Being an R6 rider im slightly bias towards the r6, however to truly resolve the issue (well partially at least) i read an article in Bike! magazine (December 2000) which tested an r6 and r1 on a track. The result, well the people on the r6 were faster over the whole lap (because of its advantage through the corners and the fact that the r1 only had a few long striaghts) but 3 out of 4 said hat they woul buy the r1 because of the extra power. Now stop argueing! Although we all know that 2002 r6's rule and 2005 r1's do to.
R1 - my bike is super. I bought my first bike when i was 11 Y.o. that's now about 45 years ago. been in motorcross races for abt 30 years and did some speed racing way back when.last years i did own a VMax 145 hp and blow-up engine since it could not stand and follow my wrist positions. Owned a Honda Vtwin Firestorm which we had tuned up to abt 125 hp, good bike lots of fun but not really a racer. Took in a GSXR 1100 150 hp is a brutal beast but not really manageable so i rebuilt it but not to satisfaction. Now i bought a R1 since abt 6 months and have now abt 4500 km on it and one word is correct " MAGNIFICENT " the more i drive it the better i feel it the more i enjoy it.i am 56 years old, correction young and when i take it to the highway i can't helping it , i have to go 240 / 250 km/per hour risking to spend all my savings on speeding fines.i really can tell everybody it steers it brakes and it accelerates like only verry few bikes do. it's stable at high speeds and suspension is realy confortable for a racing bike and never lets you down. so don't take any shit from people whom never had the real experiance of a R1 or from people whom never had the talent to ride a nearly perfect bike like a R1. SO i say to the Yamaha constructors CONGRATULATIONS to make my dreams come true !!
I dont own and have never rode an R6 or R1 but really enjoyed reading that bikenet review. I have always wanted to end up driving an R1..now I want to end up driving an R6
Over the years I have made many biking friends and happily engaged with them in many late night debates over which is the best bike, how to best do this or that or any one of a hundred other topics that motorcyclists frequently become vocal about. Whilst we're a bit long in the tooth for " my bikes better than yours" to be anything more than a joke, last year the debates (which normally end with " well so long as you enjoy what you're on and it has two wheels.....") did seem to end with a clear winner.
Now we all appreciate the different styles of riding but we're all sports bike riders and enjoy our Sunday scratches. The clear winner last year for this style of riding and the bike most of the group ended up owning, was the Yamaha R1.
There was no doubting that the R1 was the fastest, the best handling and the best breaking (though I never chopped my GSXR750 in for one) sports machine on the road. Yes, Yamaha build quality is certainly not up to Honda standards, yes it had 5 recalls so reliability is suspect, but it is the top dog! No question.
This year a strange thing started to happen. One of the guys turned up on an R6 instead of it's big brother. The next week another 600 was in the pack and then over the last two months a total of five R1's have gone back to the dealers to be replaced with the new middleweight.
This needed investigating so I lined up a couple of bikes to do a comprehensive back to back test - was there really a new Number One or were my friends just getting old and scared? Time to find out.
Jumping onto the R1 is for me at 6' 2" a rather unsettling experience at first. It is so diminutive compared to other litre class sports bikes that you could be forgiven for taking it as a 250! Never-the-less, my legs were quite comfy and the wrist position felt good so top marks to Yamaha for ergonomics. The small size is of course why this bike is so fast - the light weight and miniature dimentions make for quick handling, lightning fast reactions and more than anything else easy riding.
I'm sure the front end is light and the bike twitchy if you are a riding god but in normal use - and for this machine this means fast, hard sports riding, it is a pussy cat. There is flawless handling, perfect tracking, the smoothest power delivery this side of a jet turbine and brakes that could stop a 747. If you know how to ride (and sorry to sound smug but I do) then this bike is a godsend. It will do everything asked of it and more. If you're not so experienced (like many R1 owners I guess) it has the technology to make up for your lack of skill - the bike will do the work and the rider will look good.
However, in one respect it is the most dangerous bike I have ever ridden. The paragraph above is there to be honest and fair - the R1 is just incredible at what it does and relative beginner or old hand you'll love it. The problem is it is too good. Too smooth. Too well behaved.
What do I mean? Well, for example, one road I know really well is made up of a series of really good corners - a real bikers road. It is impossible to take a CBR900 or GSXR750 round these bends at more than 50 mph. Perhaps Doohan could go faster but you know, in the real world 50 is about the limit. At 50 you are knee down, sliding back and forth across the bike to make the turns and having a wail of a time. There are no side roads to worry about and good vision so no worries about what's round the next bend. So on this road I go flat out and love it. I get more fun at 50 here than at 150 anywhere else. But here in lies the problem - I'm not doing 50 now. When I look down at the clocks I'm doing 80!!! The R1 is doing 80 I should say - my head is doing 50 because that's what I'm used to and what the bike tells me it's doing.
At 80 I'd be near death, ragged as hell and ready to slide off the road. But not on this bike. The problem with the R1 is it's so good and so smooth that my (10 years experienced) mind cannot tell what speed it's doing. I cannot believe what speed it's doing. So when I brake, I brake from 50; when I begin a turn I turn at 50; but I'm traveling at 80 miles an hour. So whilst nothing happened on this road, what about another day, the day when something pulls out (just a quick squeeze of the lever to slow from 50) or I see and obstruction (just a gentle easy manouver from 50...).
I really want to get this point across - yes I know as you start to react you'll pretty soon realise you're going faster than you thought but it is impossible to tell without looking at the clocks on the R1. What's more the bike encourages you to go faster still, to test it's limits ( or to see if it actually has any?).
This is a dangerous piece of kit and needs the utmost respect. Not because it is wild or hard to ride but for precisely the opposite reason - it's just so easy!
So maybe this was the answer, maybe my riding buddies were getting frightened, maybe the points on their licences were mounting up. Time to try the R6 and see.
The 600 is a slightly (it's hard to tell) smaller clone of it's litre brother. The machine feels lighter immediately and still fits my plus six foot frame, though with slightly less comfort (slightly less than what - a bed of nails? ED). The power delivery is very good for a 600 - not earth shattering like an R1 but enough to convince you that you're aboard a 750. The bhp figures I have seen vary wildly but my Gixer makes 120 and this little six couldn't be far behind.
Unlike the R1, the 6 feels more rough and ready. In context it is smooth as silk but it's just back to back with the R1 where it feels more raw. You also get a very true sense of your real world speed as the bike spins up to 16000 rpm!
There is plenty enough power for anything short of a World Superbike race and the brakes (off the R1) stop this more diminutive bike with even more rapidity.
The R6 is a delight to ride in most places and though it, like all middleweights, needs a bit of work through the towns and villages it is certainly possessed of a strong enough motor to go onto one gear autopilot from time to time.
Recent scientific tests have shown that this bike does in fact weigh nothing at all. Ok, so it's not quite that light but you'd be forgiven for making the mistake. It is so compact, so neutral and so light that changing direction even at slow speed simply requires a thought.
Again it is the weight and power combination that make this bike. Everything I have just written about the R1 and more is true. The corner speed you can carry on an R6 is just unbelievable. It is quicker through the turns than anything short of a GP bike and will leave the mighty R1 for dead in the twisties. In a back to back test last week - riding with a friend of similar, probably greater, skill I was able to get two minutes ahead over a 30 mile stretch. The R6 not only wins hands down on the corners but also, because it has so much less power than the R1, it wins psychologically too.
By this I mean the R1 demands so much respect that you are always holding back a little - even if subconsciously, worrying whether power will over come grip. No so with the 600; just push it harder and harder and you will never loose confidence.
The worlds press has crowned the R1 "King of the Road" and it certainly deserves high accolade. However, in my view the 600 will do everything better on the road (Ok except the monster wheelies the 1000 does at will) and it's £2000 less. That's enough to keep the sticky rubber bits renewed for a bit of a while!
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