Beauty or beast? It really depends on your taste. If you take the time to dissect the RC51 and compare its functionality to aesthetic appeal, you might decide that there is more beauty to this bike than meets the eye. Many features on the RC51 were designed to perform first and to look pretty second. It took a little time for the bike to grow on me, but once I saw how Honda dealt with packaging of the performance features, such as the ram air, I began to appreciate their solutions.

Sitting on the RC51, my first thought was that the bike really felt like a race bike. What I mean by that is that it felt tiny, and narrow, and built for a purpose. The bike is very slim, and Honda claims that this is the secondmost aerodynamic bike that they have ever built, the first being the NC30 which was a 400cc Japan-only version of the RC30. A bike needs to be engineered to be aerodynamic, from the engine and chassis up to the bodywork, all working as an integrated unit, and Honda seems to have accomplished this with the RC51. The next thing that stood out in my mind was that the riding position was actually comfortable. The second I pulled out onto the track, I felt at home on the bike.Honda held the domestic RC51 press introduction in Monterey, California, at the Laguna Seca racing facility. On the trip up to Monterey, I was accompanied by Andrew Trevitt from Sport Rider Magazine, and for the entire drive up we were either driving through pouring rain, sleet, or snow. We both knew from the weather reports that rain was predicted for the duration of the intro.

It was at the Honda dinner the night before our track day that Honda informed us that, if it rained, not only would we be able to ride, but that Dunlop would have their truck there and a whole pile of full wet racing rain tires available. I had never ridden on real rain tires before and, deep in the back of my mind, I was praying for rain some time in the day so that I could experience the tires.

When we showed up at the track, the surface was fairly wet, but it wasn't raining. Fortunately, I was in the second group of three, so I wasn't going to have to scrub in new tires on a damp and cold track. Mike Manning from Dunlop was trackside taking care of our tire needs, which is about as close to being a factory racer as I will ever get. We started the morning sessions on the stock Dunlop D207ZR street compound tires, and were told that, if it stayed dry, we would move up to the Dunlop D207 GP Stars, which is the soft DOT race tire.

We pulled out onto the track behind Jeff Haney from the Freddie Spencer High Performance Riding School and took a few laps to learn the racing line and give the cold tires a chance to get some heat in their carcasses. I spent the first session familiarizing myself with the bike and trying to find the proper line around the track, which required a few variations of the normal line to avoid puddles and wet spots. My first impressions of the bike were favorable. Like I said before, the bike fit me ergonomically perfectly. And, it's the type of bike that doesn't require much familiarization to ride quickly; it has a very predictable feel, even in sketchy conditions. By the end of the first session, the track was drying enough that I was able to find a dry line and ride fairly hard.

Session two was much drier; there were still spots on the track that were damp, but you could get into the throttle without worrying too much. There was some water seeping up from under the track in turn five; I didn't see it at first but, after getting hard on the gas while exiting the corner, I got the bike to snap sideways. I found a slightly different line after that incident.

There are two corners that a rider needs to learn without the aid of visual references. Everyone talks about the corkscrew at Laguna as being one of the most difficult corners in racing, but this isn't entirely true. It's not the corkscrew itself that is so difficult; it's setting up for the corner that is the real problem. Accelerating out of turn six and driving up the hill towards the corkscrew, the track crests a rise that makes the front end of the bike light and sometimes wheelie. After that, the crest falls away into a dip for about 30 yards and then the track climbs back out of this dip to crest a completely blind rise, which is when the first brake marker comes into view. But, by then, you had better be out of the throttle, braking, and downshifting because the first flick to the left for the corner comes up real quick. The left/right flick into the corkscrew is slow and not too difficult; in fact, it's a lot of fun. But if the first part of the corkscrew is messed up, you are screwed.

The other tricky corner is turn one. It has a blind entry but it is a hell of a lot faster than any other corner on the track. When I was watching the first group from the side of the track, I had the pleasure of watching Freddie Spencer's line through there. Seeing where he was setting his line was easy, but once I was back out on the track, committing to the line was much more difficult than I had anticipated. Only a handful of journalists were taking the proper line, with Andrew Trevitt among them. I tried to get as close to this line as possible and felt I was almost where I should be, but the puddle I had to run through at full throttle while flicking the bike to the left made me a little tentative.

For the second session, I felt more comfortable on the bike and noticed how well it hides its weight. Most bikes that weigh close to 450 pounds make their heft apparent on a racetrack, but the RC51 is very nimble and hides its pounds well.

The third session was spent on Dunlop D207 GP Stars. For the first part of the session, I re-familiarized myself with the bike because the handling characteristics had changed. The stock bike wears a 190/50ZR17 rear and the Star is a 180/55ZR17. Apparent from the first time I pushed the RC51 on these tires was that front-end stability had been compromised to accommodate side grip. This was fine at the slightly slower pace I was running on the damp track, but the front end dancing around underneath me while winding on the power gave

The RC51 is easy to ride fast. It has enough power to lift the front wheel in second gear while hard on the gas even in damp conditions. The fuel injection was dead on with no hiccups whatsoever, which is something that would be greatly amplified in damp conditions. It never bobbled at all. During this third session, I had the opportunity to ride an RC45 that Honda had on hand for comparison. The RC45 was completely stock and shod with not very

The RC51's steering is quick, and goes wherever you point it without hesitation, and it holds its line. If you need to make any mid-corner corrections, it cooperates without complaint. The power curve is flat without any real peak, which was no surprise considering that it is a twin and its torque curve peaks out relatively high. I inadvertently hit redline a number of times as my speeds increased, and I had to start grabbing another gear in places where earlier I hadn't. Also, although the bike isn't peaky, it does surprisingly rush fast into the red as you near 10,000 rpms.
The brakes are powerful and have a nice, linear feel to them. I actually overbraked for a few corners at first because I hadn't built my confidence in the stoppers yet. But once I had this trust, I was able to brake deeper with confidence. The front end is also very stable under the heavy braking and downshifting all the way to first gear, required in turn eleven.

Another interesting thing that I noticed was that the rear end didn't have any tendency to lock up and chatter when back-shifting down into first gear under that heavy braking. We were told that the bike does not have a slipper-type clutch which big twins often need to keep compression braking from making the bike unstable while going down into the low gears. The gauges on the RC51 are difficult to read on the fly because they are all LCD and the tach is a narrow bar with low contrast that is difficult to read at a glance. It is easy to get behind the windscreen because the gas tank is small and unobtrusive, and it has just deep enough side cuts to dig your knees into to help with steering and hanging off.

My wish came true and, at the end of my third session, it started raining. By this time, I was on the Dunlop Stars and they were plenty hot, so I stayed out until the end of the session with virtually no problems with grip. The next session was to be on the full wet race tires, due to the deteriorating track conditions, and although some journalists decided that they had had enough, I was excited to see how those tires performed on a slick track. Honda made some drastic suspension changes, softening everything up a ton, and then sent us back out. What a blast! I had been told before that full wet rain tires had a ton of grip, but was still shocked at the amount of grip that was available when sampling them myself. I enjoy the challenge of riding in the rain anyway, but these tires compounded the experience tenfold. I could brake and accelerate incredibly hard without any loss of grip, to the point that I quit short-shifting and just let the bike rev out. Cornering was also very impressive and, running through puddles, the bike wouldn't break loose.

I left Monterey with a positive impression of the RC51 even though we never had a chance to ride the bike on a fully dry track. The bike is meant to be a platform for a Superbike but, much more than the RC45, the RC51 is a competent and fun bike as is. It's hard to make predictions about racing, especially when talking about unproven machinery, but pay attention to the RC51 this year; it should win some races, especially with the caliber of riders that Honda has at its disposal.

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