WSB: Ducati confirm no racing for V4 until 2019

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Ducati have confirmed that they won’t race their all-new V4 superbike until the 2019 season.

Speaking at the recent WSB round at Laguna Seca, Ducati CEO Claudio Domenicali confirmed the Italian marque will introduce their V4 to the Superbike World Championship in 2019, almost a year after it will be made available to the public.

The bike is set to be unveiled at November’s EICMA show in Milan and at present details remain scarce, but MCN snapped these spy shots of the machine in development earlier this month.

Waiting a year to introduce a new model to racing has become standard practice for Ducati, who despite not having won a championship since 2011 remain the most successful manufacturer in World Superbike history.

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While the capacity of Ducati’s V4 is currently unknown, with rumours suggesting the road bike could be 1200cc there would once again have to be a special model for racing with four cylinder machines not permitted to exceed 1000cc.

“As we have already said, our future in Superbikes will be with a V4 engine, derived from MotoGP,” Domenicali said. “The bike will be introduced at EICMA this year. As we typically do at Ducati, we will take one year for development with the new model before racing. So in 2018, we will still use the Panigale R and then the V4 will be raced from 2019.”

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