1190 RC8 R (MY2012)

This is the department where the KTM makes its case. The suspension is dialed in with real care, so my confidence stayed high mid-corner and the bike never turned murky about what it was doing beneath me. It sits composed when I load it up and still turns eager the moment I want a new line. Chicanes are where that shows best: point it at the next corner and it changes tack at once, quick and accurate, with no push toward the outside and no argument. Threading a narrow line it feels nimble; carrying speed it stays steady; and the handoff between the two never caught me out. My one hard wall was ground clearance. Wind the pace up to genuine race speed and the geometry runs out of lean before the rubber does, and one of the quick riders in my group grounded hardware and wanted more room to lean on it. At road pace, none of that ever surfaces.

Here's the payoff for all that low-down grunt. Feed in the throttle coming off an apex and the rear grabs hold straightaway; the blend of drive and grip is strong enough that quick corner exits basically take care of themselves, so I wasn't fighting for them, they simply arrived. There's real breadth around that, too. The latest engine work made this KTM easy to enjoy across a wide spread of conditions, so a rider who spends far more Saturdays on a good mountain road than at any circuit still comes away well served.

What stays with me about this V-twin is where the shove lives: low in the range and right now, so I never needed revs to make it move. The four-cylinder crowd is still stacking revs when the KTM has already gathered itself and gone, and I could ask for drive almost anywhere without a downshift. On tight, technical ground that counts for a lot. It also caught me off guard how mannered the engine has become; KTM took its time civilizing this motor, and this version is approachable and easy to ride rather than something you outsmart. The catch waits up high. Line it against the fastest fours on a long enough straight and it simply gets outrun, with no real way to reel the gap back in. Under that ceiling, running with the mid-field, it never embarrasses itself.

The stoppers themselves gave me nothing to complain about; the power and feel both landed well, and everyone in my group rated them. The wrinkle is composure, not hardware. Brake late and deep into a corner, right at the point you're asking the most of the front, and the bike takes on a little restlessness under you. It never turned violent and it never bit me, but it cropped up often enough that the whole group kept bringing it up.

For a supersport, this one treats you kindly when you're just sitting on it. The posture is roomy and fairly upright, which paid off every time I strung together a long stretch of back road; I could stay out for hours without the riding position wearing on me. The flip side showed up the moment the stopwatch came out. Every racer in my group wanted to be lower and meaner over the nose, and the upright stance that felt so good on the road started costing them at circuit pace. What takes the sting out is how obliging the fit is. Seat height and peg location both reset in a couple of minutes, no tools needed, so I could shape the ergonomics around my body or my riding style before I ever pulled away. That flexibility is genuinely useful for anyone splitting time between road and track.

There are two places where this KTM asks more of you than its rivals do. The electronics come first: it runs ABS and traction control, so the basics are covered, but for a company with this much swagger the package feels light, without the depth to match the newest bikes. The gearbox is the second, its ratios sitting close, so a track session had me working the lever constantly to keep the motor in its window. On the road both recede. On a circuit, each adds work the faster bikes are spared.