2020 Ducati Panigale V4S Refined Rocket

With its sexy look and raw power, Ducati’s V4S Panigale hasn’t had to try hard to get our juices going over the past few years, but when it comes to setting fast laps it’s proven as user-friendly as a bucking bronco with a sore backside. Thankfully, for 2020 it’s been given some much needed refinement.

- FRODO

I’m not sure about you lot, but I absolutely loved the first iteration of Ducati's V4S. It proved an utter, fire-breathing monster, with a riding experience that felt more like an acid-laced dragon than a MotoGP inspired protégé. For sheer fun that’s not such a bad thing, but when it came to hunting down lap times or having the fitness to fight it all day on track, let’s just say it proved pretty damn draining. The good news is that for 2020 Ducati’s been back in the lab and has delivered us something a little softer, cuddlier, and supposedly easier to blast around on… but how have they managed it? Looking at the spec sheet, the new V4S’s DNA may only look trivially different to what’s come before, but don’t write it off just yet – we saw only a few months ago how a similar approach from the Bologna boys transformed the dawdling 959 into a refined wonder weapon (the new V2). If anything, the V4 has been taken even further down this path. Yeah, it still utilises the same engine and most of the same components, but there are still plenty of tweaks to talk about. For starters, now the V4S comes equipped with the show-stopping V4R’s nose and fairing panels; not only is the fairing 76mm wider with a taller screen, but it also has the extra cooling vents on the side panels, alongside those fancy carbon winglets, which we’ve been told give a 2.5 metre advantage when accelerating out of the last corner at Jerez to the finish line.