To do this the bikes have many gears, seven in total, but I could have sworn I counted twelve on my ride. My left foot seemed to be continually tap dancing up and down.
As a reward for the riders efforts the 125 will produce in excess of 50bhp, propelling the 70-ish KG of bike, not including rider, round at an impressive pace.
But what makes these bikes so quick, quick enough to challenge half the Supersport field at some tracks, is the awesome corner speed. The 125's run on slicks and coupled with the fact they weigh next to nothing means awesome lean angles and corner speeds are possible.
After a while on the bike I thought I had nearly reached the limit of the lean angle, ‘yep knee down, elbow's only a few inches off, I must be nearly there,' I thought to myself. But how wrong could I be.
Donington Park is notoriously windy, with momentary gusts so strong it sometimes literally sweeps bikes off the track.
One such gust caught me as I was lapping the Donington GP circuit. However, instead of blowing me off the track it blew the bike and me lower into the corner. To my surprise this gust of wind had just given me an extra two inches of lean angle, and pushed the bike yet tighter round the corner. I felt like a proper nobber.
And so I should, I'm no GP racer, but this bike is. It was built by HRC for the 2001/02 season with a full factory ‘A' kit. It is draped with Dymag Carbon wheels and fully adjustable WP suspension all round, with the head stock and the upper rear shock mounting adjustable too. The front brake is a radial Brembo onto a single disc that hauls the tiny bike to a standstill eye poppingly quickly, time and again without any fade whatsoever.
Everything about these machines are designed for maximum speed, even the £1700 Carbon Fibre wheels are considered very cheap performance enhancers. With an increase of one bhp found from Dyno testing, gained from the reduction of centrifugal weight the tiny 125cc engine has to push along.
