The dust had hardly settled on the XSR700 launch when Yamaha started teasing their next release. It started with Roland Sands’ Faster Wasp?a brutal custom FZ-09 inspired by the flat track.
It was obvious that Yamaha was poised to release a big brother to the XSR700. And right on cue, they revealed the XSR900 at the Italian EICMA show.

Like the XSR700, the XSR900 is a restyled version of an existing Yamaha model. It has the same rolling chassis and power plant as the FZ-09 (known as the MT-09 elsewhere), but wrapped in a more refined package.

That puts it squarely in Yamaha’s ‘Faster Sons’ range: bikes that are stripped to the bare essentials, with a classic aesthetic. Modern day UJMs (Universal Japanese Motorcycles), if you will. Some might see this as a marketing ploy, but Yamaha Motor Europe product manager?the ever-smiling Shun Miyazawa?sees it as a response to the shifting market. According to him, new customers are more interested in all-round appeal than outright performance.

Not that the XSR900 doesn’t perform. After all, it’s packing the same triple cylinder, 847cc mill as the FZ-09, good for a claimed 87.5Nm of torque. It’s a brute?but like Daniel Craig, it’s a brute in a well-tailored suit.

After touchdown in Fuerteventura, one of the Canary Islands, we spent the first day thrashing Yamaha SR400s around a pop-up flat track?under the tutelage of Marco Belli of the famed Di Traverso flat track school.
On day ...