22 FIRST RIDE: TRIUMPH STREET TRIPLE 765R
ONE ROAD FOR THE
If road riding is your greater focus, the R might be your better bet. It’s a great shame that by virtue of being the ‘lesser’ spec’d of the two Street Triples, the R could be viewed as the poor relation to the RS and therefore overlooked. But it’s not really fair to compare it to the RS for several reasons, not least because the RS is playing a different game and just has a very different set of dynamics to the R. Plus, let’s be honest, we’re all magpies at heart, and the lure of the shiny bling alone on the RS more or less seals the deal anyway if you’re comparing the two Street Triples. A fairer comparison for the R would be against last year’s Street Triple and other bikes that exist in the sub-£10k price point, such as the Yamaha MT-09 or Aprilia Tuono 660. In that company, the Street Triple R looks a lot less like the ‘lesser’ option. On the road, the R basically has the same amount of mid-range power as the RS, the same gearbox ratios and the same final drive, so unsurprisingly it feels pretty much identical to the RS on the road when it comes to driving off the corners and short shifting through the gears.
Then there’s the wheelies. The route we took was about 200km in total, with a very large part of it spent in the hills surrounding Jerez that are populated almost exclusively with second and third gear corners and crests; this was the Street Triple’s happy place. T-junction, wheelie, second gear corner, wheelie, third gear crest, wheelie. I can honestly say, hand on heart, that during the ride, I have no idea how many wheelies were executed, but it must be in the hundreds, which is a roundabout way of saying that the Street Triple R isn’t lacking in the fun department. But it’s not a one-trick pony… On the occasions when both wheels were on the floor at the same time, the Street Triple was a joy to ride, and it was able to dispatch corners and bumps with the high levels of refinement that have become the hallmark of the Street Triple over so many years. It’s easy to access the levels of performance it has, and it manages to strike the balance between feeling light and playful while also feeling planted and stable.
I think the different fuel and ignition maps that give the R its lower peak output are also responsible for a slightly nicer first touch of the throttle and even smoother fuelling – if that’s even possible – than the RS. I was equally impressed with the Showa suspension. The forks are the same as the RS’s, and the rear shock, while not gold and yellow in colour, is a high-quality unit with all the adjustment, support and control you could ever need for the road. If anything, given the R’s main purpose in life being to compete for sales in the sub-£10k sector, I’m surprised Triumph didn’t fit it with something a bit more basic or with less adjustability, but then I suppose that would see the Street Triple encroaching on its very own Trident or Tiger Sport 660 territory. The Continental tyres are much better for the road than the RS’s Pirellis; they warm up faster and operate at a lower temperature anyway. They also have a nice feel to them, insomuch as the profile – in particular of the front tyre – brings
a certain amount of lightness to the steering that really suits the overall move towards agility for the 2023 Street Triple, even if it isn’t as extreme on the R as it is on the RS. Overall, I found the R to be just that little bit smoother on the road than the RS, which feels daft just saying it, but I think its different fuel and ignition maps give it a small edge on the road in the shape of smoothness. This isn’t to say that the RS isn’t a smooth, easy bike to ride on the road, because it is. We’re talking about very subtle differences here that can make any comparison pretty much pointless. However, if you change the perspective and look at it another
way, the RS can do everything on the road that the R does with a very subtle difference in how the throttle feels, but even though we never rode the R on track, it’s safe to say that the R just wouldn’t be able to live with the RS in an environment where you live in the last third of the revs, and hard cornering is the order of the day. Its outright power deficit and slightly lazier geometry would see it get thrashed, so it’s just as well that the R isn’t competing with the RS. The R has got a different set of potential customers to impress and a different purpose in life. Between them, they can take on a much broader range of competitors. They’re brothers, not rivals.