TRR-RACK WEAPON
A DIGIT ON THE DASHBOARD, GLIMPSED ROUGHLY A QUARTER of an hour into my ride, summed up the extraordinary, arguably unprecedented focus of the CBR1000RR-R Fireblade SP. I’d been enjoying a thrash on curving main roads with fairly light traffic, blasting past plenty of cars and not exactly hanging about.
Then I slowed slightly, glanced down at the instrument panel, noticed the number 3 at centre-left and realised that I hadn’t yet got the ’Blade past third gear. Which might sound like feeble riding on my part, except that at the Honda’s 14,600-rpm red-line in third it would be travelling at over 270 kilometres per hour!
On most roads, in other words, half the gearbox is not really required. And what might seem surprising is that right now, having delivered the bike back to Honda after a memorable ride, I’m hardly regarding that as a negative. This latest Fireblade might be a track-focused missile with a seriously top-endy power delivery and a close-ratio gearbox to suit, but, as a street bike, it’s utterly exhilarating and, in many ways,
