FEBRUARY 18, 2009 MOTOR CYCLE NEWS X 27
www.motorcyclenews.com THE BIKES
YAMAHA R1 £9999 Never has the link between a MotoGP racer and road bike been so strong. The R1 sports a new super-short-stroke 998cc inline four-cylinder engine, which sounds just like Rossi’s factory M1 and has a similar irregular firing order and crossplane crankshaft, designed to improve acceleration out of corners and feel through the rear tyre. With a new chassis and a sophisticated electronics package, including a choice of three engine maps, fly-by-wire and variable-length inlet trumpets, complimenting this innovative new engine, this is Yamaha’s best chance of levering the mighty Blade off its perch.
HONDA FIREBLADE £9621 (IN HRC COLOURS)
respond well to aggressive riding. For best results, you have to ride the R1 smoothly like a twin and use the grunt out of the corners, then hang on to the revs and let it sing like a four. Just writing that has made want to go out and ride it again! Thanks to the crossplane crank’s lack of inertia working together with the slipper clutch, there’s minimal engine braking when you roll off the throttle. There’s a kind of eerie silence when you back off, like you’ve slipped into neutral. All this is good, though, and helps you glide so smoothly into corners, and with such sta-
bility that it defies belief. We’ve been crying out for Yamaha to give the R1 more grunt for years and now we’ve finally got it – lots of it. But, as they say, be careful what you wish for, because in some conditions you’ve got too much oomph when you tug on the fly-by-wire’s throttle strings. With so much instant, explosive power at your right wrist, there’s often too much for tricky conditions. A traditional inline four, like the old R1 or this Blade with softer power down low, is easier to ride on cold tyres or in the wet, but Yamaha has thought of a way to tame
the power with its D-mode system (see Tech Highlights, page 28). On the softest (B) map, the new R1 is much less aggressive on the throttle and friendlier to ride.
‘It took us hours to really get to grips with the R1’s engine’ Having said that, racer Mercer loves the immediate throttle response of the hardcore ‘A’ mode. I prefer the ‘Standard’ mode when
the roads and tyres are warm, and on the track. Once you’ve got the new R1 all figured out – and it took us until nearly halfway through our test – you quickly realise this is one of the easiest bikes to ride fast ever made – even easier than the Blade. Honda trounced the competition last year with its muscular, grunt-filled, newgeneration Fireblade; it would easily out-drag any other Japanese superbike... until now. On an empty stretch of French autoroute at the start of the day, with both bikes side-by-side at 40mph in top gear, I give the
signal for a full-throttle rolling drag race. Amazingly, the R1 blasts off into the lead and stays there. This time last year, with the old R1, the roles would have been reversed by the same amount. Although our performance figures (see over the page) show that the Blade has the fastest top gear roll-on acceleration time from 40-120mph, the R1 is faster from 40-90mph and this is the over-riding feeling you get from the Yamaha on the road. It shouldn’t come as too much of a surprise to hear that the R1 easily wins this shootout – and that’s all
down to the spectacular nature of the ‘have your cake and eat it’ engine. The chassis isn’t the big story here – it’s slightly sharper than before, but it’s the same tried and tested, neutral R1 and is actually bettered in some ways by the Blade. It can be setup to suit any rider and won’t do anything wrong; just look at how many riders chose R1s last year in National Superstock racing to see the proof of that pudding. But rewind a few hours, back to the start of our journey, and Mercer and I were both convinced that the Continues over
Unchanged for this year, the mighty Honda Fireblade is the superbike to beat in 2009. It easily won our 1000cc shootout last year, thrashing its rivals on road and track, thanks to its grunt-filled 999.8cc inline four-cylinder engine, lithe handling and utter class. It easily justifies the tag of most rounded sports bike ever made. Just like the original Blade, the current bike doesn’t rely on toys stolen from the MotoGP play pen, just well-thought out, clever, tried-and-tested design. This beautiful HRC Suzuka-coloured machine is the basic model, but it’s also available with a Combined ABS system, a first for a roadgoing superbike.