Video shows Honda RC213V-S warming up

Video has emerged of the all-new Honda RC213V-S road-legal MotoGP replica being warmed up in the back of a truck at the recent Asama hillclimb event in Japan.

The short video, shot on a camera phone, shows the road-legal version of the bike being warmed up by a Honda employee in the back of a truck before it headed out on the hillclimb course. This bike has the fully road homologated exhaust system but each bike; expected to cost around £140,000, will be sold with an HRC exhaust and ECU that will not only boost power but increase the noise level too.

Honda made the shock decision to run the bike at the Asama event; which is open to the public to spectate; but didn’t tell anyone that MotoGP test rider Hiroshi Aoyama would be riding the production version of the bike presented as a ‘prototype’ at last year’s Milan motorcycle show.

Honda will be unveiling the bike officially on Thursday June 11 at an event held the day before the Catalunya MotoGP race in Spain but it appears the fully working bike was given a public outing at the hillclimb before this.

Little is known about the Asama Hillclimb event outside of Japan but this tight and twisty track uses public roads and was also the scene for racer and test rider Aoyama to parade a race-spec RC213V up the course in 2014. This year the same rider took the road-going version up the course for a parade lap. There is no official information about the ride and it doesn’t appear the bike was ridden competitively on the ultra-twisty course.

Honda set out at the very beginning of this project to make a bike as close to the racing bike – yet road legal – as legislation would allow.

MCN will be bringing all of the in-depth news from the launch of the RC213V-S next week online so keep checking back for more information and updates. More details are also published in this week’s MCN paper (June 17 issue).