Cycle News

VOL. 51 ISSUE 31 AUGUST 5, 2014 P63 bumps even when you're trail- braking very late and very hard into a turn, because it has such little stiction, and the fork keeps right on working. It gives you heaps of confidence to attack the corners at full lean even with the brakes hard on, allowing you to leave your braking later and later for a given turn. Thanks to its low (for a racer) 31.6-inch seat height you seem- ingly sit deep down within the Brough, which does indeed seem very slim - more like a middle- weight twin than an in-line four. There's good protection from the tall, domed screen to help opti- mize aerodynamics, with the foot- pegs further forward than is usual on a racer. They were much too high for not only me, but also for Higbee who is even taller and has been trying to persuade Taylor to invest in the new carbon com- posite fabrication needed to drop them 30mm or so. There's no way they'll touch down if he does that with the 180-section Dunlop Moto2 con- trol tire fitted, but the fact this is more of a big deal than simply machining up some new metal footpeg hangers since these are also carbon on the Brough. Guess that illustrates one draw- back of such avant-garde con- struction techniques. On a tight track like Sonoma where fourth gear was the best we could get, there was no time to take more than an occasional glance at the big 2D dash with copious data and serial maps that dominates the Moto2 Brough's cockpit, so I just concentrated on the shifter lights that told me when to hit the race-pattern gearshift with its HRC wide-open power- shifter – which is flawless to oper- ate. It has a short, precise action that becomes intuitive, and it even shifts from first gear to second through neutral wide open, too – not all of them do that. The slipper clutch also worked well with a little vestigial engine braking left dialed in without affect- ing stability coming down through the gears under heavy braking. There is no auto blipper fitted, however, so you do have to fan the clutch lever to backshift cleanly. Even though Higbee insisted he had the bike set up for stabil- ity more than agility, the steering felt light and ultra-responsive, as if the front wheel was also made from carbon fiber. It is, but until you get accustomed to that you will initially find yourself over- steering into turns - as if you had a front wheel with just such re- duced gyroscopic inertia. The tight steering geometry and short wheelbase make the Brough extremely agile and quick to change direction without a sig- nificant degree of rider input. It also holds a tight line very well both at low speeds, like in the double-apex turn 7 right-hander, or going faster downhill round the long downhill 6A swoop. Because the Taylormade Brough is so nimble, and you don't have to move around as much to make it steer quickly, it's a less physical bike to ride hard on than others even of compara- ble weight. Thus it should be less tiring for longer races. In a sequence of fast flicks like that turn eight complex, you can just sit in place, weight the foot- pegs alternately, and use your knees and arms to persuade the bike to change direction – a welcome benefit with those high footpegs that make levering your- self around on the Moto2 Brough a little awkward for someone of my height. That agility comes from a com- bination of the Brough's short wheelbase, centralized mass, light weight and tight steering geometry with much reduced 16-degree fork rake, allied to a reasonable amount of trail which prevents it feeling twitchy on turn in. The result is a bike that's nim- ble without being nervous, which also didn't change its character- istics as the fuel load dropped during a full day of testing, run- ning in a total of six sessions. Yes, Taylor's insistence on a tall, narrow fuel cell in the interests of constant weight distribution works well. By the third session aboard it I was back in Saxon Triumph mode, braking deep into the apex of a turn, with the compli- ant front suspension ironing out the circuit's several bumps with- out any sign of chatter even with the brakes on hard while at lean. The longer you ride this bike, the more at home you feel on it. No wonder Higbee thinks it's the best chassis he's ever ridden. And in spite of the short wheelbase and that steep ge-

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