The Holy Trinity of motorcycling hits the racetrack!
The term Holy Trinity has a nice ring to it. But personally, my fascination with it began a while ago. I am a motorcyclist but I have nothing against cars. Especially when they have a super or hyper prefix. Anyway, back to the topic at hand, being a petrolhead, the famous Holy Trinity of Hypercars had me very interested in the term. A term that encompasses McLaren P1, Ferrari LaFerrari, and Porsche 918? It had to be special.
Now, onwards to why I am talking about it. By God’s grace, I have something of a personal Holy Trinity in the xBhp Garage. Triumph Rocket 3 R the world‘s largest capacity production motorcycle, Kawasaki Ninja H2, the world’s fastest street-legal production motorcycle, and the Suzuki Hayabusa (3rd Gen), perhaps the most fabled motorcycle ever made. If they don’t qualify to define the Holy Trinity of motorcycling, I do not know what can.
I have ridden all three of these motorcycles extensively. But side by side on an F1-grade track? That’s a different story altogether. It is also a story I got to write recently during the track day hosted by ISBK. Powered by Castrol POWER1 ULTIMATE, I rode the bejesus out of the three motorcycles knowing full well that I had the best engine oil taking care of my steeds. More than that, the performance we could extract thanks to its 5-in-1 Full-Synthetic Formula… bonkers!
TRIUMPH ROCKET 3 R
Powered by
Castrol POWER1 ULTIMATE 15W50
It weighs over 300 kg fully loaded. It has a nearly 1,700mm wheelbase. It has a 240-section rear tyre. It has no fairing. It has no wind protection. It is a cruiser. It is meant for a dragstrip. And finally; IT WON’T GO ON A RACETRACK! But do you know what doesn’t give a flying monkey about all that? The Triumph Rocket 3 R.
I have owned the Triumph Rocket 3 R for a while now. And it still surprises me, it still keeps me engaged… it still thrills me to no end. For most motorcycles and motorcyclists, things dampen a bit after the novelty has worn off. But this thing, this hellspawn; it is perhaps the single-most marvellous example of motorcycle engineering.
It is powered by a 2.5-litre triple that makes 221 Nm of torque and nearly 170 bhp of power. That’s a lot and very usable on BIC’s straight. With the racket of a sound it makes at full-song, you almost don’t hear the wind being hurled at you when you are riding at almost 200 kays an hour. I enjoyed it but even some spectators were thrilled to listen to a massive triple’s thunderous roar over the scream of other much sportier motorcycles.
Another factor here was Castrol POWER1 ULTIMATE 15W50 that powered my Rocket 3 R. From heat management to smoothness, and from acceleration to endurance; Castrol POWER1 ULTIMATE and its 5-in-1 Full-Synthetic formula work wonders in accentuating the Rocket 3 R’s acceleration and in mitigating the ill effects of the heat generated by that massive engine.
But we were at BIC and not the high-speed track of NATRAX. The biggest difference? BIC has turns, tight ones too, and a lot of them. That is where everything that I mentioned in the first paragraph comes into play. But mind-blowingly enough, the effects are not as profound as one may think. And that is why the Rocket 3 R is a gem, an unadulterated result of British engineering acumen and their passion!
The dynamics of the motorcycles are important and we’ll get to them but the single most important factor is the handlebar. Why? Because that’s what you use primarily to turn. To muscle a motorcycle like this around a corner when it’s moving at quote-unquote fair speeds, it is a handful. Or it would have been a handful if not for the wide handlebar that gives a truckload of leverage.
Trust me when I say this, physics does its best to push you towards the outside of the corner and finally, in not a pretty place. But the Rocket 3 R arms you with stuff that you can fight physics with. You may not go through it, but you sure will be able to ride around it. Anyway, another important factor that aids Rocket 3 R in handling is its low CoG. Overall, the motorcycle is low and so the engine sits lower too.
Finally, the geometry and the resulting dynamics. I am thinking out loud but what I felt Triumph did was; “We need big engine with big torque, then we need big wheelbase, weight, and tyres to handle all that. Finally and crucially, we need to offset the negative impacts of those things on handling.” And that is what they did. The impact of the long-wheelbase is offset by a sharp-ish rake, the impact of the weight is offset by the brutish handlebars, and the tyres, well… they’re okay.
The result is a motorcycle that makes you want to push harder with every lap. It is not a full-fledged superbike by a long shot and it was not meant to be a racetrack machine. But that does not mean that it won’t go on one. It will and it will blow your mind.
