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/128365
ultrahard for the second-gear first turn. The way the RC21 IV's motor builds power is quite deceptive (it seems slowerrewing than before, certainly lazier-feeling than the Kawasaki screamer or Yamaha growler in-line fours), but it's extremely muscular, more like the Ducati, whose huge appetite for revs it is conversely closest to matching. Yet HRC insists there's another 5-percent more overall performance to come from the RC21 IV this season, even with the 2-liter, smaller fuel load permitted from 2005 onward - bad news for Honda's rivals, especially if it succeeds in delivering that without sacrificing the bike's superb handling and so-potent power delivery. The engine's midrange grunt from 8000 rpm upward is truly impressive and, together with its slightly slower-rewing feel, makes me wonder if Honda hasn't juggled around with engine dimensions on this version of the RC21 IV, lengthening the stroke in order to gain that extra torque, while at the same time going for more power at the top end via those higher revs. It really pays to rev it right out rather than to short-shift around 15,000 rpm, as I found myself initially lulled into doing by the gruff-sounding exhaust note and improbably deceptive feeling of laziness lower down. You have to pinch yourself mentally to remind yourself this isn't a very fast V-twin superbike but rather a V-five MotoGP missile, and it has to be ridden accordingly - which means making the most of the extra power that's very definitely available over the last 2000 rpm, before the small but piercing blue light on the dash flashes at you at 16,000 revs and tells you to shift up on the sweet-action, race-pattern, Wide-open powershifter. Doing so puts you right back in the fat part of the power band, ready to ride that wave of torque and power to the next shift light, and the next. and ... Really, it's a typical Honda trick of managing to combine two engineering opposites (that they should have been able to make the RC21 V both more torquey and higher-rewing at the same time), but it's a mark of its engineers' consummate craft that they should have done so without sacrificing any of the bike's fantastic userfriendliness or the connection between twist grip and rear tire that Honda practically invented. There's a far nicer pickup from a closed throttle on the RC21 I V than on the much more aggressive-rewing Kawasaki or Ducati, espeCially when riding with the softest of the choice of three different engine maps normally accessible via a switch on the left-hand clip-on, which had been removed for the press test. (yVe got the one for the end of a race, when the tire is worn, with no options.) The '04 Honda's torquey yet potent nature allows you to short-shift two gears up at around 12,000 rpm exiting the slow turn-two hairpin, the only corner on the Jerez track you take in bottom gear on this bike. There's a sweet gear change. which is less notchy in selecting the bottom two gears than it was back in 2002, with a crisper though still positive engagement. Nice. Same as the faultless powershifter, which even makes smooth work of shifting through neutral from first to second gear. And it even gets better in the higher ratios, thanks to Honda's trademark method that it was the first to dream up back on the RC45 superbike, where fuel supply as well as ignition is cut (each by a variable amount depending on the gear chosen and the rpm). Call it intelligent electronics. Tapping the race-pattern lever twice leaves you in third for the next tight left, accelerating through it hard at just half maximum revs, with the Honda rocketing forward as you keep cranked right over for the next, faster left. Honda's traction control system would have played its part here in keeping everything in line and maintaining drive, with the gear ratio-sensitive traction control mechanism one of the many electronic systems employed on the bike to aid the rider, not replace him. Same again at the other end of the short straight which follows, where the combination of the Ducati-style ramp-type slipper clutch and Honda's ingenious electronic system, whereby a compensator jet in the Keihin EFI doubles up to run a fastidle program governed by the ECU, means that you get just the right amount of engine braking to help you stop without feeling as if the computer has taken charge and is doing it all for you. Magic. In spite of the lack of a counterbalancer in the 75.5-degree V-five motor, there's no undue tingles at any rpm: The Honda engine runs very smoothly, with that lovely, powerful-sounding growl booming in your ear, matched by the broad spread of power and linear delivery from as low as 8000 rpm up to the 16,500 rpm rev limiter. This makes it a bike that you must force yourself to cut the gear changing down on, using a higher gear much more of the time than you might expect to, rather like Honda's SP-2 V-twin superbike. But there oin't no Superbike that accelerates like this bike, and probably no MotoGP contender, either - not even the Ducati, in terms of initial drive and clean pickup. Still simply the best? At my speeds, same as at those of anyone else except the top half-dozen riders in the world, the Honda still has to be the bike to beat, and the only reason the Japanese giant didn't make it a heavenly hat trick in 2004, with three MotoGP titles in a row to its name, was - let's face it - the human element. Can HRC's bosses find it in their hearts to own up to making a strategic error in failing to give Rossi the recognition, and kudos, he demanded? Because if Honda had done so in the first place, this bike would have been World Champion in 2004 - no doubt about it. eN CYCLE NEWS • FEBRUARY 16,2005 31