Not too long ago, Ducati Singapore opened a new showroom here, an event that I was asked to MC.
You cannot imagine how excited we were when Claudio Domenicali showed up to grace the event - I was like a giggly girl.
Anyway, a few buddies quizzed him about what's in store for the Ducati Superbike and what he said is that the Ducati Superbike will remain a Desmo V-Twin for the foreseeable future, despite our coffee shop engineering conferences pointing towards a Desmo 90 degree V4 like the Desmosedici, which would give more top end power which is what they seem to be lacking.
His tongue in cheek answer to further probing questions was "you are azkeeing tooo much, i cannot reveeeeal anymoire..."
Just a few days ago, an article by Alan Cathcart (big time bike journo) revealed that the 2011 Ducati superbike will be an oversquare V-Twin.
They are shortening the stroke further (they had a name for it which was italian) to raise rpms, may be rotating the engine backwards to make more room for a longer swingarm and maybe using the engine as a fully stressed member, which will result in a bike with 2 trellises like the Desmosedici, with no trellis connection between the front and rear!
I am not expecting all of this to be true, but it does make sense, although this may (looking at Ducati's historical marketing scheme) be applied only to next year's "R", then trickle down to "S" and "base" models the following years.
Alan has a big reputation and would not write nonsense.
I think we can expect a revolution in 2012 if not 2011.