Next project ahead: Triumph Street Triple Cup

For quite a while I've been thinking about getting my first road bike and ride it on race tracks for improving my riding skills, fully experiencing acceleration, speed and handling without worrying about traffic, speed limits etc. and for pure fun, of course.
I had something in mind that’s "raceable", reliable and reasonable (in terms of price). I wasn’t very familiar with road bikes at that time so I started doing some online research.

After just a short period of time I completely lost focus: bikes like Aprilia RSV4, MV Agusta F3, Husqvarna Nuda 900 R, Honda CRF450 Rally, KTM 690 Duke were on my list. Reliable? Built for the race track? Affordable? Reading reviews and watching Youtube videos I couldn’t resist adding more and more bikes to the list, none of them really meeting my requirements but provoking "ridinglust". Eventually, I turned it into a bucket list: bikes I have to write at least once in my life.

Okay, I refocused and looked for amateur racing series. On Mojomag.de I found an article about the Triumph Street Triple Cup. The author Clemens Gleich seemed to have had a lot of fun there as he raved about the event, the bike and the relaxed atmosphere. Then I remembered that my friend Thomas told me about the Street Triple just a few months ago when he considered buying his first motorcycle: a second-hand Aprilia Shiver. (Eventually, he bought the Shiver...another friend with a motorbike, YEAH!!!). So I had a closer look at the Street Triple. It turns out that the Street Triple R, the basis for this racing series, is a very good middle class naked bike and first of its class in most comparisons & reviews. It sounded interesting to me: below 200 kg, enough hp and torque. Therefore, I went for a test ride at the local Triumph dealer end of November.
At first, it felt weird sitting on the Streety. I'm not used to other bikes but enduros. In addition, I was wearing my motocross boots which made shifting gears a bit tricky. The engine (3 cylinders, 675 cc), however, blew me away right from the beginning as well as the brakes. Unfortunately, the test ride was limited to only 1 hour. Anyway, after this I decided to participate in the the 2013 edition of the T-Cup.
By now I've got my T-Cup bike as you can see on the pictures. The racing series will start in mid of May. There will be 6 weekends, i.e. 12 races, at different circuits in Germany, Netherlands and Czech Republic; not all dates have been confirmed yet. Due to bad weather conditions and daily life responsibilities I haven't had the chance to go for a ride with my new motorbike yet…argh!