The high-revving (though not as high as advertised) Yamaha is a purpose-built track weapon, but will have to stew over its second-place finish in our 2006 track shootout.
Second Place - 87.8%
Rank Totals: Second (11/30)
MSRP: $9199-$9499
Once again, for those averse to reading, Roberti's marks for the R6 succinctly paint an accurate picture on their own: A lowly 7 for low-to-midrange power, a 10 for top-end, and 9s the rest of the way through his scorecard.
At the top of the list of things to love about the Yammie are its handling characteristics. It's as agile as a gopher being peppered by a B-B gun.
"This thing is like a freakin' dirtbike in side-to-side transitions," Hutch claims. "I absolutely had no trouble making it go where I wanted it to go."
Steering precision is top-notch, and its modest size makes you think you can stick it on any line you choose. Yet for all its agility, the R6 still manages to be wonderfully reliable through Spring Mountain's 110-mph sweeping corner.
"I felt more comfortable trusting the front tire and entering turns quicker than every other bike," Becklin praises. "The Yamaha is a quick turner but with good stability too. The bike is small enough to throw around and it didn't protest with any crazy reactions. The compact chassis and aggressive attitude gave me real confidence."
Countering the R6's supreme handling is a motor that makes getting around a racetrack quickly a real effort. If the tach is south of 10 grand, the attendant response is less that what you get out of a Suzuki SV650 funster at the same rpm.
"It's a blast to ride a round the track, but it requires a lot of work and thought to do so quickly," BC reveals. "It reminded me a lot of my TZ250 - you can't just lazily cruise around a corner and expect it to pull you out of it. You have be in the right gear and at the right rpm, and on some of the slower corners, this required riding a gear lower than all of the other bikes."
"It's a fun bike," adds Becklin, "but you need to ride it like a 250GP machine - run it in hot, keep the revs up and use your momentum to propel you out of the turn and into the powerband."
That kind of workout can either be seen as exhausting or exhilarating, depending on the attitude of the rider.
The nimble R6 handles corners with aplomb, provided you have it in the five-figure rev range. In mid-range power, the sleek Yamaha doesn't measure up.
"The motor absolutely rips when you have it in the meat of its power," Kenny raves, "And it is rewarding when you get to the end of a sequence of corners and the tach is still hanging tough around 13,000, the motor is wailing, and the bike feels rock-solid beneath you."
"The R6 does give you the best handling of any of the bikes in this test," Chamberlain admits, "but I still don't think it makes up for its lack of midrange. My opinion may be different had we ridden on a track with better flowing corners where exit drive is not as much of an issue."
The R6 only really gets into the meat of its powerband at 13,000 revs, so a fast rider will want to keep it there as long as possible. The resulting frequent high-rpm downshifts make its slipper clutch practically a necessity. It provides only slightly less compression braking than Chamberlain's two-stroke TZ.
"I found the
Yamaha's slipper clutch to be the one I relied on most and it worked well," DB notes. "Because you need to keep the revs way up, it was necessary to drop multiple gears and overrev in certain parts of the track. The slipper clutch just ate up the revs and let you go about your merry way."
The rest of the Yamaha's transmission was also judged highly, prompting Kenny to claim that it almost shifts itself. Its sole blemish is that it was slightly more reluctant to upshift without the clutch than some of the others.
The cockpit of the R6 is very racy, with a minuscule windscreen and easy to read gauges that feature a large tach mounted front and center. Its shift light, which is used a lot, is easily visible. A fairly high tailsection is balanced by moderately low bars. In use, the chassis feels stiff and tight in a solid and reassuring way.
"Its racy ergos were probably my favorite for track duty," BC recalls. "The reach to the wide-set bars was short, pegs fairly high, and its seat firm but not painful."
The R6's braking system is as up to date as it gets, with radial this and that, etc, and most of us praised its firm brake lever and strong, controllable power that yielded a high score. However, BC complained about long lever travel that forced its adjustment to be a far reach from the bar, and Becklin says he got a bit of fade during one session. Trail-braking while turning poses no challenge to the Yamaha.
The Yamaha was a potent weapon, but you had to have the experience and skills to wring all the potential out of it. Here, DB nearly buries its turnsignal into the track.
It should be noted that we had some issues with the Yamaha's handling once we fitted the Dunlop Qualifiers, experiencing a front-end chatter (shades of Rossi!) in Turn 1 that we were unable to tune out with suspension mods. We thought we discovered the problem when we took off the wheel and noticed the tire was slightly out of round, but we experienced the same condition after fitting a replacement Qualifier.
Jim Cox, our tire services aide, told us there were other R6 riders at Spring Mountain with Dunlops who also experienced chatter, not only on the Qualifiers but also on GPs and slicks. In a later update, he told us that one of the riders he works with who uses Michelins has also had chatter problems that were difficult to tune out. It took Cox two months to tune it out of his personal R6. Apparently, the bike is a bit finicky to set up. "Because it gives us more adjustments to work with, you can either make it right or make it wrong," Cox says.
In the end, the R6 is a demanding track tool that offers the ultimate prize of quick lap times, but only those talented enough will ever reap the reward. The experienced Becklin got a time on the R6 that tied for his quickest overall, while it went second-quick for grizzled race veteran Roberti. Conversely, it went around in last place for Hutch and fourth for BC.
"The R6 is an awesome track tool and I'm sure the racers out there will appreciate its near perfect handling, smooth tranny and high revving motor," says BC, MCUSA's best sum-upper. "Personally, though, I found it easier to go fast on a bike that dished out power during its entire rev range."
