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Diving down into the small roller coaster of turns on the VIR north course, hustling the 1125R during my first session felt like dancing with a lady of overly ample proportions. (Photo: Fonzi) ยป More Photos
It wasn’t until the drive home from a day in the saddle of the new Buell 1125R at Virginia International Raceway, that the best feature of the new liquid-cooled sportbike became clear. Cruising along in my ancient Honda listening to a little Barry Manilow on the cassette player, while wondering if it’s the smell of stale Burger King or the blue velour seats that puts the girls off, I realized my legs weren’t even stiff. Normally, at my advance aged, a full day of thrashing the pants of a sport bike on a racetrack comes with a certain amount of muscle fatigue and soreness. Wriggling around on the decade old coffee stains and chewing gum patches, while singing along to a chorus of Mandy, I also realized my neck wasn’t even slightly stiff. As I had spent the majority of the day doing everything in my power to chase down Schwantz School instructor Harry Vanderlinden on an identical machine, I know I hadn’t been taking it easy. So I have to take my hat off to the 1125R’s ergonomics
Diving down into the small roller coaster of turns on the VIR north course, hustling the 1125R during my first session felt like dancing with a lady of overly ample proportions. Sure she knew the moves, but there just seemed like a lot of her to get around. Tipping the scales at a claimed dry weight of 375 pounds though, this sense of size is really more of an illusion caused by the wide aluminum frame and fairing panels that stick out in front. Add in a generous, by sport bike standards, upper fairing, a roomy foot peg to handlebar ratio, and the Buell actually feels more toward the sport-touring end of the spectrum. Get comfortable with the beast though, and it’ll blast round a racetrack as fast as you want. And, checking times with my onboard video, I was turning laps three-four seconds slower than my last visit here riding a near Formula Extreme level Yamaha R6 on race tires.
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