Innehållsförteckning för December 2025 från Fast Bikes

Putting this issue together, I couldn't ignore the pull of the past. Sure, the spotlight is on the four fire-breathing litre bikes screaming on the cover, but we've also carved out space for legends like the Britten V1000 and the game-changing Yamaha R1M. Neither is in conventional production these days, yet their influence on motorcycling is impossible to overstate. What makes some bikes hit harder than others? What's the secret sauce? Both the Yam and the Britten share one key trait: they refused to play by the rules. The Yamaha brought big-bang firing and GP tech to the street, while the Britten proved that alternative thinking and sheer creativity could outsmart the competition in every corner. In different ways, both stood out for all the right reasons. And that's a…

We're living in interesting times when, as a magazine, it's been ages since we've had a group of litre bikes gathered for your and our pleasure. October 2023 was the last time we had reason to pull together the latest and greatest metal that there is, and that time it was focused on homologation specials. This time we've done it because, to put it bluntly, it's taken that long for the three main protagonists to bring updates worthy of dedicating the pages in the mag. It's interesting because once upon a time, not that long ago, this kind of feature would have been a regular annual undertaking. Today, manufactures do little more than fiddle around the edges of their ‘Halo’ bikes, often to appease the latest Euro regulations rather than…

Earlier this year at the press launch of the 2025 BMW S1000RR, I had a lightbulb moment when I realised that the S1000RR turned 15 years old in 2025, which, to be honest, I found more interesting than the fact that the wings on the 2025 bike make 1.6kg more downforce at 150kph than the 2024 wings do, or that the new mudguard is more efficient aerodynamically, and that the side panels are now asymmetric, just like the first generation S1000RR. I did, however, find the fact that the latest S1000RR has a quick-action throttle as standard – 58 degrees from fully closed to fully open versus 72 degrees – as that'll be something you can actually notice and use. The electronics also got a quick once-over for 2025 too,…

While there are those who plough into the winter on two wheels, I reckon it's fair to say that most of us have other ideas. Wet, cold, and greasy roads can be a nightmare, so it makes sense to quit while you're ahead and park up your pride and joy until the better weather arrives. And if you want to go about that in the best way, the guys at MotoClean have some top tips to share… Keep it clean The first thing to do is to give your bike a proper wash to remove dirt, road salt, and bugs. Using a top-quality cleaner such as MotoClean Gel Bike Wash means you get rid of even the most stubborn grime in every nook and cranny that has built up during…

John Britten's V-1000 engine, in the grand scheme of things, is not groundbreaking (it was still a DOHC four-valve V-twin), but it was for the time. What was groundbreaking, and still is, is the chassis that housed that remarkable engine. After the first V-1000 ran with a conventional chassis with telescopic forks, John decided that the new V-1000, created in 1991, should run with the engine as a stressed member with the front end, sub-chassis and swingarm anchoring at various points on the engine. John was a firm believer in creating things with a difference and his V-1000's suspension set-up was no exception. Rather than run with conventional forks, John reworked the classic Girder fork system – one of the earliest came from the prewar Vincent machines which he took…

If you've been a naughty biker, you need some decent legal advice, get it from mail@uuhitedalton.co.uk Q My mates keep telling me that mud on the road is just bad luck and you've got to suck it up and move on. This cannot be right. I was following a tractor the other day which was flicking massive lumps of mud all over the place. Can they do that and get away with it? A This is a good question. The tractor driver flicking mud all over the road is liable to you if you hit the mud and crash. Your example is very easy as you know who put the mud on the road - i.e., the driver of the tractor with the registration number you'’e seen. It gets much…

If you go all the way back to 2011, when the ZX-10R was last completely replaced, and fast-forward to present day, its evolution goes something like this: 2016 – new frame and swingarm and power up to 197bhp, plus IMU-based rider aids; 2017 – RR spec introduced so a cylinder head could be homologated for racing even though the ‘go faster’ parts weren't included… the head was modified only so they could be added later; 2020 – ZX-10R got the cylinder head and pistons from the RR; 2021 – new aero… and that's pretty much it. It would be easy to scoffat just how little it's been updated over the years and bemoan how the updates applied to the Kawasaki have been so specific and targeted at race teams that…

It was a throwaway comment by Chappo, the snapper, as he was taking the static pictures of the Panigale. “It really is really red, innit?” And once I'd stopped mocking him for stating the obvious, I paused to muse on this. As simple and obvious as it was, what he said was actually an interesting observation. The Ducati is just red; there's no other colours anywhere on any part of its bodywork, and you can't even order it in any other colour apart from… red, which apart from being able to wheel out all the usual clichés of red being the colour of passion and associated with all things Italian, I prefer the concept of less is more. There are definitely fewer colours on the Ducati than the others, fewer…

If you can't beat ‘em, join ‘em. It's a common strategy in bike racing, something we've seen time and again with different configurations, such as the rise of big V-twins in superbike racing, which came about when litre bikes like Ducati's 916 kept beating the Japanese 750cc inline-fours. Honda and Suzuki smacked their 16-valve heads against the pit wall for years before switching to 1000cc V-twin motors, taking advantage of the rulebook in the same way as Ducati and Aprilia had been doing. Today, that's happening in MotoGP, where the tech regs evidently dictate a V4 powerplant as the best solution. Every bike on the grid last year used that engine layout – except the Yamaha inlinefour YZR-M1. And while the Yamaha factory team didn't finish last, its results were…

“THE BRITTEN'S SHEER PHYSICAL PRESENCE MAKES YOU FEEL AS THOUGH YOU'RE IN THE COMPANY OF ROYALTY.” If there is one motorcycle created in the modern era that is universally recognised as a milestone in racing motorcycle design, it is the Britten V-1000. Envisaged by motorcycle visionary John Britten and his team of hard-graft mates in a Christchurch garage, the Britten is a triumph of persistence and single-minded determination. Its story has been well-documented in the past 20 years since John's untimely death at the age of 45, the result of skin cancer (melanoma) that claimed his life so quickly. Tim Hanna is largely responsible for the access to information about John's life and that of his mechanical masterpiece in his biography, called John Britten – great reading for anyone interested…

While expected, the news of Ducati's 2026 V4 R still landed as a welcome shock in our inbox, with the even bigger surprise being an invite to Bologna to get up close and personal with the 998cc V4 powerhouse, engineered to unleash a potential 239hp at 16,000rpm. The question was: what kind of witchcraft had been used to make such a mechanical feat possible? The Ducati V4 R engine isn't just a lump of metal with moving parts–it's a beast with character, a heart that defines the bike and sets new standards in the mesmerising world of performance engineering. At least, that's how Ducati's head of vehicle testing described it to me; while pulling the covers on the 2026 Desmosedici Stradale V4 R. Designed, developed, and assembled in Italy, Ducati…

ANDY TIME ON TEST: 19 WEEKS ODOMETER MILES BHP: 136 GAIN: 0 NEXT AIM: Some track time. The last month has proven to be another busy one both with work and at home, and life seems to be moving at a faster pace than I would like, but it is all good. There has been a recent addition to the family; I've become a proud grandad, and the ride to the hospital to welcome my first grandson after a long day at work on a warm summer evening filled me with energy and joy at the thought of seeing him for the first time. As I was parking up after arriving at the hospital, I was grinning inside my helmet, not just because of the ride or the prospect of…

So much has been written about Fireblades over the years and decades that still being able to ride and write about one – and be able to say that today's version is properly badass – makes me very happy. It lost its way sometime after 2010, when everyone else was moving the game on with fairly big steps. Yamaha went all ‘big bang’ with the R1, BMW dropped the S1000RR, Kawasaki came up with the new ZX-10R, Aprilia switched to the V4, and Ducati went mad and came up with the frameless Panigale 1199. They were very exciting times for the sector, and Honda chose to persist with polishing and tweaking its 2008 Fireblade right up until 2017. The 2017 Fireblade still wasn't really a new bike as such, more…

At this point, I'm supposed to pick a bike from the group as my winner, but when it comes to it, the truth genuinely is that it's impossible. How can you pick one 200bhp bike over another 200bhp bike as better, when they are all capable of making your jaw drop and encourage expletives at their sheer violence? Having had a couple of days in the presence of the bikes assembled, we should be grateful to their manufacturers for not giving up on the sector and, to a greater or lesser degree, carrying on with the challenge of making the best better. It's that divergence of effort and investment which has arguably evolved the sector into one that's better than it ever was due to it being far more diverse…

The 2015 Yamaha YZF-R1 is a very special bike in many ways. Marking a turning point in the R1's fortunes, not only was this the most technologically-advanced R1 ever built, but it was also the first generation to feature a top-spec M-model variant. True, an R1 SP did make a brief appearance in 2006, but this lazy lash-up was quickly forgotten about and never really bothered its rivals. The 2015 YZF-R1M, in contrast, was a proper weapon that took the fight to the likes of the BMW S1000RR, Aprilia RSV4 RF, Ducati 1299 Panigale S and Kawasaki Ninja ZX-10R… Released alongside lots of pictures of Valentino Rossi riding it during development (he apparently had a hand in it, although we suspect this was marketing spin), the R1M took the already…

There's a great part in the Britten documentary One Man's Dream when John frantically rushes to the swimming pool to get some extra water to pour into his wife's pottery kiln. Inside the kiln is the crankcase, and although a potential catastrophe was averted and the case still useable, it gave an insight into just how close to the limit John was working when he designed the V-1000 motorcycle. The 60-degree, DOHC, eight-valve V-twin, with a bore and stroke of 99mm × 64mm bore and compression ratio of about 11.5-12.0:1 was designed from the outset to be a stressed member of the chassis – like the Ducati Panigale is today. There are only two parting lines to the engine, to maximise strength and stiffness for use as the stressed chassis…

STAR LETTER OLD ENOUGH TO KNOW BETTER… Hi FB, speak as you find and i must say that your ‘Three of a kind was a breath of fresh air. Being a born-again biker since 1999, the kids having left the nest and with a friend's help, I bought a ‘mint’ Honda Pan European 1100. The wife and I took to touring and as the years passed, we enjoyed several changes of bike: three Pan 1300s, a BMW RT, a GS, Suzuki 1000, Kawasaki Versys 1000 - and many enjoyable miles both here and abroad. However, the years pass and age catches up, as does the height and weight of machine. I have now acquired a (22 plate) Triumph Tiger sport 660 and as the wife no longer tours; I have…

Hello guys, I picked up your October issue as I've been keen to compare the new Ducati streetfighter naked with the other brands’ offerings. I was surprised to find it missing from the line-up (unless it was in the September issue, which I missed, but will order). I can kind-of understand why you didn't include a Suzuki or Kawasaki, but why did you leave the V4 street out? The new model is arguably the most innovative of all of them - unless it was an engine capacity thing? Jon Higgens FB: Hi, and thanks for flagging this up. Believe me, you're not the first. We truly hoped we could have run the streetfighter in the mix, but Ducati wouldn't allow the bike to be used in the test… which was…