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/128406
Yamaha bets the farm that their brand-new R6 will vault them back to the top of the Supersport world in '06 By BLAKE CONNER T PHOTOS BY TOM RILES here is nothing like the blood-curdling scream of a inline four-cylinder engine being tortured as the tach needle sweeps into the upper echelons of the rpm range. Especially when that needle is getting buried on the far side of 17,500 rpm. Such is the case on the new 2006 Yamaha R6. Although it may sound like cylinder-head abuse, it's not. The R6 just yawns, waits for an upshift and does it all over again. This was the gear-by-gear, lap-by-Iap routine while testing the brand-new and completely redesigned R6 at the Losail Circuit just outside of Doha, Qatar, in the Middle East. The superfast, flowing and flawlessly smooth track invited me to keep the tach needle dancing where few other engines dare to go. So I did exactly that. The hype surrounding the radically changed R6, and the fact that Iwas able to sit on the bike months earlier, had me anxious with anticipation. When the day finally came and our group of journalists was let loose on the Losail track, it was all I could do to keep from shutting off the throttle at the end of the front straight. There is something unusually intoxicating about revving the bejeezus out of a bike like the R6 that made me never want to stop. Yamaha makes no bones about the fact that the R6 was designed to dominate racing in both domestic and international Supersport (and in the case of AMA racing, Formula Xtreme) classes. The design team's goals were to attack the track with a combination of the new ultrasharp chassis, aerodynamics, and a level of engine technology not seen prior to '06 on middleweight production motorcycles. The new R6 is the third generation of the incredibly successful and popular middleweight Supersport bike from Yamaha. The original bike made its debut back in 1999 and was completely redeSigned in 2003, but the newest version of the bike is by far the most radical and purposeful yet. As demands for more performance on both the street and track have increased from consumers, Yamaha has been forced to push the envelope even further to make them happy. The new R6 should put smiles on the faces of a lot of racers and sportbike enthusiasts around the world. When it came to designing a new engine for the R6, Yamaha's engineers had a few key targets in mind. They wanted to increase stability at corner entries by adding a slipper clutch, improve flickability by redUCing inertial mass from the engine, create more precise and predictable throttle response by using a fly-by-wire throttle system, improve corner exits by giving the bike immediate throttle response and acceleration, and increase top speed with better top-end performance. Whew! If you like going to trackdays, the rear licenseplate bracket unbolts easily, as do the passenger pegs. The rear shock, like the front, has both highand low-speed compression damping. A new Ram air system is center-mounted and passes through the headstock of the frame and directly into the airbox. CYCLE NEWS • NOVEMBER 30, 2005 23