Photoshoot of the Week: June 17th -23rd 2019 – Suzuki GSX-R1000 & Anya Bondarenko

The 2017 GSX-R1000, like all its inline four-engined brethren, is not a bike focused on grunt at road speeds. It’s vastly oversquare, each cylinder having a bore of 76 mm and a stroke of just 55.1 mm, a configuration that emphasizes wild top-end horsepower at the expense of low-end torque. Indeed, it’s disarmingly civilized at lower revs. The throttle snatch issues from the magnificent GSX-S1000 nakedbike are gone, and acceleration is smooth and rapid.
Take the tacho into the midrange – which is as powerful as this bike will get without hitting the racetrack – and the Gixxer benefits from a number of technologies designed to beef up the power in the road riding zone.
Variable valve timing is the big ticket item here; a system that uses centrifugal force to push a series of steel balls outward in the intake valve sprocket, which operates a mechanism that alters the valve timing. This means the Gixxer can run an advanced intake timing at low revs, for increased power in the midrange, and a significantly retarded one as the engine speed gets up past 10,000 rpm, for a knock-your-block-off run to the redline.
The air intake gets attention too, but not to the degree of using variable length intake trumpets. Instead, the Suzuki uses a stacked system for the outer two cylinders that effectively lets air in from both lengths without needing a mechanical intervention. And an extra set of top feed fuel injectors spray fuel directly into the intake funnels from the top of the airbox to complement the primary injectors in the throttle bodies.
Then there’s the exhaust headers – headers 1 and 4 are linked, as are 2 and 3 – and there’s a set of butterfly valves in each of these connector tubes that can open and close to control exhaust gas pressure waves.
s with the GSX-S1000, whatever level and fuel map you dial in will stay that way until you actively change it, even if you turn the bike off. That’s certainly my preference, because I like to ride this Gixxer in full-fat A mode with the traction control off pretty much everywhere except the freeway, where B mode is less jerky. I spent a day in the mountains in the wet, and never once felt I had to turn on the traction control or soften off the throttle. It’s that good.
The electronics package on the GSX-R lags slightly behind the top-end competition; there’s no quickshifter, and despite the fact that the bike runs a six-axis IMU, the non-switchable ABS system included isn’t Continental’s lean angle-sensitive Cornering ABS.
What it is, is the apotheosis of the Japanese inline four: savagely fast, ruthlessly competent, faultlessly reliable, calm, focused and collected. It’s a bike that gets out of the way and becomes an extension of you, so you can concentrate on lines and braking points in the knowledge it’ll do exactly what you expect.