Innehållsförteckning för January 2023 från Fast Bikes

It's been one hell of a year, but one that's slipped through my fingers faster than a superpole lap… on fast-forward. The older I get, the more I wonder where the time goes, but it's now, during the build-up to Christmas, that I've finally got the chance to kick back and take everything into account. The bikes, the places, the routes, the people… I don't think I could have crammed in much more if I'd tried, and I hope you can say the same. As far as highlights go, riding Bautista's world championship-winning Ducati V4R is right up there, along with tackling the GS Trophy, plus clocking some very special miles on my Aprilia RSV Mille project bike that even I doubted would ever make it over the finish line.…

When you look at the way the sportsbike scene has changed this past decade, it’s hard to anticipate what will happen next. We are as likely to see 250bhp streetbikes as we are a resurgence to the trends of the Noughties when 600s were still very much a living, breathing, and thriving thing. There’s a lot of uncharted territory out there at the moment, with big question marks on every corner. And it’s a manufacturer’s job to get its head around our whims, to navigate this minefield and put the kind of juicy and desirable offerings on the table that we simply can’t refuse. But what exactly are those offerings? What exactly do we want? Do manufacturers give us bikes with more power than the generous thresholds we are already…

When Triumph announced the 2023 updated Street Triple 765 range last month, as well as a few tweaks here and there to the chassis and the addition of a new bling Moto2 tribute bike, the main talking point was the not-insignificant 7bhp increase from the 765cc three-cylinder motor. The hike in power to 130bhp makes the mid-sized engine - positioned right in the middle of Triumph’s 80bhp 660cc and 177bhp 1200cc engines the most powerful engine per cc Triumph makes. It’s hard to believe that, in one form or another, this engine has been around for 18 years already. It debuted in the Daytona 675 in 2006, in a stroke establishing Triumph as an equal among giants, completing the company’s transformation from quirky upstart to cutting-edge innovator. It wasn’t and…

2000-2003 HONDA CBR900RR FIREBLADE The 1990s was a strange old period for Honda and its flagship sportsbike. Having broken the mould with the revolutionary 1992 FireBlade, the firm then got cold feet and spent the rest of the decade attempting to neuter its beast of a superbike. As rivals shed weight and gained performance, the Blade got lardy, ugly, and worse handing - what was going on within Honda? Luckily, help was at hand and as the new millennium approached, thankfully someone within the hierarchy green-lighted the Blade’s R&D team (still headed by the father of the FireBlade, Tadao Baba) to give its litre sportsbike some balls again. The results sneak for themselves… A totally ground-up new model, the 2000 FireBlade was a proper game changer for Honda - which…

My 2022 BSB season has been a relative disaster. Never in all my years of racing have I had a year in which the effort and potential are so misaligned with the results we’ve obtained, but I need to take it on the chin, learn from the bits that went wrong that were in my control, and hope that in the future I get less misfortune from the bits that were seem to snowball - after a few positive rounds to start the year, things just spiralled since I injured my shoulder at Knockhill. I went from a showdown championship position and being truly competitive to riding over my head and still not getting the results required. The snowball slowed by the second Oulton, and just as things looked like…

V4 VICTORY It's taken a few years, but Ducati has finally fitted all its high-end machinery with V4 engines, with the mental Diavel mega-cruiser getting a Multistrada-based four-cylinder motor to replace the old 1260 V-twin. Add in some detail tweaks to the Streetfighters with a new SP2 variant and an updated Panigale V4R with 240.5bhp (don't forget the 0.5), and all you Ducatisti are truly spoilt this year.. V4 DIAVEL Starting with that Diavel, it's long been the cruiser that it's cool to love. Proper superbike-spec running gear and an explosive 162bhp motor, plus a long and low chassis, meant it could blow most stuff away from the lights - yet had decent ground clearance and went round corners, too. The new bike is now 13kgx lighter than before and…

SUB-LITRE SPORTSBIKES MV AGUSTA F3 RR On the road… You’ve got to hand it to MV. At a time when others are shutting up shop and turning their backs on the Supersport sector, the Italian brand goes and drops a new iteration of its popular F3, Quirkier, smarter, and pricier than ever, it might not be everyone’s cup of tea but I’m the kind of bloke who’s buoyed by its existence. Never forget that it didn’t have to go through the rigmarole of scratching that Euro5 itch, like so many other marques have shied away from. Cynically speaking, it’s arguably down to the fact it was a process necessary for the model’s sibling 800s that the effort went into the common component triple motor, which gained a whole host of performanceenhancing…

FEATURE TICKING OFF YOUR TEST WORDS>MAX SILVESTER PICS>CHAPPO Everyone remembers their first bike and their first time riding on the road, cracking the throttle open as the sun shines down. For me, it was on a TZR 50 handed down from my brother. I’d just done my CBT and was absolutely loving life, ringing round the countryside without any other thoughts. It's all I wanted to do… in fact, I was so against getting a car licence that I renewed my CBT two years later, carrying on to keep riding through wet, windy and overall-not-great conditions before I gave in to the four-wheeled world. Eventually, it seems to get us all… and that’s when many people hit the crossroads of what happens next. Do you leave biking in the past? Or…

WINNING RIDE FastBikesMag.com/FastBikes-Forum FastBikesMag FastBikeMagazine 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…

LITELOK U-LOCK British lock maker Litelok has been working on high-security bike locks for a few years nowt and this is its latest piece of kit. The X1 Moto U-lock claims to offer 'unparalleled' resistance to angle grinder attack, thanks to a composite steel/ceramic construction with layers of super-hard 'Barronium' material (named after the firm's founder, Professor Neil Barron), bonded with high grade steel. The composite mater ial gives angle grinders a torrid time, wearing out discs and batteries faster than normal steel locks. It's Sold Secure Diamond rated, so has passed some pretty tough tests, and the top-spec X3 version uses an ABLOY Sentry lock cylinder. Made in the UK, it also features a soft rubber outer sleeve to protect your bike and weighs in at 1.7-1,9kg. £149.99 (X1),…

If this test has taught me anything, it’s that we should be grateful bikes like these exist. In the ‘good old days’, we were spoilt for credible, exciting sub-litre options that were more affordable than their bigger bore brethren and equally as much fun in their own kind of way. There’s something truly pleasurable about feeling you’re the boss of your bike, a notion many of us have lost by the wayside considering how potent 1000cc machines are these days. Don’t get me wrong, they are epic and my preferred plaything - but without the clever rider tech most come packing with, they’d be absolute animals to ride. That’s not to say these two bikes aren’t plentifully powerful, though. Maybe at the start of this shoot-out I didn’t give these…

Fom a small team with only one second-hand bike to a stapling itself in the books as a superbike giant, Cheshire Mouldings FS-3 Kawasaki has taken the British superbike championship by storm this season as a full factory two-rider team. The team was formed in 2015 by 1SJ Boss Nigel Snook and Darren Fry, first with thoughts of a Superstock 1000 team, though with persuasion from a friend, Dave Parkes, it found its home m the superbike class. With the knowledge that PBM Kawasaki looked to retire its bikes at the end of the year to move back to Ducati machinery, Nigel and Darren jumped at the chance and bought Shane Byrne’s championship-winning bike, along with enough spares to keep them going for a couple of years. Upon the arrival…

There’s a lot to like about Triumph’s Street Triple 765. It’s been on the market a few years now and its popularity hasn’t started to dwindle yet, especially among those who have sampled its wares on the race track. As well as being a popular tool on trackdays, there has been a rise in the number of championships hosting streetbike-based naked classes, such as the No Limits Street Bike Cup, where models from different makes go head-to-head on track. It’s a formula that’s appealed to many, including Ash Norrington. Like most of us, Ash couldn’t stay away from bikes as a kid. He eventually got his road licence and was set free, but after a couple of hefty crashes and too many conversations with the police he decided that the…

MASTERCLASS Legal If you’ve been a naughty biker, you need some decent legal advice, get it from mail@whiledalton.co.uk Q I was chatting with my mate in the pub about these 'scooter thugs' who ride around nicking motorcycles, phones, etc. We had a good laugh watching videos on YouTube where they get knocked off by police units tasked with cracking down on this type of crime. However, my mate then showed me lots of cases where these police officers were prosecuted for dangerous driving. How is this fair? They are doing a public service and are the only people stopping these scooter thugs. What is the legal position on this? A It has changed. The old law, if I can call it that, applied to all of us in the same…