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| We were invited to Spain for the introduction of the new for 2000 version of the R1. My fellow journalists and I would spend one day on the brand new Valencia circuit and another day on the mountain roads around Valencia. I was excited to ride the new racetrack as it had received nothing but praise from everyone I had talked to who had been there.
The view around the track is incredible, with sight lines unobstructed by anything in any of the corners.
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The track consists of nine left and four right-hand turns with a fairly long front straight; just long enough to hook sixth gear right before going down a few gears for the fast turn one left-hander. Most of the corners are second and third gear corners with very little in the way of camber or elevation change. The last two corners on the track are the only corners that really have any of either of those things and it's the second to last that sticks out in my mind as the most intimidating. It's an off-camber, fast, blind left. The problem here is that you just don't know when to brake. I don't think I ever went through there fast enough all day. |
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The combination of 140 horsepower and a track that only has a few slow right-hand turns, makes highsiding a real possibility, because the right side of the tire never has a chance to get warm. I had a firsthand experience with almost highsiding and it scared the crap out of me for a corner or two. From then on, I practiced rolling on the throttle real smooth and squaring off the corners. I started running into the corners deeper, braking harder, and then standing the bike up and gassing it out. Isn't that the Kenny Roberts philosophy anyway?
We had in our company Rich Oliver, who you should know as the man who won every single race in the 250 GP series in the States a few years ago, and Carlos Checa, the Yamaha Factory 500 GP rider. To watch these guys ride around on the exact same bikes with the exact same tires and go so much faster, is terribly humbling. I must be missing some real important DNA, like the non-wus gene. Carlos also had out on the track his special R1 that we featured in our last issue. His bike was noticeably quicker down the front straight but, to watch him go into turn one was awesome, just pure ballet. |
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| It's stunning that a bike with this kind of horsepower can be so nimble on the racetrack. Turn-in is quick and exact and the bike can be trail-braked right into the apex of a corner without any antics. Once leaned over, the front-end feel is so good that it's easy to make mid-corner adjustments if necessary without unsettling the bike at all. The bikes we rode were set up by the Yamaha Europe guys and appeared to be pretty close to perfect for the pace that we were running. I did drag the foot pegs repeatedly and should have added some preload to the rear shock, but it wasn't unsettling enough to sacrifice laps to make the change. |
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Yamaha planned a long street ride for us the second day. We were given maps and directions and sent off into unfamiliar territory. Spanish roads and frustrating Spanish road signs. Those people over there speak a different language, you know. Anyway, we did just fine and were only slightly lost a few times. The roads that we rode on were wonderful, some tight, slow stuff and some fast open sweepers, all in fantastic shape. I don't recall coming across a pothole the entire day.
There were more than a few corners that I went into way too hot but was able to make a quick correction and go about my business without any anxiety. The bike appears to be very stable under panic situations, of which I had one on the road ride.
I had never ridden the original R1 on the racetrack before but I had ridden it on the street enough to have a grasp of what the old bike felt like in the mountains.
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It is really difficult to sit here and say that it's a whole new beast, but it is possible to see that they have refined the bike in many areas. One thing that sticks out in my mind is the way that the bike shifts. The old bike seemed to be a bit notchy in its shifting while with the new bike I was never conscious of the gearbox the entire time, street or track.
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Another detail that is easily noticeable is that the first gear ratio is slightly taller. The bike isn't as prone to wheelie around town. This probably doesn't sound good to the wheelie freaks out there, but it makes the overall ratios better spaced for riding curvy mountain roads or the racetrack. The bike also led to a fun discovery for me. I have always thought of myself as a decent first gear wheelier and on the right bike I can up shift, but I am definitely not a wheelie king. But, on our street ride I learned to loft second gear wheelies. What a blast that is! Just yank it up and you can go forever; there aren't many bikes capable of that.
Most of the changes that Yamaha made to the R1 are detail changes aimed at lowering weight and improving the few areas subjected to criticism on the previous generation of the bike. Keeping with the bike's original concept, Yamaha worked very hard to shave weight off an already feathery motorcycle. More |
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| magnesium, aluminum, and titanium were used to bring the weight down by five pounds to a claimed 385 pounds dry. One of the most obvious changes is the titanium exhaust pipe, which has a cool blue tint to it and looks great with either of the R1's two color combinations available. |
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Yamaha went to great effort to make little refinements, such as the bike's brakes. The rotor thickness was reduced as was the number of buttons holding the rotor to the carrier, from ten to eight. Yamaha went so far as to pore over bolts and fasteners, making changes to reduce weight by a fraction of an ounce here, and a fraction of an ounce there. Details, details; none of these weight-saving refinements makes a bit of difference by themselves, but when combined they add up.
The styling of the bike has also been changed so much that none of the new bodywork fits on the old model. It takes a hard look to see the differences, but the R1 aficionados out there will notice. The fuel tank has deeper cuts in the sides for the rider to dig his knees into and, in my opinion, the R1 has a lot more character than the old version. The front fairing has sharper and more pronounced creases with a slightly longer beak on its nose. The tailsection is jacked up ever so slightly to throw the rider's weight forward, but it isn't very noticeable until, again, compared directly to an older model. |
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The windscreen is also slightly higher to protect the rider from the wind. For the street, the average rider won't mind the windscreen at all. On our way back from our street ride, we took a long, straight toll road, and at the rate of speed we were traveling, I thought my head was going to be ripped off. Okay, to be fair, John Burns from Motorcyclist, Mark Hoyer from Cycle World and I were going around 160+ mph for, I don't know, 15 miles, so I guess that isn't a fair complaint, is it?
It's as hard to find faults with the new R1 as it was with the old one. I guess that when we get our test bike to play with over here, and live with the bike on a day-to-day basis, we will be able to see if it is as good as my initial response indicated. |
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