As others here and elsewhere have said, I can't see that changing the angle of their V4 motogp engine would be a major backdown for ducati, or a renunciation of their heritage. For much of the history of premier class bike racing, including the era I and quite a few others particularly revere, the formula was for 500 2-strokes with little to do with street bikes. Motogp become do-able for ducati when it went 4 stroke, apparently because they could put 2 of their traditional V-twins together. I can't see how they are bound to stick with a configuration to which they were constrained by the resources available to them, when those with more resources, particularly honda, have built basically whatever they saw fit to engineer, including a V5 990 bike. The traditional ducati V-twin doesn't seem to be a problem in their street bikes and WSBK conveyances, and if 2 of them joined doesn't work ideally as a motogp engine, so what? Their only production device with any kind of V4 was the very limited edition cash in on the 2007 championship desmosedici thing anyway.
As a long term ducati fan I will find it more of a wrench them going to a conventional aluminium chassis as seems likely, and even more so if they were to abandon the desmo valves.
