Cycle News - Archive Issues - 2000's

2003 Honda CBR600RR THE RC211 V HAS A LITTLE BROTHER . ITS NAME IS CBR600RR , By BLAKE CONNER PHOTOS 'By KEVIN WING rr he 2003 CBR600RR, the seventh generation of the best selling 600 in history, pushes the envelope in many ways. The manner in which the bike was developed alongside the championship-winning RC211 V Grand Prix racer and put into production while that bike was still in its infancy is unprecedented. Never has new technology made its way into a production bike in such a hurry. But why wait? After all, Honda proved straight away that the new technology in the RC211V worked and worked well enough to dominate the MotoGP class last year with 14 out of 16 wins for the bike, with star rider Valentino Rossi taking the title. Many of the components on the 'I 14 FEBRURY 5,2003' eye •• CBR600RR, including the engine, have benefited directly from the current Honda RC211 V MotoGP bike. Honda didn't wait a year or so to let the current and fresh lessons learned from racing the RC211V trickle down to its new 600RR, it instead decided that the technology was too good to wait and implemented it immediately. Talk about getting an immediate return on its investment in racing - I bet Honda's bean counters are loving their engineering staff this year. After editor Paul Carruthers was sadly unable to attend the introduction at his favorite track (a tear runs down my cheek, Pablo), I graciously stepped in to spank the new RR around the Las Vegas Motor Speedway. The weather couldn't have been better - it's hard to fault the desert in the middle of winter. n _ vv s It's impossible to tell how a new bike compares with the competition without a riding them back to back, but I can tell you that the new CBR600RR is an incredible motorcycle. The first motorcycle I ever purchased was a 1987 Honda Hurricane 600, which at the time was the hottest thing on the road. The new RR may prove to be just as revolutionary. Only time will tell, but on paper it sure seems to have the credentials. The RR is the first 600cc sportbike that Honda has ever created that was designed as a racebike first and a streetbike second. Honda has always gone to great efforts to ensure that its sportbikes worked well on the street, and then it would magically convert them into competitive racebikes. Nine AMA 600cc Supersport titles and an absolutely astonishing num- ber of race wins later in the class, and it seems that those "streetbikes· worked pretty well after all. One thing that I found interesting was that while riding the bike I was trying really hard to focus on what it was doing underneath me - the problem was that it was working so well that nothing really stood out. It's not that it wasn't performing - it was working so well as a package that it was difficult to pick out anyone thing that was contributing to how well it worked. The first thing that you notice is that the bike is tiny. In fact, I felt like a giant goon when I first took to the track. The RR's handling is light and instantly responsive - just as you would expect from a bike in its element. The RR doesn't hide the fact that it was designed for the track. By

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