RETRO RR-ELISH

Triumph’s ready to rumble with a new half-faired Speed Triple 1200RR

It’s been coming for a while, but we’ve finally got all the details on the new Triumph Speed Triple RR – and it’s quite an intriguing machine. First up, it’s not the 1200 Daytona we’d all love to see, with Moto2 styling, super-sharp track chassis and an angry, race-tuned 200bhp 1199cc triple. Rather, it’s a half-faired version of the Speed Triple RS supernaked, with some useful chassis upgrades, making it a bit more of a halfway-house. A retro-styled modern café racer with solid sporty credentials rather than a proper superbike.

The changes from the RS are all excellent stuff: you’ll already know if you like that round headlight and half-fairing obviously, but we reckon it’s a classy, good-looking piece of design. It adds an extra high-speed capability to the Speed Triple fam, and (whisper it) might add a bit of practicality and comfort on longer trips. Expect to see higher double-bubble screens on a lot of these…

The suspension is top-drawer, of course – a full electronic semi-active Öhlins set-up makes a lot of sense on the road, and is easily fettled for different riding set-ups via the flash colour LCD dashboard. It also adds a proper dash of premium kit to the chassis.

The tyres are also upgraded and you now get the latest Pirelli Supercorsa SP V3 tyres. That clashes a little with road bias of the RR, we think: Supercorsas are ace on track, but considering the amount of time one of these will spend on track, they might be a wee bit of a waste. Triumph actually specs an OE-approved fitment for track use, Pirelli Supercorsa SC2 V3, making it arguably even stranger to fit the Supercorsa SP as standard. It’s a statement of intent, of course – the Hinckley firm is making the point that this is a high-end sportsbike, from its point of view at least.

We can sort of see why the new bike isn’t a full-on superbike at the moment. Triumph would need to put a lot of money and effort in to build a 1200 triple with the 210bhp-ish needed to compete with the Honda Fireblade, Ducati Panigale V4S, Aprilia RSV4 and the rest of the litre bikes.

Then, everyone would expect them to go superbike racing with a factory effort – which would take even more cash and time.

Meanwhile, they still need to support the Moto2 765 project... and, oh, look... they’ve only got a full 450 factory MX and enduro programme on the way too.

Hinckley gets a pass for now, then. But we’re still waiting to be blown away with that proper three-cylinder superbike we all know it should be building…