Triumph Daytona 955i

"Take the Daytona!" you don't argue with words like that so I didn't and I did, if you get my drift. The plan was to ride up to the famed Tintaldra hotel on the NSW/Vic border on the Saturday, enjoy some good company, some excellent food and a drop to drink, then ride back the following day.

In order to do this It was essential I have a motorcycle suitable for the superb roads between my house and my destination.

The Daytona is Triumph's biggest and most refined sporting offering, and having ridden one at the Australian launch held at Mallala I was looking forward to cutting loose on roads I know well to see whether my original impressions still held.

Let me tell you about the good stuff! When I took possession of the Daytona the suspension had been wound to half a turn off maximum hard. This may have been good for track use but guaranteed a good kidney kicking on the road.

Winding back two full turns on the rebound and compression for both ends by some happy accident resulted in the best road suspension settings and allowed the Daytona to show just how good suspension can be.

On fast and I do mean fast sweeping, corners, the Daytona's ground-sucking stability is irreproachable! I can say this from a position of authority after the Daytona barely noticed a pothole that could have housed a small family while at significant lean and velocity, an event that could have seen me eating a bitumen sandwich. Yup, the suspension package is just about perfect for road use, and matched, if not bettered, my other personal fave in the Suzuki Hayabusa.

However, in the steering department the Daytona feels heavy, and as a result steers slowly and deliberately which some owners may like, and in truth was never a problem. However, if it were mine I'd raise the rear pre-load and or drop the forks through the yokes to quicken things up.

Although everything is sunshine in the handling department, things seem less so with the throttle response and gearbox. Power delivery, which at the launch had been crisp and instantaneous, seems woolly and imprecise off idle. Making it worse is the amount of slop in the already heavy throttle cables, which makes blipping on down changes unnecessarily exaggerated.

Hopefully this will be sorted at the second service, which is not very far away.

As far as the gearbox goes, the first three gears engage with a disturbing amount of lash which I initially put down to an over-tight drive chain.

Having re-adjusted the chain I'd hoped that it would improve significantly, while it did improve a little it was still noisier than I would have liked. Getting back to the good stuff, the brakes are the grouse, you'll have to go a long way to find better. Intensely strong but offering masses of feel, you feel good just knowing how capable they are.

Anyway, the real heart of the Daytona is its storming mid-range. And even though it feels a bit over-geared, when it's hurling you up hills past lines of seemingly static cars, or hoovering up the horizon through the airbox you can forget the niggles. It's a great looking thing, that still needs a bit of tidying up behind the fairing and height adjustable handlebars for us old gits, but it's a class act.

Thanks Greg, can I keep it for a bit longer?