The Honda RC213V-S: MotoGP to the Masses
When it comes to the pinnacle of motorsport, two things will spring to mind. Formula One for cars and
of course for bikes, it’s MotoGP.
Imagine then, being able to buy a Formula One car that has been adapted for road use, fitted with the lights, registration plates and safety features that make it road legal. Wishful thinking? However, this is exactly what Honda has done with the RC213V-S.
The RC213V-S is as close as you can come to riding a real MotoGP machine, having inherited the specifications of the RC213V to thoroughly ensure mass concentration, reduced friction, use of lightweight materials as well as precise machining of the components and expert skills required in manufacturing. The RC213V-S is also equipped with control technologies used on RC213V.
Only the necessary changes to the RC213V machine have been made in order to enable the RC213V-S to be ridden on public roads. To meet road laws, the RC213V-S is equipped with head/taillights, side mirrors, speedometer, muffler with catalytic converter, license plate holder and horn.
For practicality, the RC213V-S's tyres, brake discs and pads are new, while the bike’s steering ratio is now wider. Additional equipment includes Honda’s Remote Smart Key, a starter motor and side stand.
With RC213V-S, Honda set out to recreate RC213V’s handling for use on public roads. Making sure that each component differs from mass-produced items in their materials, surface treatment and manufacture to improve rigidity and strength while reducing weight – just like RC213V. Each part is also processed by hand and machined to the same specifications as RC213V – the highest possible.
So how does it compare to the real thing? There really is only one way to find out.
For the first time in a long time, Honda allowed the bike to be put through its paces out on the track by someone in the know. Chief Writer and Bike tester for GQ Magazine: Rich Taylor.
Having ridden and reviewed some of the world’s top motorcycles, we’re confident he’s up to the job.
What did it feel like?
Riding the RC213V-S felt like riding something that wasn't conceived on this planet. I've been lucky enough to ride World Superbike spec bikes, and while those are utterly, crazily brilliant, you can still detect the lineage back to the bikes you'll find on a showroom floor, even if they are faint. But the RC213V-S isn't like that at all. Yes, it has two wheels and an engine and all the other bits that form a motorcycle, but it was very different.
It's really small. The reach to the bars and the closeness of the nose is similar in dimension to sitting on a 400cc race-rep from the early to mid-1990s. But it makes a different noise – a very, very different noise, the kind of noise that vibrates your chest and gets properly inside your head. The most striking thing, though, is that it isn't all about the engine, it's about the chassis – to say that is almost doing the V4 nestled in the frame a disservice; it's a complete peach of a thing – but the overwhelming difference is in the way it steers, how much it speaks to you and how it feels when you're negotiating corners; it's as if it's plugged directly into your brain. There are other bikes that turn well, but the RC213V-S takes it so, so much further. Any line, any speed, it's not bothered, just composed and utterly, inexplicably effortless. You dance with it; you don't ride it.
Did it match expectations?
I deliberately went in with no expectations, but what I definitely didn't expect would be that the prospect of riding the RC213V-S would have me waking up in the middle of the night a full week before the event wondering if the invitation was all just a dream or a trick of my bike-mad mind. Luckily it wasn't.
I know what 210+HP bikes feel like to ride (hint: brilliant), but the RC213V-S goes about things in a completely different way. It's a pussy cat if you want it to be, and only does what the two of you agree to do together. It isn't a fire-breathing, demonic, possessed animal that wants to chew you up and spit you out... instead it holds your hand and says, "come on, let's go tighter and faster through there, it's no problem at all". It doesn’t laugh at you, even when it knows it's got one hundred times the ability you've got. Ultimately, it's a Honda, and it's incredible that those traits - that you'll also find in every other Honda out there - are still present and tangible even in a bike like the RC213V-S.
Handling aside, I didn't realise how special it would be to have *that* sound under me. It's one thing to hear the unmistakably fizzy, buzzy, raspy, almost two-stroke-esque sound that the RC213V engines make flying past you on the Hangar Straight or even just blaring out of your TV on a race weekend, but to be in charge of that noise and having it emanate from two pipes beneath you was incredible. For those four sessions at Monteblanco, at least in my mind, I was Marc Marquez.
How much better is it than a Blade SP2 (etc)
You simply can't even compare Honda's RC213V-S to anything else out there. It's a MotoGP machine and therefore making any comparison to anything other than another MotoGP bike would be like comparing cheddar with cheesecake. For starters, each RC213V-S frame is built on a jig by hand, and then welded by hand. So is the exhaust, which is made of titanium. The gearbox isn't just set into a race-shift pattern by flipping an arm on the side of the engine... the gearbox itself is race shift. The firing intervals are those you'll only find on a Honda GP bike – so nothing else can sound like it – and the Öhlins forks you probably can't even buy if you tried to. The fairings are made purely of carbon fibre and those too are made by Honda, only for Honda. Every fixing, pipe, fastener, nut, bolt... you name it, is exotic, and really, the only thing it has in common with a Fireblade SP2, for example, is the controls on the 'bars and the similar-ish looking TFT dashboard screen.
So, it's beyond compare with anything else out there. And that's before you've even hit the starter button and taken it out for a session or four and experienced it on the move.
Why should it appeal to racers?
That one's easy. Because it's the only MotoGP bike you can go and buy. Sure, you can get hold of some much older GP bikes if you've deep enough pockets and the right connections, but those aren't machines to take to the races any longer; they've got other duties. But the RC213V-S is something you can get hold of and go racing on. It might be road legal, but all it takes is a few bolts to remove the mirrors and number plate, and you're right there.
Cal Crutchlow commented last year that the RC213V-S - the same bike I rode, #31 - really wasn't that far off his own 2018 LCR Honda bike when he rode it around Silverstone to test out the now infamous "new surface". You can't say better than that, can you?
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