Bimota Tesi H2
The biggest, fastest and best sportsbike test in the world (we reckon)
In a world where conforming seems pretty much mandatory, it’s refreshing to see Bimota’s zest for innovation and uniqueness is definitely alive and kicking.
Any doubt as to what the Tesi H2’s purpose is in life is written right there in front of you on one of the huge carbon fibre wings. “Tesi” is the Italian word for “Thesis”, which, to give its full meaning according to the dictionary, means “a theory that is put forward as a premise to be proven”. In other words, the Tesi H2 is Bimota’s attempt to prove a theory – specifically that hub-centred steering is a viable alternative to the traditional telescopic fork as a form of steering and suspension for the motorcycle.
The origins of the whole Tesi concept go back to when Massimo Tamburini (the TA of Bimota) developed a project based on a thesis he had when studying engineering at university. The fact that the Tesi H2 is, strictly speaking, the fourth Bimota to use a Kawasaki engine but doesn’t get the name KB4 backs this up. Think of the Tesi as Bimota’s equivalent to Lockheeds Skunkworks division, a place for engineers to research and develop solely for the purpose of radical innovation, pushing the boundaries of physics and, yes, test theories.
Tesis have been around since the late 1980s as various conceptual prototypes, but the 1D was the first one to make it into production. It used the engine from a Ducati 851 that got increased to 907cc by increasing its stroke for the later models. The 2D followed in 2004 and was essentially the same as the 1D but without bodywork, and instead of the liquid cooled 851 engines, it got the air/oil cooled 992cc engine from a Ducati Multistrada. Bimota collaborated with another small Italian manufacturer on the 2D called Vyrus, and inevitably the companies
IT'S NOT A BIG SURPRISE THAT THE ENGINE IN THE LATEST TESI HAS GRABBED ALL THE HEADLINES AND THE ATTENTION.
fell out. Vyrus went its own way, marketing the 2D as its own, presumably because it had enough intellectual property invested in the 2D for there to be no comeback.
The main difference between the Bimota 2D and the Vyrus was that the Vyrus had much more powerful engines. Then in 2007 the 3D came along, an evolution of the 2D in so much as it got some clothes, and the swingarms were made from tubular steel, and it got the 1100cc engine from the Ducati Multistrada.
I’ve been lucky enough to have ridden the Vyrus and the 3D, both of which were thoroughly enjoyable bikes; a bit “out there” but also a lot of fun. They made a lot of sense due to their very light weight, narrow chassis and punchy engines. Enter the supercharged 200+bhp behemoth that is the Tesi H3, which, as well as being the first Tesi not to use a Ducati engine, is a very different proposition due to the sheer size, mass and output of the donor engine from a Kawasaki H2.
It’s no big surprise that the engine in the latest Tesi has grabbed all the headlines and the attention. It’s a very big departure for the concept, but the location of the front shock absorber is the first thing that catches my eye. It’s mounted alongside the rear shock absorber in the rear swing arm, with its linkage connected to the front swingarm via a long rod running underneath the engine.
It’s bonkers. The radiator is
ON THE ROAD, INEVITABLY THE TESI HAS A DIFFERENT FEEL TO A BIKE WITH TELESCOPIC FORKS.
mounted near horizontally beneath the clocks where the forks would usually be, with an elaborate system of vents and fins to help send and remove air to and from the radiator area. I even tell myself that the cartoon-esq wings are also part of the cooling solution as opposed to the current buzzword – downforce.
Mounting the radiator horizontally means the achingly gorgeous headers of the full titanium Arrow exhaust system are there for all to see. Surely vanity can’t be why Bimota took advantage of the lack of forks to repackage the radiator so Tesi H2 owners can show off their titanium headers? Could it?
Elsewhere there are details and evidence of craftsmanship that have become the hallmark of Bimota bikes over the years. Theories that play with the laws of physics aside, the sheer quality of the manufacture of the various components is off the chart. The carbon is as stunning as it is paper thin, and the rods that make up the steering system are machined from solid alloy, as are the rearsets. The system they use to adjust their position is a perfect example of how everything else on the bike is engineered. The humble rearset doesn’t get a mounting plate with combinations of holes drilled into it to line up and set the position of the rearset – oh no. There’s an elaborate solution involving a pinch bolt, eccentric cam and a slider, all machined from solid alloy that just screams out this is what you get when you let the designers loose and keep the bean counters out of the room. It’s the same story with the ride height adjuster. Bimota doesn’t do locking nuts at the top of the shock absorber like everyone else does, no – it’s more pinch bolts and machined eccentric cams.
Carbon handlebars are a first for me, and I don’t recall ever seeing a swing arm that has been machined from a billet of alloy – but there’s two on the Tesi H2. The front swingarm is actually two pieces of alloy bonded to a large piece of carbon, in the same way Bimota introduced a carbon fibre section to the frame on the SB8. Using box section alloy to manufacture the swingarms would have been much easier (and cheaper), but this is Bimota.
So, I’ve established that it’s possible to spend hours looking at the Tesi H2, soaking
up the details, and without doubt that’s part of the brief that the folk at Bimota have set themselves. But they’ve also built it to be ridden.
I’m very lucky to have been able to ride previous versions of the Tesi and every version of the Kawasaki H2 since it came out in 2015. So, is this the best Tesi or the best H2? Well, it’s neither. It’s way too heavy and way more powerful than any other Tesi to make a comparison to them, plus it’s much lighter and has a very different riding position – not to mention costs twice as much as a H2 to make any meaningful comparison the other way, too. There is the small matter of its front suspension set-up that really makes any comparison pointless, not least because Bimota itself isn’t presenting its hub centred steering as better than telescopic forks; it’s just a theory, it’s a Tesi.
On the road, inevitably the Tesi has a different feel to a bike with telescopic forks. It’s very subtle when I was just riding normally but the harder I pushed it, the more noticeable the differences became. It took me a while to work out what was going on, but after a while and forcing myself to move my little brain on from just saying, “this is different, I don’t like it”, I started to try and
work out what exactly was so different and what was causing me to develop some genuine trust issues... and it comes down to information.
It’s true that you don’t know what you’ve got until it’s gone. On a bike with telescopic forks, there is a direct path between the palms of my hands to the tyre/Tarmac for information to travel. Handlebar connected to the top of the fork, bottom of the fork connected to the wheel spindle, wheel spindle to the wheel, wheel to the Tarmac.
Not so on the Tesi. Tarmac to tyre, tyre to wheel, wheel to wheel spindle, wheel spindle to swingarm, swingarm to linkage, linkage to bottom of shock absorber, bottom of shock absorber to top of shock absorber, bolted to frame. There is no path for the subtle yet essential information to get from Tarmac to hands. This may sound like a small thing but when you’ve literally grown up riding bikes with telescopic forks, the brain – even subconsciously – is used to receiving information through various sources, so when one of them, no matter how small, is shut down, the brain’s response is – “there’s a problem here.”
It’s the same story with the gyroscopic effect of the front wheel. Usually the invisible force that keeps the bike upright is passed up through the forks that the handlebars are attached to and into the chassis via the headstock. On the Tesi, it never reaches the handlebars, so that line of communication about a force that changes with speed and forms a big part of how much you need to pull the bike over to get it to turn is also gone. It’s very off-putting and makes trusting what the front end is doing a real challenge. But one of the amazing things about human beings is that we are really good at adapting and figuring stuff out... and the best way to learn is by doing.
I must have spent about five miles on a dual carriageway swerving from left to right across the lane, just feeling what the bike was doing at the point of changing direction. On a bike with forks, there is a certain amount of bounce that comes from the forks
as the bike changes direction and comes over the vertical, and the springs are nearly fully extended, then dive and compress into the next turn. You could call it a threedimensional movement; the bike is going from left to right to left to right over and over, and it’s also going up and down as the suspension extends and compresses. Not so on the Tesi – it just turns with little or no dive or extension from the front suspension, which after a while becomes the new normal.
Off the dual carriageway and back on to some roads I’m familiar with, having accepted that the information my brain is looking for isn’t there, I tell it to stop looking and instead to grow a set and put some trust into the front Bridgestone RS11 tyre. Instead of focusing on what I don’t know, I remind myself that it’s a circa 200kg bike with trick tyres and high-quality suspension, so it will take a monumental effort from me to get the front tyre to wash out. It will stick, it will stick, it will stick…
The sense of achievement when my knee slider met the Tarmac for the first time on the Tesi H2 was right up there with the first time I ever got my knee down – the leap of faith was just as big. The “Lean-ometer” on the dashboard said 54 degrees of lean was achieved, which I’ll take, but it felt like at least 70 degrees and way more than anything Marquez and his mates manage.
Happy-ish that I could lean it over without crashing, I started to notice other nuances, like how it reacts to trail braking into corners. It’s insane just how hard and how deep it’s possible to brake into a corner without the bike wanting to stand up and understeer. It literally just turns as you expect it to without any forces countering the steering, and this is where the theory and physics of the Tesi really do make the most sense and provide the biggest wow of the riding experience. Well, that and the engine…
The Kawasaki H2 engine should really need no introduction. The supercharged 998cc motor gets a bespoke £3000 full titanium Arrow exhaust system included in the £59,000 price that probably makes the claim of 240bhp not as wild as it may seem. Opening the throttle up on any H2 is always an event, but the Tesi is 24kg lighter and 10mm shorter, so opening the taps is a violent experience to say the least. It’s not the most sophisticated or refined power delivery, just a build-up of revs until about 6000rpm, then it’s as though the next 5000rpm all gets delivered at the same time. Boom!
There’s 200bhp pretty much all at once, which, as exciting and terrifying as it is, does cause the electronics to kick in almost constantly through the first four gears, cutting the power wheelies abruptly and making the whole point of having that sort of power pointless as it fights with itself, metaphorically punching itself in its own face. It’s screaming out for a much more refined electronics suite; in particular some smooth anti-wheelie would go a long way to being able to get to more of what the engine has on offer. In terms of acceleration, I think the Tesi H2 rates as the most violent accelerating bike I’ve ever ridden… apart from the one that cannot be mentioned.
The fuel injection is the same as the H2’s, which is to say it’s perfectly smooth, except for the off/on throttle pick-up; it’s very snatchy. I’ve always been reluctant to put it down to just fuel mapping. Kawasaki is one of the very best at fuel injection and the H2 is the only Kawasaki I’ve ridden that displays the characteristic, and it’s also the only
Kawasaki that has a supercharger. It feels like there’s a small build-up of pressure from the supercharger somewhere in the system while off the throttle that gets suddenly released when the throttle is initially opened. By using a higher gear and lower revs to corner, it disappears – which also points to it not being fuel mapping because if it was, the problem would still exist regardless of revs. Either way, it’s a characteristic of the engine and it’s easy to work around.
The sound from the exhaust is really loud, as in anti-socially loud, and has a high pitch that, for me, doesn’t really suit the bike’s image. The Tesi H2 isn’t an all-out sportsbike any more than a H2 is, and having the soundtrack of a Fireblade is a bit like me playing S Club 7 tunes really loud on my car stereo. As gorgeous as the exhaust is to look at, it would be a lot better if it was an octave or two lower in tone, and many, many dBs quieter. During the 300 miles I did on the Tesi, I didn’t once hear the supercharger chirping on a shut or partial throttle due to the sheer volume of the exhaust, which is a shame.
To put it bluntly, bikes that make a racket with loud exhausts are everywhere. Bikes that make chirping noises because they’ve got a supercharger are like hens’ teeth. One of the Tesi’s party tricks is drowned out in the name of appearances. Just no.
So, is the Tesi H2 any good? Well yes, it’s brilliant for several reasons. The engine is a monster, the craftmanship is off-the-scale brilliant, the quality of the components is all premium, the backstory is fantastic, and if exclusivity is your thing, look no further. The Tesi H2 will make Ducati Superleggeras look common.
I can’t say that it’s flawed just because there’s a raft of information missing from the handlebars that makes riding it hard and more a test of bravery than a test of skill – that’s just the laws of physics rather than any flaw in the bike. Personally, I had a ball on it for lots of reasons, mainly because I enjoyed the challenge of understanding it, and trying to unlock its secrets. If I could, I absolutely would own one in my dream garage but not necessarily because it’s a particularly dynamic bike, but because I would love to spend more time with one figuring it out... a bit like learning a new language.
Up to now the Tesi has always been a lightweight and playful bike that was a lot easier to throw about and build confidence on thanks to being a much gentler proposition. The Tesi H2 is none of those things; it’s much heavier and much more powerful, and that brings about a whole new level of forces and demands on the concept. I think that extra mass and speed brings the unfamiliar handling characteristics into sharper focus than the previous Tesi’s. Nonetheless, with Kawasaki now taking a 49% stake in Bimota to keep it going, there’s no denying that the Tesi H2 is its calling card and proof, if it were needed, for the reasons why Kawasaki has bought into Bimota.
The engineering flare and “out there” attitude of the Italian company is obviously something Kawasaki appreciates and wants to be part of, so it’s good to know I’m in good company for appreciating the thinking.
I can’t help but love the Tesi H2. It’s not perfect; there are loads of bikes that are better propositions and better value for money for the road and track, but if that is the measure, then that’s missing the point completely. The Tesi H2 is one of those bikes that come along once every 20 years, and their biggest appeal is that it is different – but not different for the sake of it.
All motorcycles are ultimately variations of the same theme and there’s a good reason for that, but really, where is the harm in doing something just because?
Human beings are, in general, naturally curious. We do things like look at the moon and think how we would go about getting a man on it for no reason other than the engineering and technical challenge. We are also sometimes guilty of fearing the different and what we do not understand, so it is a breath of fresh air to know there are manufacturers like Bimota out there falling into the former category and prepared to put theory into practice. Or, to put it another way, their balls on the line.