seat height is jacked up by 12mm to 832mm,
which has implications for rear ride height and
weight bias that may contribute to the new
model’s rapid rate of turn.
The braking package has also been revised,
with anti-rear-wheel li added and cornering
ABS to assist when braking hard into the
turn. The Tokico front calipers and Nissin
rear caliper are both fi ed with special
performance-oriented pads that are extremely
responsive and very powerful for base-model
OEM. All up this new braking system shaves a
massive 3kg in weight and there have also been
revisions to the frame, swing arm and engine
design that further stiff en the chassis, and
centralise mass, for faster changes of direction.
A er a good thrashing on track, there’s li le
doubt this new and improved Fireblade is easy
to ride, confi dence inspiring and buff enough
to do ba le with the fi erce competition. It
slashes 15kg of fl ab from the outgoing model
and churns out eight extra kilowa s of
mumbo, but this improved power-to-weight
ratio glosses over the biggest a ribute of the
Blade, which concerns the contribution that
electrical rider aids have made to the already
sweet-handling chassis and exceptional build
quality. It’s not so much a ma er of just adding
computers but programming them in harmony
with the other core elements of chassis and
engine to reveal the best of both rider and
machine. In this, Honda has turned a capable
race-proven package into a supremely fast yet
easy-to-ride superbike; however, it also comes
at a premium.
This year the blade has copped a price hike of
almost $5.5K, which is a serious dollop of fi lthy
lucre in anyone’s book. Then there’s the issue
of the up/down quickshi er with autoblipper.
According to Honda Australia, this optional
extra should be available for between $650 and
$690 but it would have been nice to see it fi ed
standard given the massive gain it delivers in
comfort and track performance.
Colour options are limited to the rather
plain-looking Victory Red or Ma e Ballistic
Black Metallic in the base model, with the
spectacularly good-looking tri-colour version
reserved for SP models. And the new model
also drops 1.5L of fuel capacity and still doesn’t
have a fuel gauge or range calculator despite
the large and versatile TFT dash.
Overall, though, this is a ground-breaking“This new world order
is all about lightning-
quick computation
times that ensure you
can ride safer and
faster than ever before”
r Oh, yeah, it’s a road bike, too.r 25 years of Blade. Quite an achievement.40 | AUSTRALIAN ROAD RIDERARR139_030-041_Fireblade.indd 40ARR139_030-041_Fireblade.indd 40 6/16/2017 9:26:20 AM6/16/2017 9:26:20 AM