BRUCE’S TRIPLES ON TRACK
MV AGUSTA BRUTALE RR
It’s wrong to j udge a bike by its looks but I kind of knew the MV was going to be the twitchymess it turned out to be on track. It’s got a proper short wheelbase, which admittedly encouraged high levels of agility and great grip out of the slower bends at Cadwell, but it never seemed happier than when it was shaking like a shitting dog through pretty much all the fast sections. And it wasn’t j ust the bike that was physically nervous; I was too.
The unpredictably of its hard-damped, fast rebounding and non-adj ustable setup had me pinging out of the seat with more freq uency than a drunk returning to a bar. It made for an ex citing ride, but not the q uickest. I didn’t rate its motor too much, either. Sure, it sounded beautiful and appeared attractive in its trellis frame, but its rev happy disposition reminded me more of an inline-four than a triple.
It lacked in bottom end grunt, but seemed to come alive at the top; its limiter confusingly kicking in a good few thousand rpm before highlighted on its archaic clocks. The dash really is pants to look at, but it’s hard to knock the tech on the otherwise pretty Italian. It was the only bike to feature a blipper, which worked as impressively as its q uickshifter. I don’t q uite get why you need TC on a bike this unimpressively potent, but I guess it’ll help q uash any q uiet moments down the pub. The switchable ABS was a virtue, though. The MV ’s Brembo brakes had loads of poke but the ABS function was all too q uick to j oin the party at the end of Park Straight and down into Mansfield. Thankfully, albeit after some frustrating negotiating of the less than intuitive tech toggle buttons, ABS could be ousted. More bikes need that option.
Maybe I’ve been a little harsh on the MV , but I ex pected more. More stability. More grunt. More cornering prowess. For having a laugh on, the Brutale ticked the relevant box , but when it came to smashing lap records, it had more faults than a piss wet laptop.