Hand-built and hyper
The driver of the silver SUV possibly got a surprise as he or she braked for the left-hand bend while traveling at a respectable pace. Moments after the car’s brake lights flashed, it was overtaken by a red flash of motorbike that continued accelerating for another second or two… before suddenly slowing briefly then carving into and through the bend at an altogether different rate.
Such a manoeuvre might have looked risky from behind a car windscreen, but in reality I was barely tapping into the Brutale 1000RR’s vast reserves of braking and cornering performance. A few seconds later MV Agusta’s new naked four was through the bend and accelerating hard, as I hung on tight to its handlebars and clicked back up through the gears, front tyre feeling light and the silver car a shrinking spec in the bar-end mirrors.
Whether the motorist enjoyed this brief encounter is impossible to know, but from the rider’s point of view it was just one of many ordinary incidents made memorable by the Brutale RR’s poise and ferocious performance. Today’s top superbikes can seem as though they’re from a different planet to most machines they encounter.
