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/1542351
fu the bikes 8et bette[ dlis task tets harder and harder every yeai What w€ discovercd this y€Er is dlrt some of the bikes, such es the YarrEha are Ece-rsdy Eack weapons that {unction well on the street, wfiile othe6 - such as tlE Triumph - are aimed primariy for street duty aod kick N on the tracl. A.tualv all of the t kes in this test do bo$ extrerE, wdl, which is why they are called spor$ikes. &rt ifyou never interd to pl]t rubber to i&etraak you may want to lean toward one ofthe bikes that bn't as radical, and vice versa if you phn to attend a lot oftrack days or iace, On the top ofthe podium this Far is the Triumph, which is a vEry pleasant surprbe. Not ony did the Daytona surprise everyone on *le tra* with its er(.ellert handlirE ari strorE enSine, but it wrs ako by faI the rnost popular streetbike due to dE enSine's torque. It s by hr tlle b€st compromise betlveen street and o?ck, Triumph went back to their roots - quit tryirE to copy $e Japanere - and made oie of *€ b€st middleweight bikes ever The diference between the R6 and the Triumph is tllat the Yama- ha is just a little too track foculed to take the overall victory The R6 doesn't have the 1?iumph's abiliry to do it all. The Yarnaha is gr€at whe.t ridden aSgressi\€y either on the street or ori the track, but h's more radiGl and demandint t,lan the Triumph. However, if you wart the rnosd hard-core machine. for track daF, racinS, or kamikaze Gnyon runs, the R6 is your bike. The Honda never ceases to amaze us. The CBR makes the le.st horsepower in the t€st, yet ir scored rhe quicke$ lap tirne at Bunon- willow (Sorensen) and the third quickest ET of the day at LACR The CBR makes the most out of what its got, and th€n jLrst plain work as a street machine. The Honda is comfonable. rE{ined, predictable and at the top of almost all the tester's lists. The Kawa-saki ZX-6R isn't as had-cor€ as, sa, the R6, at least on the racetrack, bua at the drag strip it knows how to pur up the num- berc. At <tonwillow it performed middle-of-th5pack lap tirnes, but at the dr.8 strip h put up drc quickest ET of the day by pr-rfting down th€ power smoothly and controllab[r On the srreet the 6R was one of dre most comforable bikes in the test, btn it do€snt hide i6 bul\y size all that wEll, which put off some of the testers. The Suzuki's ovenll score doesn t realv reflect how Sood trle bike is. The fact of the matter is that the Buttorwillow performance scores Ere-aty hun the GSX-R, even thouBh the hke was in dle hunr fle entire time. The Gbo(er makes a lot of power ultimatey, but the engine revs slowly compared to the other 600s and the Triumph, and that makes the engine feel lary. On 6e street dte bike had good torque and a cornfonable seadnS position, makinS for a Breat overall package. lt iust hck the killer instinct of the Yamahr Unlike Sle 'Open-Class Shootod" where dte 9995,/'"s able to make the CN podium, the 7495 iust doe$t have enouSh of an advan- tage ao overcone the qui*-rewin& quick'flicking, inlinejours and the Tnumph tnple. The chass's was praised by all, but widEi,t the Ohlins suspnsion of the "R' model, the "t didn t have the ace up its sleeve that it nee& to finish highcr in dte orderl As wifi allofdEse shootouts, some of the inforrnation may b€ amponant to you, while some of k nray not b€. Find the information that suirs your needs afld make your ovvn interpretation. But for the Cy