Termer up-date April 4th 2006

Put it this way would you go away on a mad biking holiday with your mates and let them ride your bike? Imagine these mates of yours were about as careful at riding bikes as lions are with baby antelope. Imagine the sight of these lions thrashing round a race track, revving the living hell out of it on mountain roads and then doing a collection of ham-fisted, worryingly unstable, wheelies on your bike. Believe me it wasn't pretty and almost certainly was a terrible ordeal for the poor R6 and one which I could only deal with by firmly detaching myself and declaring it “just another test bike like the rest.” Needs must I suppose.

Our 600cc group test went well, a corker in fact. I won't spoil the test result (you can read about that in the next issue of SB on sale April 26th) suffice to say second place is first loser for the R6. Frantic back-to-back comparisons with it's super sport rivals revealed a truth I wasn't really expecting to be honest.
The long and the short of it is the bumpy roads in the mountains near Valencia where we did the test (yes, that's right, we went places and tested the bikes for days on end in all weather, on all roads and ragged them round one of the world's greatest race tracks – you listening rival magazines with your phoney “verdicts”?) proved the stiff R6 chassis was a bit too focused to be best overall bike in class. On smooth roads and the track it is a peach but even then it's harder work to keep things smooth given all the revving, which is the secret to going fast in my book.

One bonus from the test is having the engine and suspension 'properly' bedded in. The chassis stiffness has had the edges knocked off and the motor has a hell of a lot more punch, more than I expected actually with 115bhp @ 13,900rpm.

We did of course speed test the bikes so if you're interested in the R6 figures here they are.

Bike: 2006 Yamaha R6
Date: 13/03/06
Location: Brunters
Rider: JP

Top speed: 155.47mph (155.14mph in Roll-on) in 35.45 seconds and 2004.99 metres

Acceleration
Speed Time Distance
00010 0.66 1.365
00020 1.18 4.853
00030 1.73 10.953
00040 2.32 20.151
00050 2.91 32.119
00060 3.46 45.707
00070 4.12 64.823
00080 4.93 92.008
00090 5.68 120.711
00100 6.78 167.547
00110 7.91 220.828
00120 9.95 325.715
00130 12.25 455.221
00140 15.19 633.489
00150 21.30 1030.376

Quarter mile: 11.15s @ 129.95mph

Braking
70mph-0mph: 50.98 metres

Roll-on:
40-80mph: 7.75 seconds
40-120mph: 15.80 seconds