Ducati has announced that the Panigale V4 S motorcycles used by its riders in the Race of Champions at World Ducati Week 2022 last Saturday have all been sold.
All of the Ducati Panigale V4 S motorcycles used in the Race of Champions at the 2022 World Ducati Week were put up for auction on the Monday after the race (25 July 2022) and were sold within a few hours.
The bikes are unique, complete with replica liveries and graphics of the rider’s race team. For example, the #63 machine of Francesco Bagnaia and the #43 machine of Jack Miller feature the 2022 livery of the Ducati Lenovo Team of MotoGP; the #19 of Alvaro Bautista and the #21 of Michael Ruben Rinaldi are dressed in the livery of the Aruba.it Racing Ducati team of WorldSBK.
The first bike to be sold was that of Jack Miller, who finished the race in fourth. The next to go was Bagnaia’s, and then Johann Zarco’s Prima Pramac Racing-liveried #5 bike.
“The Panigale V4 S of the Lenovo Race of Champions are unique collector's items,” said Francesco Milicia, Ducati’s VP of Global Sales and After Sales. “The global success of the race further contributed to their value. We decided to give priority to our best enthusiastic customers: a way to thank them and to continue to fuel their enthusiasm for our bikes.
"The choice of the online sale was made in line with our strategy of using digital services to extend and improve the experience of Ducatisti and, in this specific case, to give immediate access to everyone at the same time throughout the world. The speed with which the bikes were sold confirms that many were connected looking forward to the opening of the platform.”
Where Milicia refers to “our strategy of using digital services to extend and improve the experience of Ducatisti,” he also refers to Ducati’s latest foray into the world of NFTs, among other things such as the official Ducati app that connects your phone to your motorcycle.
The Race of Champions was won by Francesco Bagnaia, and the Italian was joined on the podium by two other Italians: Luca Marini in second place, and Marco Bezzecchi in third. This was unsurprising, since, as members of the VR46 Riders Academy, the trio have more laps than everyone bar perhaps Michele Pirro at the Misano World Circuit Marco Simoncelli in recent years.
The top-placed non-Grand Prix rider was Axel Bassani, of the Motocorsa team in WorldSBK, who finished seventh, just behind Gresini Racing’s Enea Bastianini and Prima Pramac Racing’s Jorge Martin.
Bassani was off the back of a solid weekend at Donington in WorldSBK, where he was fighting for the top six in both long races, and finished fifth in the Saturday race. As Michael Ruben Rinaldi continues to face uncertainty regarding his own future in the factory Ducati team, Bassani is one of the primary candidates to take that ride for 2023.
The Race of Champions can still be watched on Ducati's website.
