Cycle News is a weekly magazine that covers all aspects of motorcycling including Supercross, Motocross and MotoGP as well as new motorcycles
Issue link: https://magazine.cyclenews.com/i/128094
(RIght! When the bike is stripped, you can see the fou....lnto-one exhaust system, the mat-black aluminum frame and swIngann and the Inllne-fourcylinder engine at the heart of the machine. Also, Haga liked the bike to ride high, as is evident by the rearwheel clearance. (Left! The Haga R-7 featured Dunlop rubber and factory Yamaha 320mm front discs with Nissin calipers bolted to 42mm Ohlins forks. 6000 rpm, makes power from 8000 revs, but comes on strong at ten grand, accelerating with hardly a hiccup toward the 15,500 rpm revlimiter which Haga hits as a matter of course in races, say his team. But though peak power of "over 170 hp" (believed in fact to be 172 hp at the gearbox) is delivered as low as 13,800 rpm, the power doesn't fall off significantly for at least 1500 revs above that - meaning you've got twostroke-like overrev to save a couple of gearshifts between turns, just as on a GP racer. There's no changeup light like on other factory Superbikes - "I don't like this - I only change by feel," says Haga - so if you tap the race-pattern power shifter (now Yamaha's own: they've ditched the overly-sensitive KLS system they used to fit) just under 15,000 rpm, thanks to the relatively closed-up internal gear ratios, you'll still find yourself back in the fat part of the powerband as the R7 motor screams its strident sound through the Akrapovic titanium exhaust. Correction - you stamp on the gearlever: this feels very notchy and mechanical, as if the gears are heavily undercut to cope with all that power - and torque. In fact, to begin with, I thought the powershifter wasn't switched on, until I stopped and checked that it was. My problem, apparently, was that I was using the race engine built for Brands Hatch but never used, thanks to the lastminute ban on Haga competing, and the gearshift ignition cutout on this hadn't yet been dialed in properly. For a high-revving in-line four, the Yamaha now has quite a lot of midrange muscle, allowing you to be less choosy than you might expect about which gear to throw at it for a given turn, thanks to the wide spread of power and linear delivery. And when you close the throttle as you trail-brake into a corner, it's only in bottom gear that you'll encounter the snatchy pickup when you get back on the gas again that was such a hander at Jerez, where you shortshift around 12,000 rpm to power through the next two lefts onto the short back straight under load, holding a gear as you do so and letting the engine howl up to fifteen grandplus 00 the analogue tachometer. This kind of power delivery is both user-friendly and extremely effective, because the R7 now has really impressive acceleration. Riding the Yamaha with the overrev capability now on tap that it used to lack - before, the engine was all done at fourteen grand - is s-o-o-o stirring, and totally addictive, the nearest thing in the Superbike class to a two-stroke 500cc GP racer. Don't take my word for it • listen to former World champion Christian Sarron, 15 years ago the only European able to take on and beat the Americans at the art and science of racing a V-four 500. "I never liked riding Superbikes before, even in 24-hour races," admitted Sarron after a dozen laps on daunting feature of the '99 R7. So don't use it, and rely on the R7's increased midrange to power you out of a slow turn like Dry Sack or the last one leading onto the Jerez pit straight. Because in all other gears, Yamaha's switch last year from a single-injector system using 46mm Mikuni throttle bodies and a Nipponden so engine management system, to the twin-injector format with Keihin hardware and a Mitsubishi ECU used last season, has transformed the RTs throttle response and controllability, as well as delivering more power, more flexibly. Accomplishing this also entailed a new design of airbox with internally separated ducting, as well as a different wiring harness and throttle loom but the result was worth it: the Yamaha not only has more power over the whole rev range, but you can feel the fatter midrange punch the revised EFI and its corresponding mapping delivers when you drive out of a slower turn, like exiting the second right a U a I e n e _ so • MARCH 7. 2001 23