Video: R1 long termer on-board at Cadwell

R1 long termer at Cadwell: on-board lap from yesterday’s MSV trackday. 

You don’t need to do much to the latest R1 to turn it into the ultimate trackday bike. Here at an MSV trackday at Cadwell I just filled it up with fuel, added a few clicks of compression damping at each end and fiddled with the electronics to give it less traction control and more ant-wheelie.

It punches out of the corners like a BSB bike, howls along Park Straight at 169mph and flicks through the chicanes like a 600. It has very tall gearing, so I’m in first gear from Mansfield all the way through to Barn.

Even more impressive are the road-compound Metzeler Racetec RR K3 I’m using. They’ve done 3500-miles on a trip to Ibiza and back and now a trackday here at Cadwell. They’re still grippy and not squared-off, which is incredible for a sticky trackday tyre. They’d outlast lots of less grippy sports tyres out there.

The R1 beat its superbike rivals at the Jerez MotoGP earlier in the year, during MCN 1000s group test. Here at a much narrower, undulating Cadwell, it’s just as astonishing.