CATEGORIES

HEDGING YOUR BETS...

We all have that list – bikes we wish we still had and can’t believe we sold for what we did, because since then they’ve gone on to become icons that everyone wants... but when we owned them, they were just what we got our kicks with.

2023 KTM 890 SMT released

The first road bike that really made us sit up and take notice of KTM was the original 2005 950 SM supermoto

Lee Jackson

Interviews with Kawasaki factory BSB racers in Fast Bikes are a bit like buses. None for ages – then you get two at once… Last month we spoke to Max Cook, the new rider for the Cheshire Mouldings team about his career so far and his relationship with SHARK. And this month we’re doing the same with Lee Jackson, the senior rider in the Kawasaki UK-backed team (Team Green completists can also read about Jackson’s ZX-10R race bike on the Addiction pages this month).

WHAT THE TECH: SLIPPER CLUTCHES

Few people know more about slipper clutches than MotoGP tech guru Neil Spalding. We quizzed him on the wonder weapons.

YAMAHA R7 PROJECT

Time and tide waits for no man, and the same goes for race meetings. Up against it, the Batham’s R7 made it to the North West 200… but only just.

BAGGING A GOOD'UN

There are some things in life that just don’t make much sense, but never let that be said of baggers on a race track, banging bars and scraping panniers.

TOUR DE PHWOAR YAMAHA TRACER 9 GT+

If you’re in the market for a cracking sports-tourer, Yamaha’s Tracer 9 GT+ should be at the pointy end of your list.

REBOOTED RENEGADE KTM 890 SMT

It’s been 10 years since KTM dropped the SMT from its range, but now it’s back – with more bling, more attitude... and more reasons to own one.

ROUNDING OFF...

So, what has this test taught us?

BMW S 1000 RR: GEN 4

So, what difference does 13 years make to a model?

OLD VERSUS NEW

BMW S 1000 RR VS S 1000 RR: GEN 1

Steve Parrish

I'm just back from a nice little break in Majorca, back for my son's wedding

Where do I start...?

You could say that nothing in life worth having comes easy – and I think I’ve experienced that first-hand just recently

Tickin' over

The 2023 British Superbike Championship is now well under way – and if you  didn’t put the work in pre-season, I’m sorry to say you’ve probably missed the boat. Au revoir…

Max Cook

It's one of the great journalism clichés spotting the next hot new prospect in racing

WHAT THE TECH: REAR SUSPENSION

It's hard to oversell the significance of your bike's rear shock. Here's what you should know about it...

SHED FIND TO SUPERBIKE...

Last month, they got the bike running. This month, the focus is on giving the ZX-7R a good old scrub and a bit of Love in the workshop

Used Bike Guide 2002 SUZUKI GSX-R1000 K1/2: HAVE SOME OF THAT!

In 2001, the bad boy of the litre bike class arrived - Suzuki's GSX-R1000

MOTOGP AT THE TT

In 2019, Michael Rutter lapped the TT at 131mph on his GP-derived Honda RCV213V-S. This year, he’s back for more of the same. Here’s the bike’s story

SUZUKI GSX-8S

After a bit of a hiatus, Suzuki's back in the lucrative entry-level sector

FIT FIGHTING

It’s one thing making the most powerful, exciting and perhaps brilliant supernaked to ever grace the earth, but what happens when the time comes to top it?

Christian Iddon

That’s Spanish testing complete and I’m on the flight back home. All that remains is a couple of UK tests before the season kicks off for real.

Tim Neave

Sh*t’s about to get real and I’ve never been so excited. We are now only three weeks away (at the time of writing this) from round one of the British Superbike Championship at Silverstone, March 7-9, and my off-season is rapidly drawing to a close.

Full zero gas

Sometimes it pays to back off the intensity...but in a structured way.

Jeremy McWilliams

Bike racing – it’s a young man’s (or woman’s) game, right? Bashing fairings and heads, trekking round the world, sacrificing every spare minute in a quest to go faster. Demanding complete physical and mental effort at all times.

WHAT THE TECH: AERODYNAMICS

The black art of aerodynamics is increasingly becoming the key area of development in the search for better lap times, especially in the prototype MotoGP class.

SWANSONG STROKER: HONDA NSR250R SP

For the sake of science and box-ticking, we let Timmy loose on a special stroker that's older than him. Here's what he made of it...

PROJECT R7 ROAD TO THE TT

Before Chris ‘Spanner’ Anderson at MSS Performance could get his mits on the R7 and get rid of all the ‘road poo’, as he refers to it, the Bathams R7 had to spend an afternoon at K-Tech for some quality time with James Harpen.

RULE BREAKER

In 2012, Ducati rewrote the V-twin sportsbike rulebook with the 1199 Panigale...

SHED FIND TO SUPERBIKE...

We kick off our rags-to-riches approach of owning a dream bike...