Rizla Suzuki MotoGP invited a select band of respected journalists to ride its GSV-R800 straight after the last race of the 2007 season at Valencia in Spain.

Alan Cathcart was one of those lucky enough to get the chance to ride one of both Vermeulen’s and Hopkins’s bikes around the 4.005km Spanish circuit.

Cathcart is an experienced and esteemed worldwide journalist and his views and reports on all types of motorcycles can be read in over 25 publications around the globe.

Here is his report on the Rizla Suzuki GSV-R:

Suzuki had its most successful MotoGP season yet in 2007, when the new XRG-0 variant of its pneumatic-valve 75-degree V4-engined GSV-R became an established front-runner in the 800cc formula’s debut year, by combining performance with reliability in making Suzuki the only manufacturer not to suffer a single mechanical breakdown in a race all season. At Le Mans in May, Chris Vermeulen scored the Japanese marque’s first victory in six years of four-stroke Grand Prix racing, and like teammate John Hopkins became a four-time visitor to the MotoGP rostrum in 2007, when the Suzuki duo wound up sixth and fourth respectively in the final points table, and the Rizla Suzuki GP squad failed by just one point to tie with HRC-backed factory Repsol Honda as runners-up in the Teams championship. This was the year that Suzuki finally became contenders for victory once again in GP racing’s top category, for the first time since Kenny Roberts Jnr. won the 500GP title for them back in 2000.

The chance to ride both riders’ Bridgestone-shod Suzukis at Valencia the day after the final GP of the season, underlined the big step forward that Suzuki had taken with the new GSV-R800 - a bike that was competitive straight out of the box, first in winter testing and then when Hopkins finished fourth in the first-ever 800cc MotoGP race at Qatar in March. Climbing aboard the Suzuki later the same day after riding both its Honda and Kawasaki rivals immediately revealed the big difference in architecture between the three bikes, with the cramped, minuscule, nervous-seeming Honda contrasting with the wider, bulkier but lower Kawasaki and the taller, more upright but actually more normal-seeming bright blue V4 Suzuki, which by sport-bike standards didn’t feel so very different to sit on from Max Biaggi’s factory GSX-R1000 Superbike I’d been riding three months earlier.

That was especially the case with Chris Vermeulen’s GSV-R800, because his and Max’s bikes share another thing in common, and that’s a street-pattern gear-change to contend with that’s pretty idiosyncratic by racing standards. This is a feature that I normally don’t care for on anything equipped with slick tyres - especially one as grippy as the front Bridgestone, which soon encourages you to max out turn speed and thus lean angle on a bike as stable handling, easy steering and downright confidence inspiring as the GSV-R800. I thought this one-down layout would be a hindrance on something this fast and powerful, because I’d have trouble getting my left toe under the lever while cranked hard over to the left in order to shift up - either that, or short-shift while still relatively upright, and lose valuable drive and momentum out of a turn.

But Chris also doesn’t use the clutch at all, ever, after punching the launch control button on the Suzuki’s left handlebar to blast off the line at the start of a race - so you must learn to just clamp your hand to that left clip-on, and hold on tight till journey’s end. But once again the Suzuki’s gear-change was the best of any of the five bikes I rode at Valencia, so light and easy-shifting, but also totally positive in the way that it worked faultlessly shifting in either direction without using the clutch, with no jerks or hiccups as on other bikes in previous years where I’ve been told to forget about working that left-hand lever once on the move. Even braking hard and shifting back three gears in swift succession for Valencia’s third-gear Turn One by stamping downwards on the lever didn’t faze the system, the Mitsubishi electronics ensuring the ratios went in smoothly and cleanly, while the Suzuki stayed stable and planted under reverse torque load, without snaking around on the overrun thanks to the control delivered by the Mitsubishi ECU’s ICS variable idle speed system. And in the one place where the street pattern gearshift might have been a big problem, when you’re cranked over to the left for a long time accelerating up and over the hill leading down to the last turn, I found the new 800cc Suzuki engine still hadn’t sacrificed any of the GSV-R’s traditional muscular midrange, so I could short-shift from second to fourth very quickly without losing any momentum or drive. I’m a believer.

So, at the first chicane in the Valencia infield, I just grasped the left handlebar firmly in my hand without worrying about having to loosen my grip a little to work the clutch as I back-shifted for the turn, which meant I could use maximum leverage to lift the Suzuki up and over from one side to another, while squeezing the brake lever hard on the exit to knock off speed for the right-hand hairpin immediately after. From being originally conceived to help two-stroke disbelievers come to terms with that strange four-stroke phenomenon called engine braking, thanks to enhanced electronics this has now become a completely liberating function which allows you just to focus on being in the right gear at the right time, and to choose an optimum line while trail-braking into the turn - with none of the distractions of having to work the clutch lever and synchronise shifting, all at the same time. Look, I was a sceptic, too, until I tried this amenity in the refined form it’s now delivered, and while I can understand those like John Hopkins who’d still rather work the clutch lever to shift down, count me a convert. It makes riding such a torquey, responsive, rorty-sounding bike like the GSV-R800 that much easier - and while I can’t pretend this is the only reason I went six seconds faster on the Vermeulen Suzuki at Valencia than I did on the Stoner Ducati which amassed exactly twice as many points as it did in the final championship table this season, it sure was a factor. OK - along with the fact I got 2½ times more laps on the Suzy, so got better dialled in to it, and in the middle of the day, too, not first thing in the morning on a cold, slippery track. But, still, my ten laps taught me that the Suzuki is a very fine motorcycle - with or without the no-clutch option.

That’s because riding the GSV-R800 revealed a bike that feels incredibly similar to its 990cc predecessor that I rode at Valencia a year ago, both in chassis architecture by the way it appears to be the same physical size and, most surprisingly, in terms of engine performance, too. There’s the same ultra-linear power delivery with a muscular pull from as low as 8000 rpm out of the slow first gear Turn 2, with the engine picking up revs very fast through to the moment the bright orange shifter lights on the 2D dash start flashing brightly at 16,800 rpm in the gears, albeit with quite a way to go till the rev-limiter cuts in at 18,000 rpm - slightly lower than I’d expected, with the 75-degree V4 engine’s pneumatic valve operation. But that’s because while spinning up so quickly the Suzuki has a strong yet fluid power delivery, as smooth as an electric motor but more linear in 800cc form than any of its rivals, even the Ducati which has a more layered just even stronger delivery of more power than anything else. The pickup of the ride-by-wire throttle was pretty fierce on Vermeulen’s bike, so you must make sure you lift it up a little to get it on to the fat part of the tyre if you don’t want to set the traction control system too stiff an exam, but the Hopkins bike felt more controlled in its throttle response, though just as muscular under acceleration from anywhere above 10,000 rpm upwards. Really, you can feel how Suzuki’s engineering team have focused on the way that the power is delivered rather than outright numbers - even if the ‘over 220 bhp at 17,500 rpm’ they claim for the bike is actually the most of any of the five factories do for their 800GP contenders! Anyway, it’s all relative - peak power is only really important in delivering top speed - the rest of the time what really matters is torque and delivery, and here the Suzuki excels, even though it was the slowest of the five factory bikes down the longest front straight of the season in the fourth race at Shanghai. Here, Hopkins was level-pegging with Rossi’s Yamaha on 325 kph, 7 kph and 6 kph respectively behind Pedrosa’s Honda and de Puniet’s Kawasaki, and a massive 12 kph down on the flying Stoner’s Ducati. Yet look at the end-of-season points table, and it’s easy to see what really matters most….

Both bikes still liked to wheelie quite a lot, but not as much as the old 990 did - you soon realise neither Suzuki has the anti-wheelie control on the Mitsubishi ECU switched on. Still, on the Hopkins bike you can use his more spacious riding position to move your body back and forth in the seat to help counter this - Vermeulen’s is a more close coupled stance, though nothing like as cramped as the frankly flawed Honda’s. Both Suzukis felt stable and secure on the brakes, though, while acceptably planted in turns in the same way their 990 predecessor had been. Really, it’s uncanny how similar the two bikes are to one another, and I can’t help feeling that Suzuki treated the final season of 990cc MotoGP racing a year ago as a development exercise, even perhaps so far as to run their 800cc bike in the 990cc category, perhaps with the engine stroked a little to add a few extra cubes and maybe round it up to 890cc or 920cc or so. Remember how fast the GSV-R800 was immediately straight out of the box when it started testing at Valencia a year ago? I reckon that could well be what they did, and the way the Suzuki proved competitive from the very start was the payoff. Loris Capirossi looks likely to enjoy his 2008 season after all after his parting from Ducati, on a bike that assuredly has lots of potential - especially when they take full advantage of those pneumatic valves and start revving it even harder in pursuit of more power to go with the rideability that’s self-evidently driven Suzuki’s development of the new bike thus far.

For where the Suzuki once again scores as it did a year ago in 990cc guise is in turn speed, where a combination of the weight transfer delivered under braking by a bike that’s quite a bit taller than the Ducati, but not as stilt-like as the Rossi Yamaha, plus Bridgestone’s great front tyre, and the GSV-R’s sweet-steering chassis package, all together encourage you to brake later and keep up momentum in Valencia’s more sweeping turns. But just as a year ago on the 990, the black Brembo radial brakes on the GSV-R800 once again felt a little soft compared to the other two bikes I’d been riding that day fitted with the exact same hardware. “It’s just the same as last year - we both have the brakes set up like that deliberately,” confirmed Chris Vermeulen. “My style is to do a lot of trail braking into turns, and I don’t like the brakes to be too fierce, because I like to brake while I’m already leaned over in turns quite a bit. If it’s too snappy, then it’s too easy to lose the front - so that’s why I have it not so fierce.” And in Hopkins’s case, as a reformed Formula Extreme Megabike star, he likes to use more engine braking than other riders, so also doesn’t need such all-action brakes in keeping the bike balanced in turns.

Balance. That’s the keynote word for the GSV-R800 Suzuki - it’s a balanced package which feels completely predictable in the way it responds to rider input, both in terms of handling and engine performance. OK, it’s not the fastest bike out there in a straight line, but it’s certainly one of the most manageable and effective, without the sense of excessive use of electronics - as well as, for me, the most enjoyable to ride, without at the same time being too lacking in performance. It’s just that final nth% the bike needs to become a regular contender for top honours - and Rizla Suzuki team manager Paul Denning believes Suzuki’s engineers are quite capable of bridging that final gap. “As the smallest of the major race departments, Suzuki needs to build momentum to compete with Honda and Yamaha, and beat them,” he says. “Because of their resources, it tends to go in cycles, and Suzuki is very much on the upswing right now. The engineers have come up with a significant new technical ingredient for 2008 which they believe will make the difference between fourth place and first, in both races and championship - Nobby (Aoki) rode next year’s bike at Sepang, and lapped faster on it than our two regular riders on the current machine, so it seems to be a definite step forward. We’re very excited about what’s coming next, and we believe this year’s bike provides an exceptional basis to move forward from.”