BALLISTIC ON A BUDGET

PART TWO

There are some things well worth getting up early for, and a date on track with a rapid R1 is one of them. That first day on our project, where we’d taken a stock road machine and made it credibly faster through a succession of basic changes, had been on our minds constantly for the best part of a month and our planned return to the scene of the crime could not have come soon enough. As keen as I was, MCAMS Yamaha’s crew chief Chris Anderson was obviously on another level, because by the time I’d rocked up at Cadwell at 7.03am, Chris has already put the awning up, got the bike out and downed a few butties. He even cracked half a smile when he saw me… unless that was wind? It was good to catch him, and even better to see the R1 looking slimmed down and sexier than ever following some special attention from Chris back at the workshop. Nearly seven kilos had been removed from the bike, in the form of mirrors, the number plate assembly, sidestand and that kind of stuff. Perhaps the biggest benefactor to the bike’s drop in mass was the removal of the ABS pump. That alone weighed well over a kilo, but the main gain of that being gone was the prospect of no more Russian