There’s one thing you can’t buy in the custom world: pedigree. And Roland Sands has one of the best pedigrees of all. He’s a former 250GP national champion, so he’s got the track smarts and knows how to make a bike handle.
Sands started his racing career on a Yamaha TZ250, a fact not lost on Yamaha Europe. So when they wanted a flat tracker based on the FZ-09 (known as the MT-09 outside of the US), Sands was the guy who took the call.
Fast forward a few months, and here’s the result. It’s called ‘Faster Wasp’ and it’s dressed in the fabulous ‘bumblebee’ color scheme made famous by Kenny Roberts’ TZ750.
The bike slots into Yamaha’s ‘Faster Sons’ project, which means taking a current-model Yamaha and giving it a splash of classic style. Sands has added a third element—Yamaha’s racing history.
The Yamaha FZ-09 offers rapid performance straight out of the box. The inline triple delivers 115hp at the (crossplane) crank, and the aluminum frame keeps wet weight down to a creditable 190kg or so.
So the RSD mechanics have left the fueling alone, and freed up the breathing with Two Brothers Racing stainless steel headers. They’re hooked up to an RSD Slant muffler, which should lose a few extra kilos.
