VOLUME 57 ISSUE 30 JULY 28, 2020 P71
"The Front Frame has been
created with the layout of the V4,
which has been challenging for
the design guys to create in car-
bon fiber," says Ducati Superbike
Performance Development Man-
ager, Carlo Ricci Maccarini. "But
the target has been met because
with this frame, we not only re-
vealed the carbon frame with the
same shape of a cast aluminum
one, but we also had the chance
to fine tune the stiffness."
Typical thinking would have
the Superleggera's carbon-fiber
Front Frame as the stiffest of all
three Panigale V4's on sale, but
you'd be wrong. It's actually the
reverse. The V4 R, which essen-
tially exists as Ducati's homologa-
tion machine to go WorldSBK
racing, isn't as stiff as the road-
going V4 S, and the Superleggera
was therefore required by Ducati
Corse to investigate a lower
stiffness reference. The Ducati
engineers defined a play book for
the new chassis that reduced the
braking, torsional and lateral stiff-
ness when compared to the V4 R.
"On the V4 R, we made two
openings on the side walls, and we
also put reinforcement on the lower
part to match the new set of stiff-
ness numbers that Ducati asked
of us. On the carbon-fiber frame,
