Triple Threat

Never one to rest on its laurels, Triumph has once again put in the graft to keep the Street Triple at the top. We caught up with John McAvoy from sister publication Fast Bikes to tell us why…

You’ve really got to doff your cap to Triumph. Not only did it conceive the Street Triple 675 in the first place back in 2007, in the process setting the gold standard for performance, desirability, build quality and price in the middleweight naked class, it’s continued to set the standard ever since.

So, what do you do when your bike is top dog, with no sign of any challenge coming from your competitors? It turns out that if you’re Triumph, you don’t play it safe, save your energy, maintain the status quo and keep adding to the 130,000 units already sold. You don’t even give it a quick onceover with an extra couple of bhp and trim a kilo of weight from it. No, if you’re Triumph, what you do is start with a phone call to the people who have been designing and building your Moto2 engines for the past four years…

By virtue of being the RS spec Street Triple, it gets some nice touches and a sprinkling of bling, too. The brakes are now Brembo Stylema monobloc calipers with MCS adjustable span and ratio levers. There’s also a fully adjustable Öhlins STX40 shock in the back; Pirelli Supercorsa SP V3 tyres; some fancy LED daylight running lights; belly pan and pillion seat cover all as standard on the RS; which, along with the 10bhp change, all account for the £1700 price difference between it and the R spec model.

So, you’ve upgraded your middleweight naked bike and state that it’s been ‘designed to set the new performance naked benchmark’ and use other phrases in your marketing such as ‘race-powered naked sports perfection’, and you talk about ‘taking the handling performance to the next level’… you really need to back that stuff up. It’s a sign of confidence, then, that of all the places Triumph chose to present the Street Triple to the world’s media was at one of – if not the greatest – race circuits of all time: Jerez. Turn one in 2011 and Rossi torpedoes Stoner; turn three nearly finishes Doohan’s and Marquez’s careers; turn six in 2018 and Pedrosa wipes out Lorenzo and Dovisioso; turn 13 in 2005 and Rossi shows Gibernau the gravel trap; and in 1996 a track invasion before the race ends costs local hero Alex Criville victory. Some of the most iconic moments in motorcycle racing have happened at Jerez – and one of the reasons for that is that it’s fast, very fast, which, on the surface, makes it a brave place to launch a bike with ‘only’ 128bhp. However, the majority of the lap is spent turning the bike either through a series of corners, joining up corners, or setting up for corners. You might have all the power in the world, but if your bike doesn’t handle, lapping Jerez is not easy.

Straightaway, it’s clear the 2023 Street Triple RS is like no other Street Triple that’s gone before. It really likes revs, and it really likes the brakes being let off early and carrying speed into the corners, both slow and fast. The worry from a rider’s point of view, when you start getting greedy on corner entry, is whether the front will tuck, or will the bike run wide or turn through the corner? This is the overriding sensation and ongoing calculation that goes on in my head as I try to simultaneously learn the circuit and bike. Both come to me quite quickly, as both are relatively easy to learn, even though I know unlocking the secrets of the track would be much more difficult than the secrets of the bike; I learn the circuit well enough to know what the bike wants.

Riding the Street Triple is a lot like riding a supersport bike, insomuch that maintaining momentum is the goal. Braking deep into the corner and turning the bike in the shortest space possible, as you would on a litre bike before firing it out, is not the way to ride the Street Triple or how it wants to be ridden. Brake very late and very hard right at the very edge of the curb, or on the curb if it’s smooth enough, then let the brakes off at the same time as you roll the bike off the centre of its tyre, and eyes on the apex you want to hit at all times. Commit, stay relaxed, don’t grip the bars too tight, get your body off the bike, and get your head down by your forearm as the load on the front tyre builds and builds to the point where it starts to feel a bit uncomfortable, and you feel like it can’t take any more. Next, just touch the throttle to move some of the weight to the rear and give it some relief as you sweep past the apex. Then hit the throttle and spot the exit curb. Do not shut the throttle, finish the corner by leaning on the electronics and either keeping the bike turning by staying low, or letting it drift to the edge, and be ready to click another gear, but under no circumstances back the throttle off and lose that precious built-up momentum. This is how you ride a 2023 Street Triple RS, which is nothing like the Street Triples I’ve ridden before.

I’d have happily kept going round the circuit on the Street Triple until the sun went down, and then I’d have happily kept going round some more – a testament to how even on such a wide, open and fast circuit, a humble 128bhp naked bike can be exciting and ask as much from you as a rider in terms of commitment that a litre bike does. It’s just a different type of commitment.

The next day we took the RS out on the road to ride alongside the more road-biased R spec model, and this is where the RS played its ace card. After all the heroics on track the day before, the RS revealed the other side of its personality by being an absolute doddle to ride at normal speeds. Lightweight, manoeuvrable, flexible engine and smooth fuel injection make it an ideal first bike for anyone who’s just passed their test. It’s as happy being thrown into a fourth gear corner at more than 100mph and holding a line as it is pootling through a town centre or rolling through the countryside just rolling the throttle on and off.

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