All Tests – 1290 Superduke R: the king of motorcycle rallies facing the beast of KTM! – Thank you electronics!

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1290 Superduke R: the king of motorcycle rallies facing the beast of KTM !

All Tests - 1290 Superduke R: the king of motorcycle rallies facing the beast of KTM! - Thank you electronics!

According to KTM, the 1290 Super Duke R is a ferocious beast whose 180 hp require courage and control to be tamed … Carefully, MNC left to Julien Toniutti, official KTM driver in our rally team, the task of titillating him. ride-by-wire !

Thank you electronics !

A turn of the key after the few recommendations for use – "yes sir, promised sir, i will be good and i will try to wait until i get out of town to start speeding up, and even if i am super wise i will try to bring it back to you whole"-, pressing the starter button and the V2 taken from the RC8 and increased to 1301 cc finally reveals its sound (read in particular our)

Departure from the hotel by the first end of the ring road and to my surprise, the engine is very round and does not knock when releasing the clutch as could be the case on the model with which I have done a few seasons of rallying . It turns out to be very efficient while remaining really flexible, even in low revs, which is rather surprising for this compact and light twin (62 kg).

Me who expected to ride an unusable motorbike … I would have been lied to ?! Unless I stayed in "Rain" mode, which was programmed at the factory by the engineers to deliver only 100 hp so as not to be surprised on the outlets with a little water? No, I am in intermediate mode "Road" which delivers the same final power as the "Sport" mode, but in a more progressive way by making the cavalry arrive a little more gently…

But that was before … Before turning the right grip all the way, until another thought made me worry about the weather! "Wish the sky is super blue today? But where did the road go? Ahhh, yes, but now, if I continue I might turn around !"

And indeed: it is clear that no one had lied to me … The engine of the Super Duke R is so full that it is both round and full in low revs, without being unusable, but grows very – too much? – strong from 6000 rpm (7000 rpm if you stay in "Street" mode).

So much so that with each frank acceleration up to third in this rev range, the front wheel does not hold in place and tirelessly takes off from the ground: unheard of for me on a production roadster. !

This ultra fun motorcycle already gives me a big smile from ear to ear, so much so that I can not help shouting my happiness in my helmet while playing with the accelerator, even in a straight line! If I had been told one day that I would manage to have fun on a ring road…

Come on, finished playing now: we leave the ring road to go further inland and attack the mountain and its fast roads with sometimes changing surfaces.

The opportunity to reconnect the Traction Control, also from the new Adventure and redesigned to cash in the excess power of the Superduke R. On this playground, the big inverted 48 mm fork and the shock absorber signed WP cash well all the irregularities of the road, as much on the small ones as on the big movements of suspensions.

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