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/128196
The R6's styling is a natural progression of its lineage· nothing radical, just a nice clean modem design. to challenge it. I mean, the roads we were on weren't really the best in the first place. Some of them were damp; some of them were full of potholes and broken pavement, but the R6 lets you get away with a lot of stuff that other bikes wouldn't, mainly because it isn't even breaking a sweat. The bike has more than enough power for the street, and even more brakes, so riding it fast is something that just sort of happens. It's just so easy to ride fast - by the time you decide to give the bike some input, it acts as if it has already read your mind and initiated the action. Overcook an unfamiliar corner, and the chance of saving it is pretty damned good. This bike's handling far exceeds the riding ability of 99 percent of the people who are going to buy it, which is a good thing. There isn't really a lot to report from the street ride other than the fact that the R6 is just an amazing bike to ride on a tight, twisty road - and it's not near bad through slow urban congestion. It's well-balanced for anything from everyday commuting to hellfire canyon carving, but as I said, I was never near the bike's limit - I was just hoping the Almeria circuit would help me get there. ON TRACK A lot of readers ask me why we do so much of our sport-bike testing on the track (wondering how it relates to the street rider). and the simple answer is that the bikes these days are so good, they can't be pushed next to me (while looking over at me) and riding wheelies well past my normal braking marker down into turn one - he followed me around and gave me some pointers. I was superexcited to be receiving advice from such an incredible rider and one of my GP heroes, and you know what? His advice instantly helped. I probably don't need to say this, but Randy Mamola is still really fast - wickedly fast. I was blown away with how little speed he has lost over the years, but like they say, it's kind of like riding a bike... Well, it is riding a bike - you know what I mean? The first thing that was apparent was that the R6 was really nimble through the tight stuff. I thought that the new Ducati 749 was awesome at Almeria, but the R6 just took the handling to another level. One of the key differences was that I had to rethink my riding a bit because the R6 doesn't have the 749's torque coming out of the corners, forcing me to carry more speed midcorner. This is where Mamola helped me out the most. He told me to whack the throttle open (meaning wide open) way before I'd even reached the apex of the corner, because by the time I got there, the bike would just start to make some serious power. Duh, I knew that, but it's not always the easiest thing to make yourself do. Of course, he was right, and I was able to keep the bike from falling out of the revs too much and started getting some killer drives off the corners. Once I got the R6 on the boil, it was amazing how effortlessly fast it was. The bike steers with ease through the tight corners, but there is one distinct improvement over the old bike - it has more trail in the front fork's geometry, making the bike a lot less twitchy than the old one. The bike feels as if it turns just as quickly (the rake is the same), but the combination of the added trail and 10mm-longer swingarm seems to have settled the bike down a bit without sacrificing stability.' This should be good news for all of you racers anywhere near their limits on the street. The only true way to see what a bike like the R6 is capable of is to ride it on the racetrack. The Almeria track is the perfect track on which to spank an R6 around because it has an amazing variety of corners - from fast sweepers to quick-flick chicanes and offcamber blind fall-away hills. It was nice to show up at a foreign track and not have to spend the morning figuring the place out (I'd just been there with Ducati), so I could start thinking about the bike from lap one. One of coolest things about the trip was that former four-time 500 Grand Prix runner-up Randy Mamola was a special guest of Yamaha and offered to follow me for a few laps and tell me where I needed to improve (urn, Randy, that would be everywhere, but thanks). After two exciting warm-up laps (behind Yamaha's test rider Jeffery DeVries) - with Mamola doing 140-mph stoppies CLeft) Yamaha has this really cool cutaway on display so we could see all of the cool details that aren't normally visible. CRighti The most striking element on the R6 has to be the headlights. I don't think I've heard anyone talk about the bike and not throw praise their way. cycle n e _ s ' JANUARY 15, 2003 27