Sizzling Hot Suzuki GSX-Rs: Yoshimura Suzuki GSX-R750 Superbike

Leaving Willow’s pit row at 8000 rpm in its close-ratio transmission’s tall first gear, Yoshimura’s Superbike signals its intentions by unexpectedly lofting its front wheel at partial throttle as if to say, “Better treat me with respect, boy, ’cause I’ll spit you in the dirt if you’re not careful.” And we were careful, but that didn’t keep us from clocking a 1:26.85 on just our fifth lap in the saddle. While it was clear that there was more to be had from both the Yoshimura machines, our tester rode all three bikes at the same aggressive-but-not-chancing-it pace.

It should be noted that the Superbike’s fast lap, was also our tester’s quickest lap up to that point, which highlights how user-friendly the Yosh machine is, even to journalists not accustomed to AMA Superbike–size performance envelopes. While the pit-lane wheelie showed the serious power of Thomas Stevens’s racer, it never intimidated us by showing its teeth the way a few other AMA Superbikes have. Its power delivery was surprisingly tractable, allowing us to control the wheelspin of the sticky Dunlop slicks with relative ease coming off Willow’s flowing high-speed corners.

The GSX-R’s rather antiquated sidedraft cylinder-head design is behind the competition’s and appears to have reached the end of its competitive lifespan in the Superbike arena. Yoshimura’s Don Sakakura explained that rather than building peaky, difficult-to-ride engines in an attempt to match the competition’s peak power, the team has concentrated on midrange power to aid acceleration and ridability.

The carburetion’s crisp, usable power extends down below 6000 rpm, almost unheard of in the Superbike class. Some of that ridability comes from a softer top-end rush and lower rev ceiling than, say, a Muzzy Kawasaki or Vance & Hines Yamaha Superbike. Whereas the Yamaha and Kawasaki pull to 14,000 in a violent top-end hit, the Suzuki pulls just past 13,000, and in a much less intimidating manner. Of course, Stevens’s machine is still capable of clocking 173 mph (given a mile of running room) and sprinting through the quarter-mile in 10.12 seconds at 137.2 mph. Respectable numbers, but a bit off the mark set by other front-runners in the class.

Though Yosh riders Stevens and Fred Merkel push the chassis hard enough to require extensive chassis bracing, their setup was difficult to fault at our pace. Where the SuperSport racer’s ergonomics felt surprisingly close to the stocker’s, the Superbike wears lower, wider bars, and the control layouts give it its own distinct feel. Likewise, the chassis geometry yields surprisingly quick, almost twitchy, steering that makes the machine feel even lighter than it is (it weighs 40 pounds less than the lightest stock 600 we’ve tested). The Superbike’s short, light feel and the glue-like traction levels of its Dunlop slicks encourage deeper lean angles and higher corner speeds than the SuperSport bike could ever hope for.

Riding the two Yoshimura bikes back-to-back with the stock GSX-R750 illustrated the vast leap in performance that the slightly modified SuperSport bike has over the stocker. Yosh’s championship-winning bike is so good, in fact, that it’s surprisingly close to Stevens’s Superbike, which has an extensive list of exotic parts not allowed by the more conservative SuperSport rules. Sometimes, usually with the help of hard work and perhaps careful interpretation of the rules, you get a bike that’s truly more than the sum of its parts, a bike like the Yoshimura SuperSport machine: a champion.

Check out other Suzuki samples here:
Overview
Stock Suzuki GSX-R750
Yoshimura Suzuki GSX-R750 SuperSport Racer

This article was originally published in the 1996 February issue of Sport Rider.