SuperBike Magazine July 2020
The July issue is packed with awesome content to keep you busy over the remaining days of July. We are hard at work putting our August issue to bed!
The July issue is packed with awesome content to keep you busy over the remaining days of July. We are hard at work putting our August issue to bed!
Create successful ePaper yourself
Turn your PDF publications into a flip-book with our unique Google optimized e-Paper software.
“AT LEAST I DID BRING IT BACK IN ONE PIECE, UNLIKE DOOHAN,<br />
WHO THE DAY BEFORE HAD CRASHED OUT OF HIS HOME GP”<br />
BREATHLESS<br />
Coming on to Eastern Creek’s downhill main straight<br />
for the first time, I held my breath and flicked the throttle<br />
open. Instantly the monster went on the rampage. In third<br />
gear at over a ton the front wheel snapped off the ground,<br />
then did the same thing in fourth as I trod through the box.<br />
As the straight disappeared in seconds it was as much as I<br />
could do to hold on and pull myself forward to keep some<br />
weight over the front wheel.<br />
If the NSR’s acceleration was blood-draining, the<br />
stopping power provided by those carbon discs and the<br />
Michelin front slick was barely less so. And in the bends its<br />
control, balance and ease of steering made every road bike<br />
I’d ridden feel rough by comparison. No matter how hard I<br />
tried, the NSR refused to twitch. Its rigid frame and stateof-the-art<br />
suspension simply meant it reacted perfectly<br />
to every command. And then tried to rip its bars from my<br />
hands all the way down that long straight.<br />
From about 298km/h I brake at the 120-metre board<br />
for Turn One: a long, sweeping fourth-gear left-hander, the<br />
Honda was the only outfit to make a single-crank<br />
V-4 two-stroke work. No-one outside HRC knows<br />
how they did it, even 17 years on.<br />
Gull-arm swinger, quad-spannies, HRC sticker: we’ll<br />
never see the like again<br />
200bhp<br />
Max power for a weight<br />
barely more than 130kg<br />
SB<br />
fastest corner on the track and a great place to overtake<br />
if you get it right. The front Michelin slides quite a bit here,<br />
then on the way out of the turn the bike’s wheelspinning<br />
as I’m back on the throttle and heading towards Turn<br />
Two...<br />
Er, or not. Sorry, got a bit carried away there. That<br />
last bit was not me but Mighty Mick, explaining what he<br />
did during a hot lap of Eastern Creek. I used up some<br />
knee-slider through that frighteningly fast and bumpy<br />
Turn One, but I sure as hell didn’t get either tyre out of line<br />
during my short but intense five laps on the NSR.<br />
At least I did bring it back in one piece, unlike Doohan,<br />
who the day before had crashed out of his home GP after<br />
clashing with team-mate Alex Criville. The Aussie tamed<br />
the NSR again to win two more titles before Honda’s brilliant<br />
but brutal V4 flicked him off again, at Jerez in 1999,<br />
and this time even Doohan didn’t come back.
Change language