streetwise

Motorcycle Daily vergelijkt vier ‘Sport Bikes‘ (niet de Triumph Daytona). De zoveelste keer, was ook mijn eerste gedachte, edoch:

You can ride these motorcycles in essentially two places, on the track and on the street. We could have tested these motorcycles on the track (and we have no objection to doing so), but several other publications have already done this. Primarily, these other publications placed an extremely competent track rider (typically, a racer turned journalist) on these motorcycles, and set fastest lap times. You then read the results, and draw your own conclusions (“Gee, if I could ride like Sam Fastguy, I could lap Willow Springs 0.7 seconds quicker on Brand X than on Brand Y.”). This information is useful when it comes to determining the 10/10ths capabilities of these motorcycles, don’t get us wrong, but we chose to focus on street riding.

Jammer dat de Daytona er niet bijzit, want in 2002 schreef bikepoint nog At the start of the launch, Ross Clifford Triumph’s global sales manager, went to considerable lengths to emphasise that the 2002 Daytona is a sports bike for the road. Voor het 2004 model zal dat wel niet echt veranderd zijn, want de enige wijzigingen aan de Daytona waren cosmetisch. (Met gelukkig ’the return of the SSSA’ (single sided swing arm): enkelvoudige achterbrug, zoals bij de Sprint. Het achterwiel hangt dan maar aan een kant vast aan de rest van de motor: de kant van de ketting. Véél mooier.)

Maar wanneer komt die expert nu langs?!