Performance Improvements Power the 2025 Ducati Panigale V4
Exploring the latest flagship superbike during World Ducati Week
The mood at this year’s World Ducati Week gathering in Misano, Italy was electric, with tens of thousands of tifosi gathered to lay eyes on Ducati’s latest hardware and watch their heroes race wheel-to-wheel on the freshly minted hardware. Ducati design boss Andrea Amato gave us the lowdown on Ducati’s latest flagship at a closed-door preview ahead of the main event. “People usually think pure beauty cannot be super-functional or perform at a high level,” Amato says. “I strongly believe the opposite.”
Amato cites the 916 (1994-1998) as inspiration for the 2025 Panigale V4, suggesting a sort of spiritual ancestry that links design philosophy across the ages. While the “eye of the beholder” walnut certainly holds true, there are indeed styling cues and proportional ties to that broadly loved, Massimo Tamburini-designed beauty including a lightened snout and a fairing-mounted intake, not to mention a few subtleties only the cognoscenti will catch. There are also a slew of modern introductions, the most prominent of which are a pair of nose-mounted winglets that are either futurist or catfish-like, depending on your outlook. The Panigale’s body panels have also been resculpted in the name of improved ergonomics, particularly the ability to duck a helmet into the tank at speed and hang off the bike more easily in corners.
The new fairing is said to better protect the rider from turbulence and reduce drag. However, the buzz at Misano (and across the internet) was focused on two controversial bits: the aforementioned winglets, and the newly (re)introduced double-sided swingarm. The latter raises the ire of traditionalists because a sexy single-sided design has graced Ducati superbikes for the better part of 30 years. Showing off the side of the rear wheel has become a point of pride for Ducatisti.
The new swingarm offers a “double hollow symmetrical” design that provides a glimpse of the wheel through openings on either side. It is indeed more attractive than many more workaday solutions—but it’s not quite the same as the olden days of one solitary swingarm. Which begs the question: why depart from tradition?
Ducati contends that two is better than one due to the engineering inevitabilities of racing—specifically, how two swingarms enable greater cornering loads, lighter unsprung mass, and more power to be laid down on corner exit. Like the advent of liquid-cooling in the Porsche 911, the embrace of the double swingarm was the only way to keep up with their racing competition, all of whom embraced the more robust layout long ago.
The Panigale also sheds a few pounds, brings incrementally more power (216 hp in Euro spec) despite stricter emissions rules, and offers a wholistic set of ergonomic, chassis and electronic improvements intended to make it easier to extract performance from the bike. These changes are objective improvements that can be measured in the lap times, but the chatter remains focused on aesthetics. For what it’s worth, the body panels and winglets flow seamlessly together thanks to high-end automotive levels of fit and finish—no surprise, given Ducati is operated under the auspices of Audi AG.
While the new Panigale’s performance improvements will undoubtedly make it go quicker around a racetrack, the civilians who purchase Ducati’s latest will likely dither on details like those curious front-mounted winglets and the ditching of the iconic single-sided swingarm. The aesthetic loss is real—a signature styling element that has been sacrificed to the gods of speed. But as the new design follows the prevailing trends in MotoGP and World Superbike racing more closely than boulevard beauty trends, so must the brand as well.
What are your thoughts?