Retired Superbike champ left stunned by sheer power of KTM MotoGP bike
“It feels small, straight away,” he said while on the bike. “My god, the brakes aren’t working — I was already waiting for that to be the case.”
Beyond that, the stability of the bike impressed Hodgson, as well as the smoothness of the seamless-shift gearbox.
“First thought: gearbox, unbelievable. [...] It feels so stable, so stable.
After one or two laps, Hodgson started to open the bike up a bit more. On using the ride height device for the first time, he said: “Oh my god. I can’t talk, I can’t concentrate."
While the aerodynamics help to keep the front wheel on the ground coming out of corners, the new ground effect aerodynamics, pioneered in MotoGP by Aprilia in 2022, help mid-corner.
“What a bike! It turns, it feels planted round the corners, but so fast, like ridiculously fast,” Hodgson said. “No wheelie, it’s unbelievable.
“What I love [is] the brakes feel so good. That gearbox, this chassis — everything is unbelievable. Unbelievable. It just turns! You look at the corner and it just goes to it.
“What a bike, honestly. What a bike. You can’t believe how good it is. It sounds like I’m exaggerating for TV, I promise you I’m not. Unbelievable, unbelievable.”
Following his ride on the RC16, Hodgson continued to break down his impressions of the bike.
“The best bike I’ve ever ridden times-1000,” he said. “Talk about game changer, talk about the game’s moved on. It’s unreal. No wheelie, full power. The front brake, you can feel every little bit of that front tyre.
"You look at the corner and the bike turns into it. It’s outrageous, I can’t believe they’re not going faster. That’s how good the bike is. Stunning.
“It felt nothing like what I expected, it was like everything’s on steroids. It’s so precise, like nothing [else].
“I rode the Ducati, but that was eight years ago, so you can’t compare the two — it feels like you’re comparing a superbike against a MotoGP bike. That [the RC16) is the most precise, beautiful machine I’ve ever ridden.”
Hodgson then spoke to Jack Miller, and spoke about how different the MotoGP machine is to ride compared to a road bike.
“It’s been so long since I rode a proper bike. You get used to riding street bikes and they’re just vague. [On the RC16], you just look at the corner and it just drops in. And the front brake, I can feel every bar, or 0.1 of a bar I can feel it.
“That is the most fun I’ve had in a long time. It was even better than I expected, and actually quite easy to ride. I thought it’d be nervous and twitchy, but it didn’t feel like that at all.”
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