Yamaha R1 vs Suzuki GSXR 1000 - Knox Superbike Shootout 🔥 P.1 The road

foreign [Music] though in recent decline Superbikes are still the Pinnacle of motorcycle advancement performance and Technology they represent the biggest thrill in motorcycling and are designed to do just one thing go fast in this two-part Superbike shootout test we put two of the most famous Superbikes ever made head to head on the road track [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Music] foreign [Applause] [Music] [Music] back to 2001 The GSXR 1000 is legendary throughout its history it's won and lost championships it's been plagiarized battered and bruised and is currently facing extinction by the bureaucratic powers that be but the GSXR in this test will endure only facing death by thrashing or crashing [Music] most recently updated in 2017 our Gixxer has a 200 horsepower inline 4 motor with variable valve timing 200 kilos wet weights and sports and exhaust the size of a nuclear bomb yamaha's R1 is equally famous the latest edition packs a 200 horsepower whiz-bang in cross-plane crank four-cylinder motor the modern R1 is a no compromise weapon and has experienced huge amounts of success in racing and in the showroom since its 2015 introduction with sharp and compact looks a sound more akin to a Moto GP bike and a top drawer Electronics package it's a tough bike to beat as both machines in this test are our own bikes and not part of some press test Fleet like most owned bikes have had more than a bit of fettling since ownership our own experience of the GSXR 1000 is that it's been more than a handful a combination of a monster engine combined with Bargain Basement shock and a steering damper that basically doesn't do anything means that as soon as you start to ride it hard instability tank slappers and near-death experiences are never far away our own experience ended in a 140 mile an hour tank slapper crash last year at sneterton and that experience put the nail in the coffin for us in terms of our opinion of the stock modern Gixxer 1000 foreign [Music] with some dedication and some flexed credit cards as you can see she's now 100 straight she's straight as an arrow and she's been built back again but this time with a totally revised chassis components from nitron we've got nitron shock and nitron forks with a buy two boat race steering damper the combination of this has totally fixed the stability issues we've also complemented that with a Brembo RCS 19 master cylinder as the previous one was broke and a brand new race Dash as well because that original Dash was split into about three million pieces right across the Norfolk Countryside so she's had a bit of a potted history this machine but as you can see she's mint now and she's ready to go over to you ollie this is my R1 it's a 2016 60th anniversary edition in the Kenny Roberts colors and I think it looks absolutely stunning I've owned the bike for just over two and a half years which is actually the longest time I've owned a road bike for I've owned quite a few different bikes in the past including mostly Japanese liter sports bikes but also a Gen 2 S7 Double R however nothing comes close to the thrilling excitement I get from this weapon so like most bikes it's not without its floors the standard braking setup on the R1 really wasn't great especially coming from the BMW Brembo setup there's also quite a snatchy throttle and the battery actually died on the demo ride which really wasn't great either however this didn't put me off the sound of the exhaust and the overall experience of the bike you know made me buy it and here we are today so so what have I changed on the bike aesthetically not a massive amount I think the Livery looks absolutely fantastic I've changed a few bits such as the grips bar ends a few carbon bits here and there and of course the paint protection film in terms of the brake setup I went with a full hell Suite so I've got a master cylinder calipers front and rear including the rear under slung caliper and also braided lines all over in terms of Crash protection I've gone with RNG and also there's RNG rear sets on there as well I normally run an agrapovic d-cat system but for this test I've gone and fitted the cat just to quiet it down a little bit so there we go [Applause] [Music] the first thing to say about Superbikes is that they're now often branded as Irrelevant for the road the consistent narrative is that they're too fast they're too stiff and riding them for any period of time we'll see you booking into your nearest chiropractor and turning your wrists into mashed potato [Music] foreign the reality is that Superbikes can do pretty much everything that any other road bike can do Nick Sanders circumnavigated the world in 19 days on his 2005 R1 covering 19 800 miles and averaging over 1 000 miles a day Bruce smart of teapot one spent 442 days riding his GSXR 1000 across 54 countries and covered in incredible 74 000 miles on day one of our two-day road test we covered just 170 miles but more importantly every one of those 170 miles counted we were engaged and alive for all of them not wishing we were on anything else as we carved corner to corner through mountain passes [Music] the GSXR is probably the most familiar to most Riders swinging a leg over one it sounds conventional has a familiar riding position it's light and flickable to maneuver at low speeds Handles in a predictable Manner and has a smooth and confidence inspiring motor to use jumping off my own Gixxer 750 it's quite familiar that is until you open the throttle the Suzuki GSXR engine is an animal it has Monster Power and drive everywhere in the Rev range due to its vbt trickery this means you don't need to rev the nuts off it to get it going and you can be lazy with your gearing if you want to be but once you do get going man you better strap yourself in because this thing is about to go warp speed [Music] thank you although it's hard to fully experience it on the road the top end power of the Gixxer is unbelievable it's so fast and you feel every single one of the brake horsepower on offer although the Gixxer has a silencer that's more visually aligned to a submarine than a motorcycle exhaust the noise it makes is incredible combine that with an awesome quick shifter blipper the audible experience is simply fantastic and it matches its powerful performance foreign bike the GSXR the one thing I noticed straight away was the difference in the the ease of either variety you can use and the other one's very sort of snatchy um compared to the jigsaw it's a very smooth sort of power delivery smooth engine smooth throttle response um and the seating position as well on on the R1 you're very on top on this is sort of in and it's less risky which is nice um in terms of the upgrades Jeff has made on the suspension and the brakes that's absolutely transformed it so yeah really good impression overall and I'm off to ride it now so [Music] all right the R1 is comparatively less familiar it's whiz-banging cross-plane crank engine ensures your riding experience is uniquely R1 it's a bit of a pick to start easy to stall harder to maneuver and riding it at slow speeds has a slip in the clutch in first gear at speeds of less than 30 miles an hour if this all sounds bad it's forgotten the moment that you leave the car park in town center because once it's up to speed it is fantastic its compact frame and engaged riding positions suddenly start to make sense and you feel at one with the bike and the road in front of you ironically Ollie has this we are R1 Motif applied to his tank it's ironic because that's exactly how you feel with the R1 bike and Rider coming together as one [Music] I spent most of my time recalibrating how the Yamaha was in reality in comparison to my expectations I had this expectation that the motor would just be an animal that was Wheeling every time the throttle was open in reality it was smooth of course it's got amazing drive but it wasn't in any way intimidating and the bike was planted I expected it to be crippling based on some of the online reviews that I'd read but in reality it was more than acceptable I expected the stock suspension to be poor in comparison to the aftermarket Hardware on my own bike and on the GSXR 1000 in this test but the reality again was that it handled great if it was a little less plush and controlled in this road going environment in comparison to the gixx's nitron setup foreign [Music] initial impressions are that it is absolutely fantastic uh in terms of my expectation it's much easier to ride than I ever thought it would be and overall it's just much better than I thought it was going to be I think it's really really top-notch and I can't wait to talk a little bit more about it later but for now we're going to ride it a bit more [Music] thing and the reality is another so we put them up against a tape measure and the results matched our feelings [Music] the R1 has a one centimeter higher seat two centimeter lower bars three centimeter higher pegs and the combination of these three measurements undoubtedly put you in a more racy riding position a higher seat and pegs with lower bars although aftermarket rear sets fitted to the R1 May skew this slightly even though they were on the lowest setting [Music] objectively against the tape measure the GSXR has a more relaxed riding position and that makes Road riding on it more comfortable the seat was also an interesting one both Riders were sure that the R1 was a harder seat but against our sure hardness tester they're actually equal although the Gixxer has a thicker amount of padding and you definitely feel it's extra Comfort on longer stints against the weighing scales the R1 really impresses with 194 kilo weight versus 199 kilos of the Gixxer both bikes weighed with tanks that were a 20 mile ride away from being brimmed with fuel it's not hard to see that in race spec the R1 would be a really light bike fuel wise it has to be said the R1 is slightly worse than the GSXR it's fuel light appearing consistently around the 90 mile Mark in comparison to the gsxr's typical 110 miles Japanese bikes are often and rightly criticized for their braking performance a mushy compromise of huge vein-like lengths of rubber brake lines leading to ABS pumps with said pump controlled by electronics that feel about as modern as a commodore 64. break hard and the ABS interference rears its head all too quickly leaving you feeling that you're heading for the grass Verge instead of actually coming to a stop in the case of the R1 Ollie resorted to a fully revised hell setup yet opted to retain the ABS for legality purposes this Hardware investment has significantly improved matters and our R1 now has excellent road going braking lots of feel lots of power and rear wheel lift is possible with minimum ABS interference similarly Jeff's Gixxer is fitted with a Brembo rcs-19 master cylinder this seems to have remedied some of the weakness here as well combining with a better Fork strength from the nitron suspension to reduce from Fork dive and improve performance rolling stoppies are now possible on the Gixxer 1000 even with the ABS on the road both bikes do a phenomenal job in the handling Department the Gixxer is light on its feet it's flickable and tracks a beautiful light sitting slightly taller in the front than the R1 means cornering downhill on the road gives a more comfortable feel less like you're pushing all of your weight through the front tire in terms of the R1 there is something very right going on here handling quite unable to put a finger on exactly what it is it's enough to just say it Corners really well and holds a beautiful Corner in line and just feels perfectly balanced front to rear the engine braking seemed the ideal balance of allowing the corner to flow with enough resistance to hold the tight line [Music] [Music] looks wise both bikes look great in our opinion the Suzuki has a bigger stature matching its increased Comfort the R1 is Compact and arguably has some nicer design finer details it's noteworthy that 80 of our Instagram followers preferred the R1 looks wise it's fair to say that electronic AIDS are a massive part of Superbikes these days in this road test it's also fair to say that most of the time they were untroubled and will leave full evaluation until the track test ing on the road though the R1 undeniably has the edge with many more sets and possibilities in comparison to the Suzuki's simple plus or minus traction stroke wheelie control setup on the GSXR I ended up opting for level one which allowed me to do exactly what I wanted and it was the closest experience to the non-traction control bike that I'm used to [Music] but in the end our two-day road test just felt like the start of something the R1 and the GSXR have their distinctives they have strengths and weaknesses on the road but these are super bikes at the end of the day and both of us decided to reserve full judgment until the next part of the test the track and make the feeling go you see I got your number but still I ain't used [Music] yeah one thing I know so you better you better show us one more oh yeah oh yeah yeah [Music] [Music] so how good is the last few days been Ollie riding these Superbikes oh it's been amazing the roads have been perfect the weather's been Prime you know and the the bikes are just amazing absolutely Flawless awesome few days as part of this test obviously is part one is on the road which is what we're going to be talking about right now but Parts on the track as well we've done previous versus tests and we found that the tie has made quite a big difference in in our findings in the end so we had to choose like a control tire and you know one that was up for doing start stop on the road and be really good performance for these two bikes but also one that could handle fast group sustained track day riding as well and in my opinion there was only really one choice for me and that was the Dunlop Sports Mark TT um I think both of our impressions of this tire have been really good on the road haven't they yeah definitely like you said there's been a lot of stops starting a lot of them cooling down and with this tire it's just been it's just been there straight away you know we have been fiddling around with you know pressures it's just we use the OEM pressures and then we're just there ready to go there's been no slips no slides you know it's been awesome and they're really confidence inspiring is what you want you know and you know for the different conditions that we've written yeah yeah great great stability that's why I personally really like the dunlops great stability and it works well with a with a good and tuned suspension package which is why I really like them yeah and the other thing I would say as well is the Knox gear that we've used over this a couple of days it's been damn it's been hot um it's been absolutely fantastic Flawless for this type of motorcycle I've personally been wearing like a triple AC approved outfit with the Hollister jacket and shield jeans Ollie you've been wearing something different in the urban Pro and Richmond jeans but both setups I think have been fantastic and they're perfect for riding this bike because oh this type of bike as they are riding all the other different stuff so if you want to find out what we've been wearing we're going to put all the links in the description for the gear that we've been using so in the end I don't think we've come up with a clear winner for you guys unfortunately um you know both bikes are not stocked they're our own you know there's personal preference involved all that kind of stuff but really be interested to hear what you guys think so please let us know in the comment section um that has been our part one of our Superbike shootout between the R1 the Gixxer thousand on the road in the beautiful English Lake District part two is coming up and we're heading off tomorrow to one of the gnarliest and personally my favorite track in the UK that's Alton Park so stick around and stay tuned part two is coming very soon [Music] for watching part one of the Knox Superbike shootout in the next episode join us as we turn the heat up take a deep breath and twist the throttle until it won't go any further arguably the UK's most gnarly track Alton Park [Music] thank you [Music]

Channel: Knox

Views: 240,384

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Id: H7xXZydkX2Q

Length: 23min 8sec (1388 seconds)

Published: Fri Sep 16 2022