First Ride Suzuki GSX-R1000
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Words Emma Franklin Pics Suzuki
Filling the void
Suzuki’s new GSX-R1000 may look similar but choice tweaks have returned it to those heady glory days of mad mid-range
Don’t trade it, upgrade it – it’s been the PB mantra for years. With money not worth what it once was, we, the performance-conscious, now choose to fettle what we’ve got rather than spunk out on the latest tech. Te knock-on effect is that sales of new bikes are falling, so manufacturers are doing the same – tweaking models rather than radically overhauling them. No news there. So you won’t be picking yourself up off the floor when we tell you that this very familiar -looking bike is in fact the new 2012 GSX-R1000. Suzuki aren’t trying to pull the blue and white wool over our eyes, they’re quite open about the fact the L2 is a refinement of their 5th generation GSX-R1000 rather than a new chapter in the bike’s history. Beneath that unchanged fairing sits a host of engine upgrades designed to improve acceleration and feel, not power. Output remains totally unchanged, albeit with peak power chiming in 500rpm lower. But what Suzuki have strived to do is fill out that noticeable dip in midrange between 6000 and 7000rpm in an attempt to get the engine back to where it was on the stunning K5 model, before emissions regulations eroded all that glorious grunt. Meanwhile the chassis has been honed with a pair of Brembo monobloc calipers, thinner brake discs and a revised stock fork set-up. Tey’ve also dropped 2kgs off the kerb weight, achieved mostly by abandoning one of the twin silencers and modifying the exhaust collector box. It’s just like Suzuki have flipped open the performance parts catalogue, checked the bank balance and then commenced upon a course of subtle but effective mods. And if you can’t stretch to a new bike this year, we’ll show you how you can give your older bike the same benefits.
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hink of the F3 as less of a supersports bike and more a baby WSB racer. Te surprisingly affordable £9999 F3, the first all-new MV Agusta since the 2002 Brutale, is to the F4 what the FZR400RR SP was to the FZR1000 EXUP, or the RGV250 to the RG500. It’s smaller, prettier, more exotic, better-handling and easier to ride flat-out. It’s the sexy mother’s beautiful 18-year old daughter. It’s also packed with electronics, a first for a ‘600’. Te F3 has the most over-square bore and stroke of any of its rivals and with a claimed 128bhp at the crank it’s the most powerful, too. Revving it at a standstill sends the needle surging furiously across the tacho and back again even quicker. Te induction noise and angry snarl coming from those three stacked, side-mounted pipes is sadomasochism to the ears. Between your legs, the F3 feels light and hollow like a factory superbike. And like a full-on racer it takes a lot of clutch slip to pull
away, due to its tall first gear and the motor’s lack of flywheel effect. Head down Paul Ricard’s pitlane in air temperatures struggling above freezing and pin it out on to an even colder track. Tere’s that incredible howling soundtrack again, but this time it’s accompanied by glorious g-force and deafening wind rush. Surprisingly the MV doesn’t wheelie under hard acceleration in the lower gears. Maybe that’s the counter-rotating crankshaft doing its job. It’s not the anti-wheelie control as it’s not wired up yet. It’ll be fitted with MV’s internal gyro, which we’re told is coming, at some point, either as an optional extra or a future update. Te F3 stays flat and true as you feed in more gears and surge furiously towards the red and blue-painted track edges of Paul Ricard’s horizon. Te MV has a slick new cassette gearbox (although I’m missing a few lower gears from time-to-time) and the bike I’m on is fitted with the optional quickshifter. It makes life easier, although it’s not the smoothest one I’ve ever used. 19
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The Art of the V-Twin Panigale launch
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Words Matt Wildee Pics Milagro
THE DAY OF RECKONING Ducati say this is the lightest, fastest, most powerful sportsbike ever been produced. Matt heads to Abu Dhabi to ďŹ nd out if it is worth the hype
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The Art of the V-Twin Panigale launch
here are few sportsbikes that have been as heavily hyped as the Ducati Panigale 1199. It isn’t surprising really; at a time when Japanese manufacturers get excited about saving a couple of kilos or bolting on some new brake calipers, Ducati has reinvented the sportsbike. It’s a bold claim, but it’s the truth. With frame technology only ever seen in MotoGP and claims of more power than a BMW S1000RR, there is nothing else like it on the market. The stats suggest there has never been a more hardcore bike. But can mere mortals actually access this performance? The launch of the sexiest bike in years was held at the YAS Marina F1 track in Abu Dhabi. The following words are taken from the scrawls of Matt’s notebook… 8:50 Twenty-two Ducati Panigale 1199S ABS machines await in the gloom of the immaculate YAS Marina pitlane garages. Tiny, pointy and with a bum-up stance made even stronger by the high Ducati Corse paddock stands, they drip presence. Arabian sunlight from chinks in the garage door play on the bike’s flanks, catching the odd curve here and there. Proper exotica. Tis bike is a big deal. Te Panigale is the bravest Duke for a generation. It is packed with amazing tech and has a claimed 195bhp. Ducati has flown in Troy Bayliss and Neil Hodgson and spent a fortune hiring an F1 track and five-star hotel to host the launch. Recession, you say? 9:12 Before we get to ride the bike, Ducati Technical Director Andrea Forni talks us through the machine. Forni is one of the greatest motorcycle engineers of all time – he’s been key in the development of the last twenty years of sports Ducatis. He’s exactly what you’d expect an Italian bike engineer to be like, full of musical English and mechanical passion. Give him a chance and he’ll talk to you endlessly about his old Pantah or his high-speed crash at Imola while developing the old 1098. His heart is Desmodromically activated. His presentation is as revealing as it is inspiring. Tere’s no doubt that this is the most advanced sports motorcycle there has ever been. I already know about the monococque airbox frame and the way the engine is used as a stressed member from which hangs the rest of the bike. I’d also heard plenty about the ridiculously over-square Superquadro motor before I got to Abu Dhabi but that doesn’t make its intent and technology any less impressive. I can’t remember a road bike that has as much radical thought put into it. At a time when most sportsbike manufacturers are honing and refining, Ducati has ripped stuff up and started again. And what’s more they didn’t need to. Tey already had the best V-twin in the business. 38
Te baseline figures of 195bhp, 98ft.lb torque and an unfuelled weight of 188kg will make any performance-minded head spin, but it is the sheer attention to detail that blows me away. Te decompressor system for easy starting and a lightweight electrical system are pure genius. Te dash is as trick, as functional and as easy to read as my iPad. Te intricately wrought swingarm and subframe are works of lightweight casting art. Ten there is the suspension linkage, switchable between a flat and a rising rate. I’m particularly taken with those exquisite Brembo M50 radial calipers, which look like something off a factory superbike. Tere is a level of technology here that has never been seen on a production bike. I text Emma, who is at the launch of the new GSX-R1000 L2. Suzuki is getting excited about some new brakes and a bit more midrange. Ducati has reinvented the sportsbike. 10:38 BRAAAP! BRAAAAAAP! BOOM! I’m sitting astride the 1199 waiting to go out for the first warm-up lap. Tat V-twin groan and
‘The Superquadro is so free-revving it’s hard to believe it’s a twin’ moan emanates from underneath me and dominates the whole bike. It feels alive. Te throttle is light, the action short and every blip sends the revs rising rapidly. It spins up so quickly it is hard to imagine that there are two 112mm slugs pounding up and down somewhere below me. Te Aprilia RRV450 racebike that I rode last year had a similar character, but this has nearly three times the capacity. Remarkable. Te riding position is very different to the old 1198. Te bars are higher, wider and further apart and you sit much closer to the front of the bike than you did before. Your arms are bent and set at the perfect angle to lever a bike from side to side. Tere is plenty of
legroom too. Tis is the most intuitive, roomy riding position of any sports Ducati yet. 10:41 Tey wave us out on the 3.4 mile YAS Marina circuit, down through the subway pitlane exit and onto the track. It’s like entering another world. YAS is an F1 track built on the grandest of scales, but it’s also slightly schizophrenic. Part glass and steel grandstands, part be-walled street circuit, it is a fusion of Monza, Monaco and Macau. Some of the circuit basks in huge blue-striped runoff areas, in other places the walls are perilously close. But it is fast. With two sixth-gear straights and a variety of corners, it is a great place to test a bike. But it is a bastard to learn. 10:42 I wobble around the first few corners, not really knowing where I’m going. Instantly, I’m impressed by the Panigale’s docility. Te fuelling is predictable and the bike chops and changes line like no Ducati I have ridden before. It feels so light, so nimble, so compact. Just like an Aprilia RSV4. Te first big straight. Tuck in and wind the throttle hard in second. Initial response is muted. In a bid for class leading top-end power, the midrange has been lost but at 8000rpm the world goes mental. As the Panigale comes on cam, the engine note hardens and it shoots forward on a barely conceivable wave of torque and power. I brace myself and keep it revving, hooking the next gear through the slick quickshifter as the dash lights flash at the 11,500rpm redline. Te 1199 is trying to suck the tarmac through its distended ram-air scoops, the bars rhythmically weaving in my hands. It only calms down in fifth gear, by which time I’m hiding behind the tiny screen, bracing myself from the windblast. Te Superquadro is so fluid, so free-revving it is hard to believe it’s a twin. I’d like to be poetic, but the violence of its acceleration deserves only the coarsest Anglo Saxon. It’s fucking fast. 10:43 Brake! Te speedo is showing 280kph when I tug on the lever. Te four-pot Brembo
This is second gear, 8000rpm. Still, it’s easier to keep the front whel on the floor than on the old 1198
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The Art of the V-Twin Development Words Rupert Paul Pics Rory Game
from Pantah to PanigalE
Thirty two years of the same Ducati crankcases. Until now For most of the 1970s Ducati V-twins – with their greyhound styling, Mike Hailwood TT associations and mythical bevel-Desmo innards – had been the coolest tackle available to the discerning performance motorcyclist. Te only trouble was there weren’t that many discerning motorcyclists. Besides cool, Ducatis offered expense and fragility, and as Japan went power crazy throughout the 1980s the appeal of skinny Italian V-twins guttered and died. In response the great Fabio Taglioni (the father of Desmo motorcycles) made a new, cheaper, more reliable engine. Te new Pantah had belt-driven cams, but at 500cc it was tiddly and expensive. Te big moment came in 1985, when Claudio Castiglione bought the ailing factory, relieved engine designer Massimo Bordi of his diesel-related responsibilities, and invited him to, “do something to get back again the technological leadership of Ducati engines.” Bordi didn’t need asking twice. Tis is the story of evolution from the stone-age to the eve of the space-age marvel below.
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This is a factory 888 race head used by Stephane Mertens in 1991. The greenish cam end caps are magnesium – an early attempt to save weight
Opening cam Closing cam
Cam drive pulleys
Opening rocker Closing rocker
Desmoquattro WSB championships 1990 Raymond Roche 1991 Doug Polen 1992 Doug Polen 1994 Carl Fogarty 1995 Carl Fogarty 1996 Troy Corser 1998 Carl Fogarty 1999 Carl Fogarty WSB racers claimed power 1988 Ducati 888: 125bhp @ 11,000rpm 1999 Ducati 996: 168bhp @ 11,500rpm
A late Desmoquattro head from a 19972000 916 SPS, which was really a 98mm bore 996cc. But it used the same onepiece head design as the first 851
1987-2000
With a green light from the boss to do something extraordinary, Bordi took inspiration from a Cosworth Formula 2 car engine he admired. He had also done a university thesis on a four-valve Desmo head – a concept the older Taglioni apparently did not approve of. “My idea was to start with the Pantah engine architecture, keeping some common components,” Bordi says. “And so I could make a new engine with 40 degree valve angle, a very straight intake, water cooling and an injection system I got from an F40 Ferrari.” Te parts were ready in early 1986, and the 851cc production bikes appeared the following year. “Ducati, thank God, are back from the dead,” reported PB in November 1987. Wonderful though it was, the new superbike’s cylinder head was limited by the casting technology of the time. Working on the valve gear was a bit like doing brain surgery through the patient’s eye sockets. “It’s a bit of a ball-ache, to be honest,” confirms Matt Norman, race engine technician at Coventry Ducati. “Everything’s enclosed so you’re always working in a confined space – the horizontal cylinder especially.” Honda won the first couple of WSB titles. But from 1990 the rules began to favour factories who could do short production runs to homologate new technology, and Ducati started laying down WSB championships like bottles of fine red wine in a particularly luxurious cellar. Tey bagged eight before the first serious engine upgrade. 57
Buying Honda Firestorm
the perfect storm Words Jon Pearson Pics Jason Critchell
With used prices from just £1500 and gobs of fat torque, Honda’s Firestorm is the cheapest way to own a big twin Why the hell is this bike so cheap? It’s a mystery that’s playing around my mind as I roll the throttle on in third gear one more time and enter a biking cliché. (Te front tyre is skimming the tarmac – in case you’re wondering.) It’s a measure of the years passing when you ask yourself “is this bike really that old?” Te Firestorm dates back to a time when Oasis and Blur were still squabbling, Manchester United did the treble and an Australian called Mick Doohan was winning everything on a 500cc two-stroke.
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First Ride Triumph Speed Triple R
Words Kev Smith Pics Jason Critchell
“You just can’t keep it on the ground!”
We put PB stunt god Kev Smith on the Triumph Speed Triple R – the nuttiest naked bike to come from these shores. What do you think he’d say?
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Brrrrraaahhhhhh……..SMACK! Brrrrraaaahhhh! Tat’s the sound of the Triumph Speed Triple R landing from another jump on my favourite B-road. Tis is my first proper ride of 2012, and I just can’t help but misbehave. For the best part of twenty years, the Speed Triple has been one of those bikes that begs you to ride it like you stole it, and this lighter, snappier, sharper version demands it even more. I ran a 2011 Speed Triple last year. I loved the power, the noise and the way I could get it to top gear on the back wheel, but I thought the handling could be better. Te main problem on every hard ride seemed to stem from the suspension. Te damping was too harsh on standard settings and when you backed it off it all went way too floaty. Tis bike doesn’t have that problem. Triumph has equipped the Speed Triple R with proper, high-quality adjustable Ohlins NIX 30 forks at the front and a proper Ohlins TTX shock at the back. But they haven’t stopped there: the bike now has PVM wheels and Brembo monobloc front calipers too.
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Obsession Spondon TZ 421
Obses
Race bike chassis with a drag quad heart makes for one hell of a c
EnginE YPVS cases contain a crazy crank from a drag-race Banshee quad. It’s pummeling oversized pistons into a pair of 421cc barrels. The increase in bore and stroke give it the same dimensions as an RD400 yet with almost the power of a 600.
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Words Emma Franklin Pics Mark Manning
ssiOn
crazy road bike. Behold Martin Brown’s Spondon TZ421
Chassis The frame and chassis is all authentic Spondon TZ250. Spondon made replicas of nearly all modern incarnations of Yamaha’s legendary customer GP bike and this particular version is a 1994 model. Made from alloy it’s ultra lightweight, taut and extremely beautiful.
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The firsT Time...
Foggy’s first shakedown on the 916 was at its first race, at Donington BSB 1994
i won a World superbike title
“Te first time I saw the Ducati 916 I honestly didn’t think that much of it, although to be fair it didn’t have its clothes on. It was 1993 and I was a factory rider on the 888 at the time. I was in the race department in Bologna and there was a bike in bits in the corner of the room. I remember looking at it, seeing the single-sided swingarm and underseat exhausts and thinking ‘I hope those aren’t too close to where the rear tyre is!’. “Believe it or not, the first time I rode the 916 was at Donington Park in a British Superbike race in 1994. Te Ducati factory did no preseason testing and that was our first official shakedown. Tey actually brought the test bike over from Italy for me to ride and I think there was even a bit of snow in the air. When I saw the completed bike I remember thinking it was pretty, but I didn’t fall in love with its look. It was a test bike and not the finished article, which turned out to be a good thing as I fell off it in practice down Craner Curves. Luckily there wasn’t much damage, a good job seeing as Ducati hadn’t brought many spares. I won both races but I didn’t get on with the 916. I was used to the 888 and I remember thinking ‘I wish I had my 888. I could be going a lot faster’. “Te first WSB race that year was at Donington Park and about a week before Ducati organised a two day test at the circuit for all its riders. Tere was James Whitham, Fabrizio Pirovano, Giancarlo Falappa and I think Troy Corser as well. I remember when the garage door opened and I first saw the 916 in its WSB colours – Ducati red with the white number boards and the Agip sticker. I just stood still and said ‘fucking hell’. I didn’t want to take it out, it would have been criminal to crash such a beautiful machine. Who is Carl “Initially I didn’t find the early 916 very easy to Fogarty? ride. Where the 888 was really smooth in the Do you really have to ask? With four WSB corners the 916 was twitchy and nervous, a bit titles, 59 race wins and like a 500GP bike. To be honest it was a shock to 21 pole positions, ‘King’ win the first WSB race on it; I was struggling like Carl is the most crazy as it didn’t suit my riding style and I was just successful WSB rider ever. Injury forced his trying to get through the first round with some retirement in 2000 but decent points. James and Fabrizio were ‘hard in, he still remains a legend hard out’ style riders where I relied more on amongst Ducati enthusiasts and WSB corner speed and flowing riding. Te Ducati had a race fans the world over. short wheelbase and suited aggressive riders, 114
something that caught me out at the next round. “I broke my left wrist at Hockenheim and limped my way to a fifth place in the next round in Italy after the gearbox blew up in the first race. At this point I thought the season was done. Luckily the next track was Albacete – tight and twisty, it suited the Ducati. I won both races. After this we had a test at Mugello that turned our whole season around. “I was riding around and around but couldn’t get out of the ’57s. I could do that time on the 888 the year before but what was more annoying was that the Ducati test rider was doing ’56s. What they didn’t tell me was he was riding a development machine. At the end of the test they gave me the bike and said ‘take it out, see what you think’. I went two seconds faster within a few laps. Te bike had a longer swingarm and they increased the fork angle. I now had a machine I could ride the way I wanted. It wasn’t nervous anymore, it wasn’t twitchy and it held a mid-corner line much better. “Te rest of the season was a straight scrap with Scott Russell on the Kawasaki. It was a hell of a battle, bloody close and one of the best seasons of racing ever. I’d get a double win, then he would, I’d win a race, he’d win the next one. If I was on a podium, Scott was there next to me. It went down to the wire and in the last race of the year at Phillip Island either of us could have taken the title. I won the first race but Scott was second after Anthony Gobert let him through. Tat meant I had a five point advantage on him so I knew all I had to do was be behind Scott when the chequered flag came out and I would be the champion. As it turned out his rear tyre disintegrated and he waved me past… “Crossing the line as champion is the best feeling in the world, especially after such a tight season. It is so emotional, you have had a tough season, a few crashes, injuries, mechanicals and it all comes down to the last race of the year. Te emotions are uncontrollable, you are in tears of joy and relief, everything comes out at once when you pass the flag. And with Ducati it was like winning it with your family, at Honda you felt like you were just a cog in a big machine. “Te first world title is certainly special. Eventually they all merge into one but when you win for the very first time it is that little bit more special because you know that no matter what happens in life that can’t be taken away from you – you will always be a world champion. If you win it two, three or four times it’s only icing on the cake.”
Pics Bauer Archive Interview Jon Urry
by Carl Fogarty, the most successful WSB rider ever
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