KIWI RIDER 05 2019 VOL.1 | Page 53

I’m seriously impressed with the suspension and it’s made one of our favourite sporty road bikes even more capable TUONO FACTORY  Hilarious fun; great chassis; stunning motor Nothing You’re probably more than a little interested to know what the semi-active suspension is like. Until this point I’d been riding with the bike in active track mode, so I took a session with the bike in manual track mode. The difference was huge. The bike felt less stable and took longer to settle into a turn and generally felt ‘wobbly’. To get the best out of the bike I had to be relatively gentle with it to stop it bouncing mid-corner – due to not enough damping. It wasn’t ‘bad’ but it certainly needed the settings playing with like the non-active Tuono does for track use. As soon as I selected active mode again the bike became taut and composed once again. In fact, with the bike in active mode there wasn’t anything I wanted to change with the suspension – it just worked exactly how I wanted it to, without me needing to fiddle with it. The beauty of Aprilia’s ASC implementation of Ohlins’ semi-active suspension is that an owner could have the suspension in active sport mode for the road, then turn up at a track day and select active track and have an absolute ball, without the need to turn a single spanner or clicker adjustment. I’m seriously impressed with the suspension and it’s made one of our favourite sporty road bikes even more capable. This is a seriously good bit of kit. Go ride one, you won’t be disappointed. KIWI RIDER 53