TRIUMPH STREET TRIPLE 765 RS
It’s bigger yet lighter and nimbler. Behold the all-new Triumph Street Triple 765
Triumph’s latest naked is all out ballsy
HURTLING TOWARDS TURN ONE ON THE Circuit de Barcelona-Catalunya, the flickering 228 on the 5.5-inch full colour TFT screen of the RS barely registers as I try to keep my head out of the wind blast. There were times when I was afraid that the chin bar of my helmet would dig a hole in the 17.4-litre petrol tank. And that perhaps is the single most significant flaw of this bike, if you take it for a track day. I couldn’t have wished harder for some sort of protection from the buffeting, because in every other aspect the Triumph’s new Street Triple 765 RS is almost perfect.
Love, they say, comes in shades. Some fleeting like the leaves of autumn while others are solid like the oak tree. Some happen at first sight while others grow over time. Where the Triumph Street Triple is concerned it was love at first sight for me and I always assumed that it was the oak kind of love that would last a lifetime. But it seems that my love for the brilliant Street Triple 675 was more like the leaves of autumn, now that there is the new 765.
The latest in this long line of Street Triples carries the burden of a legacy that dates back to 2007. At the time this light, fast and agile machine set roads and tracks on fire with its distinctive character and that superb in-line triple engine. When the next update arrived in 2013, the reaction from riders across the globe was exactly the same as before. They were delighted. As was I, when I first rode the bike after its launch in India in 2014. It was powerful but unintimidating, felt like a big bike yet light on its feet, it was comfortable and yet handled brilliantly. It felt perfect and I didn’t think there’d be a better one. But Triumph being Triumph, they have upped the game, and how.
At the heart of all these updates is of course the allnew 765 in-line triple cylinder howler of an engine. To get to the new capacity, Triumph’s engineers took the superb 675cc engine of the Daytona and then went about increasing both the bore and the stroke. Then they added a new crankshaft, con-rods, pistons and balancer shaft before replacing the iron liners of the old Street Triple 675 with Nikasil plated aluminium barrels. The result? Increased power and torque throughout the rev range and across all three Street Triple models that are going to be sold. In the case of the top-spec RS version, at 3,000 revs the engine produces more torque than the peak torque of the old engine and peak power at 121bhp is a full 16 per cent over the previous bike. Triumph has also worked on the transmission to improve acceleration by shortening first and second gears. The other important update of course is the addition of ride-by-wire, which makes the power delivery crisper and more linear.
Triumph has also updated the chassis with a new gull-wing swingarm, new fully adjustable Showa front forks, a top-spec Ohlins monoshock at the rear and Brembo M50 monoblocs. These are of course all for the top-of-the-line RS version that we got to ride while the more affordable R and even more affordable S will get less fancy kit.
Back to the circuit, I get on the brakes and the bite and the feel from those top class Brembos is phenomenal. And speaking of levers, Triumph has not only given them span adjustment but you can also adjust the amount of progression you want. It’s a superb thing really for those who want that level of customisation. Stock set up is good enough for me, thank you very much. As my head stops shaking, the track comes back into focus and I have just enough time to get my bearings sorted before I reach my turn-in point for the first corner, a sharp right-hander followed by an equally sharp lefthander before turn three, which is a sweeping right. It’s incredible how MotoGP riders do this lap after lap on circuits around the world.
With fresh appreciation of their challenges I flick the bike into the set of turns. What seems daunting at first is made easy by the Triumph, which cuts through the corners like a scythe through a field of corn. Turn-in is instinctive and the bike, having lost a couple of kilos over the smaller outgoing model, is superbly nimble on its feet as it dances on the super sticky Pirelli Diablo Rosso Supercorsa tyres. It’s only the newly added chicane at the penultimate turn before the main straight that catches this Street Triple out for it has been placed at the end of a short but fast straight that’s also downhill. Powering back through the final turn you exit almost on the kerbs of the main straight. Throttle pinned, you quickly go through the six-speed ’box without having to roll off, for in RS guise an upshift-only Quickshifter is standard kit. And with that, I complete a lap of the circuit as the bike blasts past the electronic board that today reads Triumph. On race days it tells you which rider from which team is in which position on the track. Thankfully, today the board was happy to remain static.
But long before we reached the track, our ride took us from the isolated mountain top Hotel Montanya outside Barcelona over Spanish motorways and through some beautiful twisty roads. The ride on public roads reveals another side to the new Street Triple 765. It’s incredibly easy to ride and thoroughly unintimidating despite the increase in power and torque. Or perhaps, it’s because of that increased torque. The fact that all this torque is spread over a wider rev range only helps matters. Thanks to the improved driveability of the engine, the rider has to work less on keeping the unit revving in its sweet spot. So be it pottering through the 50kmph built up zones of the quaint villages nestled in the Catalonian mountains or overtaking trucks on motor ways, we relied mostly on our right wrists and did not feel the need to
continually work the gearbox.
Around the tight twists and turns of the mountain roads, the bike feels as surefooted as a mountain goat. It never steps out of line and the amount of lean you can carry through a turn will surprise many a hardened rider. And you will certainly need a larger helmet because with this bike, mark my words you will give in to the temptation to smile. Turn after turn. It really is that good. The Supercorsa rubber that would prove itself so capable on the race track is as great a road tyre, even over the damp patches that we went through, and it hangs on to the tarmac like velcro. Unfortunately, this also means that you’ll probably be replacing tyres sooner than you would on the R and the S versions.
While the engine and the chassis are brilliant, special credit has to be given to the Triumph engineers who worked on the bike’s riding position and ergonomics. They’ve hit bullseye. The handlebar, seat and footpeg relation feels completely natural, be it on the road or on the race track. After a full day of riding around on the road and then thrashing the bike around the Spanish circuit, I was more than pleasantly surprised that I wasn’t feeling as fatigued as I thought I would be.
But as I said before, the Street Triple 765 is a near perfect bike for it does have a flaw. Although the roads in Spain are many times smoother than what we are used to, the RS still feels stiff. It thuds over every single bump on the road. So, and in spite of Triumph’s many reassurances, I would say the Street Triple RS will require an iron back to ride on our Indian roads.
Although we rode only the range-topping RS spec bike in Spain, the Street Triple 765’s Indian chapter will start when Triumph India gets the base S spec bike here in June or July. Following that will be the R at the start of the festive season and the RS will only be here by the end of the year. Given that the bikes will come to India via the CKD route, Triumph should be able to price these motorcycles competitively in the range of `9.5 to `11 lakh from the S to the RS. And at that price, the Ducati Monster 821 will have its work cut out. ⌧
AROUND TWISTS AND TURNS, THE BIKE FEELS AS SUREFOOTED AS A MOUNTAIN GOAT