completely nuts, 200bhp+, 200 kilos, or
there abouts, all the electronics you can imagine, top of the line suspension,
top of the line brakes, the biggest problem for most owners would probably be the heat, which we'll
have to learn to deal with.
Because two things, one, the Indian heat is not going anywhere and two,
if you're going to ride fast motorcycles with big engines, you're going to have to
get used to the heat because heat is the basis on which internal combustion engines run.
And we've done a video on this in the Simplified section, please go watch it,
if you haven't, we'll leave a link for you in the description.
But heat is how internal combustion engines run
and therefore waste heat is going to happen and we're going to have to deal with it.
The more fairings we have, the more there is an opportunity to divert the heat away from
the rider, but when you don't have fairings like on the Streetfighter, that's not going
to be possible.
So now let's talk about availability, deliveries and all of that part of the process
and Ducati says the motorcycles are actually here in India now so they can actually deliver
the motorcycle to customers who book them as soon as humanly possible.
However, the COVID-19 lockdowns also mean that locally this situation is a little bit difficult.
So do reach out to Ducati if you're planning to book one, the dealers are available
online, off their social media Ducati India says you can reach out to them directly over social
media if they want to.
This is an unprecedented situation and they think that they can respond to you directly
and try and get at least the paperwork done before the motorcycles can be delivered to you.
But, tell us one thing before you go, in this class of motorcycle there's not a lot of this
kind of crazy motorcycles going on.
The choices are, the Tuono V4 1100 Factory with all the bells and whistles,
that one also has electronic suspension now, the 1290 Super Duke R and the Streetfighter V4 or the V4 S.
Which of these three motorcycles would you pick? Leave us a comment.
Thank you so much for watching.
I would like to remind you that just like you, we would like to be outside riding motorcycles
as soon as possible and for that we are doing everything we can.
So this video is being recorded in my house. My mask is up and I'm staying away from people as much as possible.
And I would like to do this so that this pandemic is behind us as soon as possible so that we can get outside again.
If you haven't been vaccinated, PowerDrift urges you to get vaccinated
and in the meantime, please stay inside,
stay away from people, stay away from COVID if you can. Best of luck, stay strong, stay healthy.
Thank you so much for watching.