Ducati’s 2022 Streetfighter V2 Stuns!

Good on you, Ducati, reviving the middleweight naked sportster once again via their V2 Panigale. ‘The Panigale V2 stripped of the fairings’ quotes the press release which, frankly, is great news. Quite how close to the sportsbike it ends up being remains to be seen, but whatever they’ve done with it rest assured, it will be brilliant…

It’s true that very few manufacturers, well, only one really, refrain from diluting the sports side of things when it comes to adaptations to naked life. Usability for most is key, so long as they preserve enough essence, and speed, of the machine it is borne of. Yet there are usually significant concessions made, be that softening the chassis dimensions and suspension, or knocking off some revs to concentrate on naked-friendly drive. We won’t know the full truth till we get our hands on one, but thus far things are looking gravy.

With no fairings they’ve used an aluminium high-bar, while the freshly padded seat is wider as your weight is no longer pitched as far forwards, giving you more support. To match, the footpeg position has been altered and though suspension remains the same with a Sachs shock and 32mm BPF Showa fork (each rolling on a light-weight 5-spoke wheel), you can guarantee they likewise will have seen some fiddling.

The swingarm is different, a significant 16mm longer single-sided item to increase stability given the extra leverage from the flat bars with the V2’s arm would have been way too, erm, lively in the steering department. In fact, true to their word, most of the bike is as the V2, the same goes for the excellent Brembo M4-32 monobloc brake calipers which chomp on 320mm discs.

They’re great stoppers, one of the best in fact, if not the most glamorous in Brembo’s range.

It also means a wonderfully competent and cutting edge electronics suite, with so many DTC or DWC or EBCs that you literally don’t have enough time in your life to read them all. Suffice to say, things like traction-control, anti-wheelie, slide control (both on the TC side and the braking side for epic skids) and so on, are perfectly catered for here, and all controlled via a sweet colour TFT dash.

So far, so fabulous, and though on the face of it the choice to use Pirelli’s Rosso IV tyres could point to an ever so slight reduction in sporting pretence, Pirelli have been putting a lot of work into making the new Rosso IV much more effective when it comes to scratching or track action.

Aside from all the obvious changes necessary for it to be a naked, it really does seem to be a version of the V2 they haven’t watered down too much. And the figures make for great reading, despite its bigger V4 sibling throwing around the huge numbers – a fully dry weight of 178kg is impressive, as is the claimed 150bhp plus (at 10,750rpm) that the 955cc Superquadro L-twin pushes out, complimenting the 100Nm plus torque output nicely.

This really could be a great seller for Ducati – still on the pricey side, but tempting on a PCP deal and nowhere near as intimidating as the big V4 bully brother from the same stable. The good news? You don’t have to wait long to grab hold of one as they hit UK dealers in December. Worth a test ride at the very least, nay?