Suzuki 6-HOUR Endurance Champions | Why Suzuki Ignored the Superbike Power War

Good afternoon folks, welcome to VisorDown, my name is Toad and today we are at Montablanco for, as you can see, the launch of the new Suzuki GSX-R 1000 R. It has been, I'm going to say this, it has been the coolest launch event that I've ever done because this doesn't feel like it's been a launch event. This has been the Suzuki six-hour endurance, not a race. Suzuki have been very very strong on letting us know it's definitely not a race, but it was a race, but it was absolutely incredible. It's been the best day, basically Suzuki have basically tried to give us the experience of a six-hour endurance. So we're in teams of three, we had a team manager, we had our own pit crews, we had our own pit boxes, we had 20 minutes to half an hour stints, we got a lot of track time. It's been a really long day, it got hot here earlier on at Montablanco, it was about getting up into the high 20s and it's just been an absolute blast. It has given me so much respect for what EWC riders do, we've had Dan Linfoot here all day who's been spinning laps with us and giving us advice on lines and gears and you know where to brake and all that sort of stuff, but I've got so much more respect for what the people who race in the EWC do because it has just been phenomenally good fun. But I'm not here to talk about that, I'm here to talk about the bike and this is a big one because this bike went away a little bit like the Hayabusa went on a little hiatus and it has come back in Euro 5 trim and while a lot of people will say well they haven't really done anything, there has been a lot done. Whether or not the average rider on the road would feel all the things that have been done is a very different question, but I'm going to take you through everything now. The big thing that Suzuki needed to do to get this bike back into the market was update it for Euro 5 certification, so as you can see the big f*** off silencer has gone, the catalytic converter has been moved, it's been changed, a little bit close to the engine to balance where the weight of the bike is. You've got the winglets at the front but the biggest changes for this bike are internals within the engine and also the electronic systems which Suzuki have brought a lot more up to date than they were on the previous generation GSX-R. So it's still putting out 195ps which is about 192bhp and a lot of people will say oh well that's a lot less than a Panigale or an S1000R, it is but what the Suzuki has always had is excellent drive off a corner, it's got loads and loads of mid-range grunt for an inline four, you really don't need to wait for this thing to spin up and get into the fun zone before it will fire you off down the next straight. Peak torque is 110Nm which is about 81lb-ft of torque I think, so yeah the grunt is seamless, it's got the VVT system which is derived from the MotoGP bikes that Suzuki used to run and the internal components really there's a lot but it's things like crankshaft, you've got a different finger followers, the cam chains are all new, you've got new pistons which are DLC coated, they've got a really short skirt on them as well, the new connecting rods, it really is endless but none of those things have boosted the power, what they have done though is they have increased the durability of the engine if you were to go on and tune it for racing or for track days and things like that so they've given it a stronger engine so it can be tuned up further if you wanted to go racing, I mean you can take, we were talking to the Suzuki engineers last night and they were telling us if you took the stock exhaust off the old Suzuki and put it on this engine you would already gain power because the stock exhaust was not Euro 5 plus and it was slightly more free-flowing, the big huge thing, the big bazooka, you could put it on you would actually gain power so you've lost power partly through the intake, the exhaust but it looks nicer, it sounds a lot better and you can take the exhaust system off, you can fit an aftermarket one or a Suzuki accessory one and you will gain power there so there is things that you can do to get up to the the power that you really want on this one but as I've been riding it all day I've not been wanting for power because that drive off the corners and we've all been riding the same bike obviously but the drive off the corners is such that you you don't really miss the top end power it would only be if you're on a track day with other bikes when you got to the end of the straight and those bikes with 220 or 225 horsepower would still be pulling past you at the end of the straights but you'd get off the last corner quicker than them I am pretty much sure. So chassis wise we've got the Brembo monobloc calipers, we have got the Showa so balance free fork, balance free rear shock, it's all very much the same we've got a steering damper which is non-adjustable that is one point that I need to make note is a non-adjustable steering damper on this one and it rolls on Bridgestone's RS11 tyres although today we have been testing some new RS12s which have got less grooves on the edge and they've got different compounds in the middle and they've got changes within the actual banding of the tyre as well and they have been absolutely faultless on the track they've been really really good electronics wise we have got a 6-axis IMU now got 10 level traction control and you can switch that off you've got roll torque control you've got corner independent abs as well which is a big big thing you've got a bi-directional quick shift you've got launch control you've got lipo battery you've got an up and down shifter and blipper it's really got all of those things it doesn't have the myriad of toys that some of the other super bikes in the class get but I wasn't really missing any of them as we were riding on track I wasn't really thinking about oh I need a bit of slide control here or anything like that it's quite in that respect it's a bike with a lot of electronics on it but it still feels quite analog it still feels like an analog like an organic riding experience so we've obviously got a slightly revised styling to the thing the new 40th colour schemes there's like a matte yellow one there's a like a red and white one there's the blue and white one that we've been riding they all get this lovely 40th anniversary colour scheme with the branding on there and the little retro R down on the belly down there and they do look very very nice those winglets I mean they're said to produce downforce and anti-wheelie didn't feel it at all really really they look quite small compared to some of the competitive bikes in the class but I guess they've got to tick the box they've got to put them on there because everybody else has got them that's the way I'm thinking about that so the engine there's a lot of little changes that have gone on within the engine I mean did I feel them I felt some of them in a little way you would have to take on track to really feel what's going on inside that engine it does drive off a corner harder than it did before the throttle connection is better than it was before and it feels crisper when you open up the throttle it just it just drives cleanly it pulls really really hard and that's the biggest takeaway that I can take from the engine the GSX-R engine has always been about the mid-range torque and the mid-range drive and just being dependable and rideable and that is exactly what it still is it is still all of those things the gearbox is excellent I was shifting with the quick shifter earlier on so we had two modes on the quick shifter so we had a more road focus mode and we had a more race or track focus mode I wouldn't even ride in the road mode on the road because it did start to feel a little bit clumsy when you were coming up and down the box stick it in the track mode and it's much sharper much more direct and it shifts much more cleanly as well which is really really good I've also got to talk about the slipper clutch because this thing has been getting a workout here at Montablanco this circuit is quite bumpy all the bumps are in the wrong place they're basically all in the zone from where the sports cars drive around the track and they ripple the surface as they're going into the slower corners and that's one of the things you get at the first corner here if you're braking from I don't know 175 180 miles an hour and you're braking down to about 40 miles an hour for the the tight right-handed hairpin first corner and there's loads and loads of ripples so you're going over those ripples and the abs is kind of doing its thing and the slipper clutch is doing its thing but the slipper clutch in particular was quite good at sort of gobbling up the torque from the rear wheel you just basically have to get down into second gear as quickly as possible so you've got all of the engine braking that you need to get through that corner so yeah it's been great the gearbox is very slick it's very direct I've no issues with that the quick shifter works well with it and the slipper clutch works well so there's really no no issues there at all I've just got to mention as well that the new exhaust that put on there it does sound a lot less muted than the old GSX-R1000 did it sounds really really crisp really raspy I've been stood at the track all day and these things flying by along the main straight here at Monte Blanco just sounded absolutely heavenly it's been really really nice to hear a bike with a fully stock Euro 5 exhaust sounding just that good so props for Suzuki for doing it and also for making it look better than the abomination that was on the previous generation bike so I'm going to talk about the handling in the bike there are a lot of corners here we've been riding a slightly different variation of the track this time than any of the other times that I've been here is a bit more free-flowing it was a bit more better suited to the 1000cc Suzuki it's still got a lot of bumps and lumps it was it was a really good test and really it played to the GSX-R's strengths because it was it was fast it was physical and this is still a physical bike to ride that hasn't changed you still need to work to ride it it's not one of the ones where it just comes to you really easily you've still got to work it's still you know after the end of the session today we're absolutely blowing the only real thing that I can say is we started off the session on a base setting that Suzuki's test riders and Dan Linford and Greg Black the EWC racer that races with Dan Linford had come up with as a good base setting for a lot of different journalists we went out on the base setting on the RS12 and it was really sagging down at the back so you're coming out the last corner here at Montablanco and the bike was sitting on its arse and the front wheel was getting so light that your the bars are going like this and it felt like the you know it felt like you couldn't find the seat beneath you because the bike was squatting quite so much we did a couple of sessions on it just as it was just to see how it was going and then when we were coming into the afternoon sessions we got the Suzuki engineers to put a load more preload in the front and that that solved the squatting problem but then the problem was that because the bike was more on its nose it was turning much better but when you were getting into the braking zone with more weight onto the front it was then diving much harder onto the forks so then we put a bit more well we basically just stiffened up the bike at the front then and then we dialed in a little bit preload at the rear again towards the end of the day and what amazed me about all of that stuff that we did was how these little changes that Suzuki's engineers were making to the bike they weren't doing loads they were just in little bits at a time and we were going out and testing it coming back and going right now you need to go a little bit more and they do a little bit more the transformation that it made session to session to session was just insane and it shows just how tunable this bike is whether you're a track day rider or a racer or even if you just want a really sweet setup on the road you can make really really small adjustments and they will make a big big difference the only fly in the ointment for this one for me is the front end stability because even when we've done all of that stuff the front end still has a tendency out of faster corners mid-speed corners you get on the throttle and it will start to shake its head and the bars will be sort of rattling around and you've got to kind of just get a grip on them and just sort of ride through it never at any point got into a point where i thought it was going to go into a tank slapper but the one bugbear for me is that the steering damper on this thing isn't adjustable and having an adjustable steering damper would have allowed us to try and sort of dial out a little bit of that that head shaking that was going on that that would have been the ideal scenario for me i would have loved to have had an adjustable steering damper on there just to sort of stop a little bit of that head shaking because it it wasn't it wasn't a massive issue yeah we were losing time but it's a it's not a race it's not a race honest but it was just it was frustrating because you end up coming out a corner and then you're you're pointing in the wrong direction you've got to go back over there so it would have just been nice to be able to stiffen up the front damper just a little bit so i mean that small small thing aside and a steering damper is a pretty easy thing to fix if you wanted to get a more trick steering damper that's got some adjustability it would be very very easy to do and very very easy to bolt it on there it is a small thing and if you spent a few days on track on one of these got it absolutely absolutely dialed in you would be playing with the more powerful sports bikes you would be playing with the panigales and the s1000s are s1000rs because it is just so rideable it's such a rideable package it's kind of why suzuki this has been the talisman for suzuki in ewc for so long i think they've got 15 ewc titles that have all come from the gsxr family tree from across the years and it's the dna of the bike is endurance racing hence why we are here in montablanco simulating an endurance race engine aside the electronics are the next area that suzuki has gone to town with so the 10 level traction control is a really really nice touch because people want that level of adjustability they want to be able to dial the traction control in to just where they want to be on that track on that day so that is a very nice feature there's another thing about the traction control though we had it set in three all day it's much more sophisticated than the old traction control system so you don't feel it cutting in anywhere near as much as you did on the old bike the only way that i was really knowing that something was going on beneath me was with the tc light was flashing on the dash you could see that but you couldn't really feel it wasn't chopping the power it wasn't you weren't getting that kind of feeling when you were riding the bike and the traction control was cutting in a new feature on this bike is this roll torque control some of the bikes have got it some of triumphs have got it so if you're fully lent over it says no you haven't got enough grip so it doesn't matter how much you open the throttle you're not getting all the power the triumph system is very intrusive and you can almost you pin the throttle and you stand the bike up and you can feel the power coming in as you're standing the bike up this system that suzuki have got is nowhere near as intrusive as that and it will still let the back slide if you crank open the throttle mid corner you can still get into trouble effectively if you were a real idiot in coming out of a slow corner but it is it does feel very sophisticated which compared to the previous generation bike the way the electronics were on that were probably not the most sophisticated out there that's a real big plus as well the other thing the abs we had it i don't even know what setting we had it put on but there were three of us in the garage and we're all kind of happy with where it was the only places that you really felt it cutting in around here were on the bumpier bits on the way into corners and i think a lot of bikes are going to struggle in that sort of situation because it is the worst of everything really you've got bumps you're coming down from 170 or 180 miles an hour slowing down to about 40 miles an hour to go into a corner and it was a little bit intrusive i would have liked to have been able to dial that back just a bit but on the whole the electronics package is a big it's a big plus over where it was before so that is that is very very cool i mean to be honest with you this event has been absolutely incredible and i know exactly why suzuki have done that they've done that because all of the things that they've done to this bike are down there they're in the engine and they're up there in the dash and from the outside looking in it looks very much like the old suzuki so what they had to do was they had to make this event as incredible as they possibly could to highlight what this bike can do they picked the ewc theme the suzuki six hour that we've done here today um and props them it's been absolutely incredible like i said probably the coolest motorcycle press launch that i have ever been on the bike is better than it was before i can't deny that it's it feels exactly the same it does feel crisper on the throttle the electric electronics are much more sophisticated than they were before the riding experience is just pure gsxr and if you're a big fan of the gsxr if you race one or if you you know own one and ride it on the road and you want to refresh your one this is a step up there are good things to be had from upgrading your c gsxr 1000 to the latest edition one don't be put off by the looks and the appearance being pretty much as they were before anyway folks i've been toad at montablanco for visor down thank you very much to suzuki for having us along for this one as i said it has been absolutely incredible out here today and if you like the video please don't forget to hit like and subscribe so you can stay up to date with all of our latest videos and for the latest news reviews and motorcycle features get yourself over to visordown.com