Today I was at the Superbike race at Laguna Seca and Yamaha had a tent where you could test ride a few different models of their line up. I signed up and got to ride this bike:
The group of us went out into some nice twisty roads near the track and then turned around and came back. All in all, the trip was about half an hour.
The bike definitely had more punch than the 6. It was actually the first time I've ridden anything over 600cc, so I wound up just leaving it in the "Standard" mode instead of putting it in "A" mode. It was also the first time I rode anything without a windscreen, other than a couple dirt bikes.
It was a pretty nice bike and I liked the seating position. The only things I didn't like was that it felt kinda "springy" whenever I hit a bump and the position of the gauge cluster was a little awkward. The 6 seems to take bumps in stride but the 9 definitely made the bumps more noticeable. The gauge cluster thing was mainly because my helmet has a piece on the inside that covers up my nose so it's not really the bikes fault.
Today was a great day all together! I also got to do three laps of Laguna Seca on the 6. I had a GoPro on my helmet but I fat-fingered it and wound up taking a stream of consecutive still pictures. If I flip through them fast enough, it KINDA looks like a video.
The group of us went out into some nice twisty roads near the track and then turned around and came back. All in all, the trip was about half an hour.
The bike definitely had more punch than the 6. It was actually the first time I've ridden anything over 600cc, so I wound up just leaving it in the "Standard" mode instead of putting it in "A" mode. It was also the first time I rode anything without a windscreen, other than a couple dirt bikes.
It was a pretty nice bike and I liked the seating position. The only things I didn't like was that it felt kinda "springy" whenever I hit a bump and the position of the gauge cluster was a little awkward. The 6 seems to take bumps in stride but the 9 definitely made the bumps more noticeable. The gauge cluster thing was mainly because my helmet has a piece on the inside that covers up my nose so it's not really the bikes fault.
Today was a great day all together! I also got to do three laps of Laguna Seca on the 6. I had a GoPro on my helmet but I fat-fingered it and wound up taking a stream of consecutive still pictures. If I flip through them fast enough, it KINDA looks like a video.