The s#*t is big.
The starter motor is likewise afraid to disturb the bike. Either the superbike charging system's not strong enough or the MoTeC drew too much juice while we stood around playing with it or there's just too much compression; in any case a classic bumpstart is in order. Switching on the ignition and opening the throttle all the way once lets the computer know to feed the gas when the wheels roll.... A hearty shove from the lads and KAHBHWHUBWHUBWHUBWHUB...sounds like one of Wes Cooley's old 1000cc Yoshimura Superbikes from back in the day. Away you go.
Stretched out across the 24-liter aluminum quick-fill fuel tank like a lobster ready for boiling, you pull onto the track, a light squealing just beginning to emerge as your carapace heats.
Suspension's firm, eh? Apparently Ammar, accustomed to helping clients such as Mladin, was expecting us to hop on here and circulate in a like manner. Maybe later, like in a different lifetime. For now we'll sample the top inch or two of suspension travel whilst attempting to defamiliarize ourselves with all of Willow's highside zones.
Oh well, at least we can use the motor once we get to the back straight. Did we use the term "sneaky-fast" last month in describing Honda's RC51? Well then, this Hayabusa is top-secret, clandestine, John LeCarre-in-a-trenchcoat fast. On the move you can barely hear the motor, and as the cool LCD tach bar moves and fattens toward the little seven it occurs to you you've already arrived wherever it was you were going a second ago. Most bikes you need to keep spinning, wait for some revs to come up; this one doesn't require more than just a few. Factory-prepared 750 Superbikes might make nearly as much peak horsepower as this bike, but you can rest assured none of them approach 108.6 foot-pounds of torque at 7500 rpm. The Bus also wears a one-tooth-smaller rear sprocket than stock, and feels like it would blow right through 200 mph in its mirrorless, turnsignal-less, race bodywork. Heck, maybe it just did?
Eek, tiptoe through turn eight through the ripples. Clip-ons jostling from fist to fist is the Bus's way of saying: C'mon ya little runt, you're gonna hafta give it more than that for this relationship to work
Alrighty then, you cranky bastard, you think you're so tough, we'll see about that down the long front straight (but no way we're opening this throttle 'til we're straight up and down). Even then there's wheelspin.
Turns out it's true. It is even faster up toward 10,000 rpm. In fact, once the tach moves past eight grand things begin to happen real suddenly as that lightened crank spins smoothly up toward God-knows-where. All the way down Willow's half-mile front straight feels like an inch-high power wheelie, handlebars giving a little whack over each bump. Must you do that?
Shuddup and hold on ya pipsqueak. Hey! What are you doing? You're not squeezing my brake lever already are you...the turn's down there at the end of the straight.
Why yes, as a matter of fact I am. My eyes are joggling around like golf balls in a garbage disposal and I want to leave plenty of room. The brakes seem way more than adequate-crisp and mighty powerful. Between them and the monster motor I develop a new "style" for riding the X1 at Willow: brake hard way early, squint, reascertain the vicinity of the corner, accelerate again up to it, brake again, turn.
The plot begins to thicken and gel after a couple more laps, though, and you eventually learn to trust the beast, which is big and powerful and omnivorous and must keep water pouring over its gills at all times, yet turns amazingly light and quick and feels better the faster you go. Still there's that feeling you get in the company of pit bulls you don't know well, or from people you meet in jail.
I have a vague comprehension that someone who knows what he's doing could make serious, tire-spinning time on this monster, but that rider would possess huge skill and reproductive organs also not to scale. (Maybe that's why the seat's so high?) It's a 500-pound object, dear, and while its limit is a ways out there, you'd eventually grow familiar enough to explore the perimeter. You just know that when you step over the line with this bike, gathering things back up could be like attempting to shove toothpaste back in the tube at a very high rate of speed while wearing thick gloves. All the power in this bike reminds us of the old saying about rain tires: They simply allow you to crash at a higher rate of speed.
But as a streetbike, which is what this Hayabusa's supposed to be, what could go wrong? On the street, unless you're insane (and you won't be for long on this thing), you're only going to access that power in very short, impressive bursts that will amaze your friends and influence people wherever you go. And then you'll sit there with a double-espresso, heart pumping like a Yosh-kit fuel pump, and just admire the audacity of the thing and the loons who would dare to race it, and you have to laugh. Yoshimura has known it all along: Nothing succeeds like excess.
By Hiroshi Sato
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