Indholdsfortegnelse for June 2023 i Fast Bikes

And just like that, there are motorcycles everywhere. This is the best time of the year, seeing and hearing an unholy amount of bikes breaking free from hibernation and capitalising on the dry, warm weather we've had in recent weeks. It's the perfect tonic for those winter blues that now seem a distant memory-thankfully I'll be honest, as much as I do ride all year round, l don't enjoy wet, cold and sketchy roads. I know some people wear the winter warrior badge with pride and for others it's a necessity, maybe having to commute on a bike whatever the weather, and I take my hat off to you all, but I'd sooner clock twice as many miles in the warmer months than an even spread all year long. Everything…

LAUNCH DUCATI V4S How do you perfect perfection? The Streetfighter’s evolution was, of course, inevitable, but truthfully speaking, there wasn’t much wrong with the last one. In my humble opinion, the box-fresh beast that hit the scene in 2020 would still batter the core of today’s supernaked sector. Ducati created a monster, and several years on its brilliance still reverberates the world over. The downside to that success is the expectation that consequently follows… people always want more. Ultimately, Ducati re-wrote the rulebook with the Streetfighter, pumping out a street naked weighing less than 200kg and making more than 200bhp… for context, making it more powerful and lighter than a number of thoroughbred sportsbikes - the cheek of it. That formula has gone on to prove a winner in our magazine…

It’s universally accepted that the Isle of Man TT races are quite simply the ultimate race of any kind, let alone motorcycle. There probably isn’t a corner of the globe where someone isn’t familiar with the TT races - it’s that famous. At the risk of sounding cliche, it really is the ultimate test of man and machine, combining average speeds way above anything the premier class MotoGP could ever dream of and a test of durability and endurance of the machine with a race distance of well over 200 miles and a sustained mechanical pummelling far in excess of anything the bike’s designers ever had in mind when putting pen to paper. Then there’s the human element of the test, where the riders must combine ultra-high levels of physical…

FEATURE PROJECT R7 PART THREE As I literally sat down to write this update on the Bathams R7 Supertwin project, I’ve just received a message from Performance Parts that the Yoshimura cam kits we ordered have arrived. They’ve travelled all the way from California, and have shown up three weeks late. They are the very last thing we’ve been waiting for before starting the engine build, and the delay has heaped massive pressure onto the timeline. As I write, it’s 23 days until the truck leaves for the North West 200, so by the time you read this, the bike will have had to have been built, dyno’d, track tested and shaken down. Just because the engines have remained in a state of dismantlement for several weeks now, it doesn’t mean…

FastBikesMag.com/FastBikes-Forum Facebook.com FastBikesMagazine @FastBikesMag BACK ON TRACK Here is a pic of me at Andalusia on April 1 this year. It was my first time on track since September 2020, when I spent 10 days in hospital in Hull following an airlift from a No Limits Cadwell Park race. I had a destroyed left shoulder and nine other broken bones, which meant I never thought I would ride again! Two and a half years of pain and physio later and I am finally back on track. Chris Rollings FB: Thanks for writing in, Chris. Very inspirational to hear that you're back on track after such a big hit. We’ll hopefully see you out on track this season. All the best. You can win a Weise stealth Hoodie for simply writing the…

The first road bike that really made us sit up and take notice of KTM was the original 2005 950 SM supermoto. The wacky Austrian dirtbike maker was a niche operator on the tarmac up until then, but this pile of orange nonsense was a cracker. It had a lovely carburetted 942cc 75° V-twin engine - the first KTM engine that wasn’t a thumping single - borrowed from the KTM 950 Adventure released a couple of years earlier, steel trellis frame, long-travel suspension, and sporty wheels, tyres and brakes. A few years later they bumped up the engine to a 999cc and called it the 990 SM, before adding pannier fittings to make the hilarious 990 SMT. Bonkers, barmy, brilliant for bringing beer home from the shops… it could do…

DUCATI V4S Why no more power or less weight? Of course, we can increase the power, but maybe we would have lost some torque at low rpm and we didn't want to do that. We think that the maximum power is already enough. Being honest, I think we are already the reference for power in the market. And regarding the weight, the bike is light… it's really light. At Ducati, we have a rule - 'never forget to reduce weight.'. Of course, we could have done something more. Take the Superlegerra, for example; it is superbly light, but it is also very expensive. I think that people would not appreciate the cost of the bike for a few extra kilos saved. But for those who want to make their Streetfighter…

PART TWO I’m slowly but surely learning why lots more people don’t stake their livelihoods on flipping bikes… it’s bloody hard work. I’ll be honest, taming this ZX-7R around and getting it flogged seemed much easier in my head… the truth is that it’s consumed me financially and mentally over the past few weeks, but I'm starting to see some light at the end of the tunnel. I took this path on a complete whim, without doing my research or even knowing what I was buying. That was a mistake, one I’ll learn from for the next time round. For now, I'm just trying to get a grasp of what I’ve bought, with a clear idea of what it needs and what it’ll take to get it over the finish…

IN ASSOCIATION WITH NO LIMITS TRACKDAYS NO LIMITS FastBikesMag.com/ FastBikes-Forum Facebook.com FastBikesMagazine @FastBikeMag WINNER Here at Fast Bikes magazine, we love trackdays. So much so, we wanted to give something back to you, the reader! We've teamed up with the lovely lot over at No Limits Trackdays to offer a free trackday every month! All you have to do is send us a picture of yourself at your last trackday for a chance to win. If you're the lucky person highlighted on these pages, you've won a trackday of your choice! If it's you, get in touch with us and we'll look after the rest, and if you haven't won this time, there's always next month. There are no cash alternatives available. The winning image is drawn at random. Terms and…

It’s one of the great journalism clichés - spotting the next hot new prospect in racing. And in some ways you can’t lose: if you get it right, you spend the next few years crowing about your soothsaying skills… if you don’t, you just never mention it again. Sometimes you can be quite relaxed about a prediction, though, and that’s definitely the case here, we reckon. Max Cook is a 19-year-old racer from Swindon and has quite the bio. He’s been racing since he was just six years old, and comes into 2023 as one of the new riders to watch in BSB. After winning the Junior Superstock 600 title last year on a Yamaha R6 for the Binch Racing X Uggly & Co team, he’s swapped to a Kawasaki…

LAUNCH SUZUKI GSX-8S Hats off to Suzuki - it isn’t afraid of making brave and bold decisions. It recently pulled out of MotoGP, just a couple of years after winning the world championship, and then it announces it’s I pulling out of the World Endurance Championship. Next, it makes the GSX-R1000 obsolete due to not enough sales, swiftly followed by an announcement that it’s building a completely new bike to get a slice of the hugely popular sub-£8000 category… and this is a very brave move. Brave because that price point is rammed with what are simply great bikes, regardless of price tag. The competition the GSX-8S faces is fierce, with the main contenders being the Yamaha MT-07, the Triumph Trident 660, KTM 790 Duke and the Kawasaki Z650, all under…

BRUCE LONGTERMER DUCATI PANIGALE V4 SP2 TIME ON TEST: A FEW WEEKS ODOMETER MILES BHP: 213 GAIN: 0 NEXT AIM: CRANK UP THE MILES I'm old enough to know not to wish my time away, but this winter I've had good reason to. Tucked inside my garage, wrapped up warm and chained to within an inch of its life, has lived perhaps the most stunning production bike of now - Ducati's Panigale V4 SP2. Technically, it's not Ducati's, nor is it mine. It belongs to a bloody good mate who bought it box-fresh and passed over the keys so we could test it last year. We ticked that box but I must have misread the returns policy because it's never made it back to its rightful owner… and the good…

WINNING RIDE FastBikeMag.com/FastBikes-Forum FastBikesMag FastBikesMagazine Facebook.com WIN A FAST BIKES HOODIE! To be in with a chance of winning this most tasteful of tops, just email us (letters@fastbikes.co.uk) or post on our Facebook page with a pic of you, your bike and a few words about it, where you've been on it and why you rate it so highly. We’ll then pick our favourite post each month and that lucky person will be the proud owner of their very own Fast Bikes hoodie - which is proven to make you at least 60% faster!* Send yours to letters@fastbikes.co.uk…