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Posted by Administrator
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Wednesday, 23 August 2006 |
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Page 1 of 3
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Dodging a Real Job - Mike Emery ~ Dodging Dust Bunnies - Kevin Wing
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We've been asking for it and we finally got it... this is the genuine article, my two wheel freaks, it's got lights and turn sig's, amazingly it's EPA friendly too but make no mistake this is getting so much closer to a race bike, you can taste it. Yamaha invited us to explore the depths of our motorcycle wish list with a trip to Willow Springs Raceway. We had a chance to test the character of the new R6, first on the big track, and then, to further cement our feelings about their new Supersport weapon, an afternoon running around on the smaller Streets of Willow. (Yeah my life sucks.)
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It's a good one too, almost as fast as Ray Blank looking for the first bus out of Indianapolis. The R6 has always been a sharp tool in its class, this rendition sees a sharpness not yet seen on a street legal bike especially with its higher than average RPM range some 1500 RPM short of its initial advertised maximum of 17,500. Yamaha apologized profusely for its mathematical mistake (I believe they now have that engineer tuning piano's in a very cold place) and are offering a full buy back for any disgruntled buyers - I've got to think that there'll be no takers there, the bike's just too good outside of that 1500RPM discrepancy. |
| So what's new? Pretty much everything. From the axles up its focus is positioned as an Xtreme Supersport, did I say Xtreme? Of course I meant extreme. This Supersport class has seen a radical 275% increase in sales since 1998, and to keep pace with the trend, this is the most radical Supersport yet from Yamaha and stressed to us that this is not a beginner steed. The bar that Yamaha has raised this genre to means the other OEM's will have to revisit the performance drawing board and come up with their plan of retaliation...whoops, with that thought in mind, I just drooled on my keyboard. |
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Don't worry, Yamaha has a contingency plan for those of you thinking this might be too radical, and the next best offering from the tuning fork folks is the R6S - pretty amusing really, especially when you consider that this alternative model is the same bike that won the 2003 AMA Supersport Championship with hungry Hacker behind the clip-ons. Laugh? I nearly paid my bar tab.
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| We sat down and listened to the usual lighter, smaller, faster blah, blah and then listened to the fact that this is being marketed as a GP racer for the street. GP racer? Factor in the MotoGP geometry of the relationship between the rear axle, swingarm pivot and steering head, and it's a Rossi replica. This newer peakier version is actually up from 109 to 112 rear wheel BHP. The identity is truly R6 though and a good design stroke away from the look of its bigger brother the R1. A good thing too, this way you get maximum kudos when you rail past the superbikes ala Jason Disalvo at the last Fontucky test. Yes, a couple of Superbike's got left behind in that test so it would seem that if you have the minerals (JD seems to) you won't be eating too much crow. |
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Tire choice for this event was a true good and bad experience. Bad because the cheeky monkey's didn't supply us race rubber, and good, nay, very good, because the street bias tires that come OEM equipped on the R6, were the new Dunlop Qualifiers. I'm well sold on the DQ, and like the Kawasaki ZX10R tire, Yamaha too has requested a slightly harder compound than the series we tested at their debut in Las Vegas. The only downside to the harder compound is the obvious slightly longer warm up time, the upside, obviously the good mileage. Each session with that harder compound saw me wobble around for three laps minimum, it was cold and windy and I've cold tire high-sided at Willow before and I wasn't about to bend a bike (or myself) for the sake of some early speed - but then I'm old and smell like cabbage. |
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