Cycle News - Archive Issues - 2000's

so it isn't as wide as it could be . Tho ugh the Aprilia does feel q uite tall, with a high cent er of gravity, and isn't particularly nimble in t urns - not like the YZFMI Y amaha is - the riding posit io n is nice, and there 's quite good protection from the wings of the fairing, as well as the nonetoo-pointy screen - which is wider than it looks befor e yo u sit on the bike . The Aprilia race mechanic fires the bike up via the hand-held plug-in starter o n the right side of the bike , and the RS3 bursts into life with that unmista kable th ree -cylinder exhaust not e. It' s gruff but revvy all at the same time . Inte restingly, there's not an especially high idle speed, around 2500 rp m, making me wo nde r how Aprilia has cra cked the problem of backing into turns under engine braking. Hey, let 's get out there and find o ut. One up on the race-pattern gearsh ift and trickle off down Pit Lane after being pushed off by a mechanic. Since this happened for each of my sessions , and for Byrne as we ll, I presume it has something to do with t he fierce take up of the car bon clutch . But o n the track it felt completely normal on my sighting lap, as I pussyfooted around trying to get com fortab le on the RS3 . And w hat a great road bike this woul d be ... well, at 8000 revs or so. There's an extremely reada ble dash, matched o nly by the Ho nda, which has a similar layout com bining an analog tachometer with digital infocen ter so you can clearly see the revs at any time , just at a quick glance. Nice. Nice, because while the Aprilia pulls stro ngly fro m 8000 rpm ou t of a tight turn like the uphill fi rst right at Jerez o r the tighter o ne after it, it holds a noticea bly tighter line under power, making it important to accelerate aroun d t he apex of a turn on the gas, just to improve turn speed. It also seems pretty to rq uey and forgiving down low - Aprilia's work on wide ning t he spread of pow er this season certainly appears to have paid off, befo re it goes mental when you crack t he throttle hard ope n anywhere above 10 grand on the tach. It acce lerates unbelievably quickly, so you need to be ready fo r what' s abou t to happe n as you r arms are yanked in their sockets and the Aprilia just takes off - lite rally Anywher e fro m I I,000 rpm upward in . the bottom four gears, the fro nt w heel starts pawing the air as you shift seam lessIy th rough the gears (the ratios were really w ell chose n fo r Jerez, a track Aprilia has worn a groove in testi ng down the years). But though the wheel came up a lot, it felt rea llyco nt rollable - there wasn't any of t he wayward ali-or-nothing throttle response and fierce power delivery of the ZX-RR or the Yamaha MI' s similar peaky natu re . The Aprilia has a meaty midrange that flows into impressive to p-end performance , and the wa y t he t hree-cylinder engine delivers the power is re latively usable. Honest! Exiting the last left-hander onto the pit straight at Jerez, I found I could handle the fro nt w hee l lift-off okay o n the throttle in the botto m th ree gears, but hitting fourth wou ld provoke a still bigger w hee lie that invariably had t he wheel com ing down slightlycrossed up as I powered past the pit wall, leaving me to wobble past the watch ing Aprilia pit crew without shutting off, short-shifting into fifth fo r the run up to that first turn. Fun, fun, fun - but also very fast. The Aprilia acce lerates really we ll, and it's mos t impressive revving it right out in the gears, waiting until the shifte r lights on the das h flash at 16,000 revs before changing gear and gra bbing the next one up via the so-smooth-a ction wide-o pen powershifte r, before the soft-action rev- limite r cuts in at 16,500 rpm . Though Aprilia race boss Jan Wittevee n says peak power is delivered at just under 15,000 revs, there's no sudden fall-off in power above that, making the Cube an easy and forgiving bike to ride hard - but o nly in a straight line, once you're straighte ned up and flying right. That's because the fact that the Aprilia likes to lift the fro nt wheel , even when leaned over ex iting a turn, is a definite wo rry for someone of my limited ex perience o n performi ng crossed-up power \ AftAl\AIr ll rl ,;n 6=VUc:. r n m wheelies leaned over at45 degrees - headed by the co ncern that the rear Michelin is going to kee p gripping w hile I recover fro m my foolishness (it did - every time) . I can see how it would be a problem acce lerating too hard , too soon , on this bike - in a way that the equally powerful Honda RC 2 1IV does n't present. So you e ither have to wait until you' re more or less upright before you can get hard on the gas to drive out of the turn - in wh ich case that guy on the Honda you just passed two turns ago on the brakes immed iately gets you back again - or else you try to keep up corner speed to the max. It's not bad, but t he Cube not only feels a little ungainly in tu rns do ing tha t, because of its apparent bulk, but I also started getting chatter from the front in the few laps of my Cube learning curve - rather from the rear where Shakey vvas complaining of. Obviously. I wasn't getti ng o n the gas hard enough, soon eno ugh to share his experiences. It wasn't until I'd been out the re for a few laps on the Aprilia that I suddenly remembered I was supposed to be loo king out for the su pposedly flawed ride-by-wire t hrottle res po nse. I suppose the best compliment I can pay Wittev een and his me n is t hat I honestly didn't not ice any differ ence betw een the Cube's thro ttle actio n and a conventional bike. That' s because this was the first test fo r a new softw are program they're run ning on t he bike 's ride-by-wire system, and I can on ly say that in my op inion it works (Shakey agre ed !). The on ly th ings I was aware of wer e that the thro ttle felt a little lighte r t han I'm used to o n other race bikes and vvas insta ntly respo nsive, as we ll as linear. By that I mean that if I opened the throttle 60 percent exiting a turn , it felt like I got 60 percent at the rear

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