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Nicky Hayden & Stefan Bradl Give Their First Impressions of the New Honda CBR1000RR SP2

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Nicky Hayden and Stefan Bradl had their first experience of the all new for 2017 Honda CBR1000RR SP2 on the opening day of the Jerez test, and it was clear that there is still plenty of work to be done by the Ten Kate squad to get the bikes ready for the start of the season.

With the Phillip Island opener only four weeks away, the Dutch team faces a race against time to be up to speed for the start of the WorldSBK campaign. Both riders made it clear that it is very early days for the project, and as a result were unwilling to offer definitive opinions – though initial impressions were positive.

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New Honda CBR1000RR Videos Confirm Inline-Four Engine

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After seeing the spy photos of the Honda CBR1000RR filming in Croatia, we already have a pretty good indication that Honda isn’t going to stray too far from the current Fireblade design. The chassis looks almost exactly the same as the current generation model, as does the engine.

The most recent teasers from Honda confirm this notion, with the Japanese brand showing us four glowing header pipes off an inline-four engine. The exhaust note should end speculation that a crossplane crankshaft has been added to the CBR1000RR, with a distinct “screamer” tone coming from its pipes.

Honda’s next video gives indication that the 2017 Honda CBR1000RR will have an LED headlight, a tip to the likely robust electronics suite that Big Red is bringing to its new superbike, which will compliment the major fairing design upgrade

With the tagline “Total Control” being touted by Honda, we can expect the 2017 Honda CBR1000RR to come with the bevy of electronic rider aids that we have come to expect from this segment: ride-by-wire, traction control, wheelie control, launch control, etc.

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Honda Begins Teasing the 2017 Honda CBR1000RR

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Honda launched a dedicated website for its arriving 2017 model year motorcycles today, giving us a glimpse into what Big Red has in store for us at INTERMOT, EICMA, and the IMS Show in Long Beach, and the first machine they’re teasing seems to be the 2017 Honda CBR1000RR.

While the current teaser is set in the United States, at Thunderhill Raceway Park, we first caught glimpse of the new Honda CBR1000RR while shooting at a similar promo video in Croatia, strangely enough.

From those photos, we know that the 2017 Honda CBR1000RR (that’s the 2017 Honda Fireblade to our European readers) is based off the current model’s design, with the two machines sharing a chassis, and likely many engine parts.

Obviously, Honda has wrapped the 2017 CBR1000RR in very different fairings, and updated the superbike for Euro4 emissions.

Logic also dictates that Honda’s updated superbike will have ride-by-wire, traction control, and other electronic aids, and we can likely expect the engine to get a little bit more pep as well, just to keep us from moaning too loudly that the aged platform is seeing yet another year of service.

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Hi, Are You the 2017 Honda CBR1000RR?

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If you were hoping that the 2017 Honda CBR1000RR would be a completely new machine for sport bike enthusiasts, the following might disappoint you.

This is because photos published on Twitter seem to suggest that the 2017 Honda Fireblade will get mostly cosmetic changes for the upcoming model year.

As you can see after the jump, what looks like the new CBR1000RR was caught lapping for what appears to be a PR video spot for the Japanese OEM.

While it is clear from these shots that the pictured Honda CBR1000RR has a radically new fairing design, a closer comparison to the chassis (see above) suggests that the machine is simply the current generation machine, with new clothing.

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Bikes

New Honda Superbike for 2017, But Will It Be Any Good?

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It’s the worst kept secret in the motorcycle industry right now, Honda is finally updating its superbike offering for the 2017 model year – replacing the now extremely long-in-the-tooth Honda CBR1000RR.

The interesting part of that news of course is whether that new superbike will go by the name CBR or RVF, as there is a bit of a debate regarding what kind of engine will power the Honda.

Despite whether it is an inline-four machine like the CBR1000RR, or a V4-powered beast like Honda’s MotoGP bike, the new superbike will have big shoes to fill.

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