THE MCN250 TEST ROUTE
It’s Britain’s best road test route. A tough 250-mile mix of A and B-roads, a stretch of busy motorway, plus plenty of towns, villages, blind corners, ballistic straights, and a huge range of grippy to slippy tarmac. There are two cafés, an off-road section for adventure and trail bikes, track time for sportsbikes, and Bruntingthorpe Proving Ground and the dyno for hard and fast data when needed. You want answers? We’ve got ’em.
It must be said our road testing route, the MCN250, wasn’t conceived by the MCN road testers. If it had, I’d be writing this somewhere in southern Spain right now. We’re shallow like that. Testing the latest and greatest on warm, twisty mountain roads is all well and good, but it’s not exactly real world. Apart from that occasional bucket list European summer riding holiday, or the odd trackday, most of us ride here in the UK, on UK roads, troubled by UK traffic, in UK weather. God bless it. Our route is designed to see how the latest and greatest perform in everyday conditions. It’s always easy to answer the ‘how fast does it go, mister’ question, but the MCN250 fleshes out more useful things: like how fiddly are the controls? How long does that seat actually stay comfy? What’ll it do to a tank of gas? Our day always kicks off at the petrol station in Oundle. With brimmed tanks we head to Northampton, up to Silverstone, Stratford, around into the Cotswolds and back via Bicester, Milton Keynes and Bedford. Throw in traffic, towns and villages and it takes around eight hours to complete. The next day we ride selected locations to take pictures, so we’re putting over 500 miles on every test bike. My longest MCN250 took two days, on an electric Zero that forced us to twiddle our thumbs at charging points for hours on end and the quickest took just under seven hours on BMW’s F850GS, thanks to its elastic tank range. The Kawasaki H2 SX and Suzuki Hayabusa we tested a few weeks ago would do it in half that, if pushed . Northampton’s rush hour is boring, being stuck behind mudsplattering lorries in Broadway is exasperating and the gridlock of school’s-out time in Bedford is like trying to jostle for position in the first corner of a race. My wrists took a pummelling on an R1M through all the slow bits, I almost lost my hearing behind the Tracer 900GT’s jet-loud screen and boiled my spuds on a Panigale V4 S.
But these mild annoyances are road testing gold. For every inch we travel our bikes pump our brains with info on power delivery, throttle response, ergonomics, electronic
rider aids, wind protection and everything in between.
My first MCN250 began on Wednesday, April 11 and it was the worst day I’ve spent on two wheels. We left Oundle at 8.30am in freezing fog on a KTM 790 Duke and Triumph Street Triple R and the weather stayed dreadful all day.
Early on we got lost in the Cotswolds when our satnav died and we hadn’t even reached our halfway point near Cirencester by mid afternoon. With kit soaked through and gloves turned inside out every time I removed them to look at my phone’s Google Maps, we finally arrived back in Oundle shivering on our naked roadsters.
The following photo day the weather had cleared and all was well with the world. The rasping Triumph had me laughing like a lunatic in my Arai during the Milton Keynes roundabout GP and the KTM became a speed-crazed supermoto on the B660 to Kimbolton. Growing up as a sportsbike fan I love race replicas, but they’re my least favourite around the MCN250. Bikes like that R1M and V4 S have evolved into such serious track monsters they feel lost on our route. Sure, the curvy run from Silverstone to Banbury on the A4525 and the track-smooth minimountain of Fish Hill lets you dig in and marvel at a superbike’s front end feel, its full lean confidence and arm-stretching acceleration, but most of the time they’re clumsy and uncomfortable. That reflects the harsh truth of life on a race replica away from a track nowadays and sums up why riders just aren’t snapping them up like they used to, especially when there’s so much more (cheaper) choice around.
If you love the idea of superbike power, handling, brakes and tech, but without the pain, super-nakeds are where it’s at. Hooning around the MCN250 on the MT-10 SP, Speed Triple RS, CB1000R and Tuono V4 1100 Factory have been my favourite things to do this year and my two abiding riding memories of 2018 have been that Aprilia and Triumph. Boasting Öhlins forks, sticky Pirelli Super Corsa SP tyres and honed to perfection by factory test riders, the way they roll and grip into corners borders on the spiritual. Only properly set-up race bikes offer such front-end confidence and feel. Add in the Speed Triple and Tuono’s fiery soundtracks and you can’t help but come away dizzy with lust. The MT-10 SP deserves a mention for being plain bonkers, too. Sports adventure bikes like the
‘Riding the Z900RS Café on a spring day was a real treat’
Ducati Multistrada, BMW S1000XR and KTM 1290 Super Duke GT are such capable mile-munchers they barely broke a sweat, but riding Kawasaki’s new Z900RS Café on a sunny spring day was a real treat. It’s right up there as one of my favourite bikes to ride around the MCN250. But I’m going to sign off by talking about two machines that have surprised me the most. Kawasaki’s Z1000SX may be getting long in the tooth, but my god it covers miles with such fluid ease. It’s so much quieter, more stable and refined than the new Tracer 900GT we pitched it agains. With its wobbly high-speed handling and hard seat, the Yamaha is a bit too ‘emperor’s new clothes’, if you ask me.
Yamaha’s Niken couldn’t be more
‘Early on we got lost in the Cotswolds when our satnav died’
different (it has an extra front wheel, for a start). It seems to do nothing particularly remarkable at first, but after a while you realise how confidently you’re riding on cold tyres, in the wet and over broken surfaces. There’s no much front grip you can take serious liberties. I loved riding it and it’s by far the most comfortable bike I’ve ridden around the MCN250.
With the torrent of new bikes to look forward to in 2019 we’re going to be busy on the MCN250 next year. Be sure to give us a wave.