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Thursday, 18 September 2003 |
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Honda's answer comes in the form of a revised linkage that sees the top of the shock anchored to the swingarm, not to the frame. A few positive effects occur as a by-product of this thinking, the frame is less stressed and with a new manufacturing process that allows engineers to create hollow die-cast members that are lighter and airier, this less stress also results in less bracing, less bracing allows room for incidentals, like a lower gas tank, which in turn allows a bigger airbox. The knee bone is attached to the thighbone; the thighbone is attached to the hipbone… |
| Anyway, enough of this sleepy stuff let's go ride one. The venue is Fast Freddie's house of speed, Las Vegas Motor Speedway. I've been here a few times so less effort was spent on track orientation, more on going as fast as my motor-neuron skills would allow me. Dunlop was present and the bikes were fitted with the D208 ZR OEM street tires for the mornings sessions, Honda were the consummate host and had them wrapped in hot, sweaty tire warmers to help with the total opposite in weather conditions here in the Nevada desert facility. |
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The bike felt quite small in stature, and I felt perched nice and high looking down onto the redesigned instrumentation. The tachometer is now central with the fuel bars and idiot lights either side. As I moved into the open pit area, I immediately went into tire scrub mode and swept the bike side to side to scuff up the virgin tread. The bike moved so well that I nearly fell over and then repeated the same thing on the opposite side with my counter correction. The bike is absolutely effortless in side-to-side transitions both at speed and with my silly, potentially embarrassing, tire warming pit stunts. |
| Off into the racetrack the bike was all that was promised and more. The Honda staff begged (or was it egged?) us to get on the throttle as early as we dare to demonstrate the rear suspension action and traction. Nobody dares MikeE and I soon had the bike overpowering the street tires, especially when race warm and with the consequent slides, one at triple digit speeds, soon had me hiding at the back of the pit garage pretending that I was looking for something (my nerve?) I don't remember being able to overpower the OEM tire on the last version, so let that be a strong indication on power difference. I was also dragging a peg in a couple of places so I had my personal technician (no, really) add a tad more preload, a smidgen of compression, and a dollop of rebound - all to thoroughly confuse the guy and impress him with my suspension tweaking vocabulary and cooking skills. |
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After a couple or three sessions of shagging street tires on the RR, I rode the older F4i as a back-to-back comparison. Now I really liked this bike especially after attending its launch at this same venue, this wasn't a tired 2001 by the way, it was a low mileage unit and was set up quite well for my (over) weight. At the track it's hard to get a true perception of speed, but riding the two together, the older bike just didn't have the same get up and go capabilities and wasn't as composed under braking as the new bike was, it was good to compare the two models back-to-back and to see and feel the progress made. |
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