Rickey Gadson And The Triumph Rocket 3 R

[Hugh Janus]

Drag racing champion Rickey Gadson (Meekail Shaheed/)

At the end of 2018, rumors began to swirl that Triumph Motorcycles was working on a new Rocket 3, the company’s biggest and most powerful motorcycle. This caught the ­attention of 11-time motorcycle drag racing champion Rickey ­Gadson. He knew about the first-generation Rocket 3: a 2,294cc, 765-pound hunk of British steel that boasted nearly 150 horsepower and 163 pound-feet of torque. He had ridden drag racing and land-speed builder Bob Carpenter’s modified “Silverback” Rocket 3, going deep into 8-second E.T.s at over 150 mph. What would this new, more-powerful, and lighter Rocket 3 be capable of in stock form? We wondered as well, so we made the call to the legendary drag racer. We also ­wanted to understand Gadson’s tuning and riding ­technique as he searched for his best time on the world’s ­largest-displacement production motorcycle.

News spreads quickly in the motorcycle drag racing world; not long after Gadson was handed the keyless ignition fob of a 2020 Rocket 3 R and his following Instagram posts chronicling delivery, Gadson’s phone lit up. “When will you hit the strip?” “What do you think it will run?” “What does it weigh?” He was on a mission to find out.

RELATED: 2020 Triumph Rocket 3 R And GT Review First Ride

Triumph came at the 2020 Rocket 3 with a clean sheet. An all-new 2,458cc, 12-valve, longitudinally mounted inline-triple powers both the Rocket 3 R and GT models. The R model has a more aggressive stance and cockpit—a light-to-light roadster intent on turning far sportier motorcycles and muscle cars to shrinking violets when the red light goes out or someone gives the signal. Claimed horsepower is 165 at 6,000 rpm, and peak torque is a stout 163 pound-feet at 4,000 rpm, although near-peak torque is achieved from 2,000 rpm until it slightly tapers at around 5,500 rpm. Triumph also stripped 88 pounds from the Rocket 3 R, 40 of that from the engine.

Triumph’s Rocket 3 is no longer a wolf in sheep’s clothing; it clearly wants to run for pink slips. (Meekail Shaheed/)

The other 48 is reduced thanks to an aluminum frame that is 50 percent lighter. This smaller, more mass-centralized frame allowed the Rocket to become more svelte—a relative term; think a leaner sumo wrestler. No longer is the Rocket a cruiser with a tractor engine. “It’s now a street bruiser; and everyone that looks at it knows it,” Gadson said.

With that, predictions were postulated online, and surely some bets were made. Not many doubted a sub-11 second pass, some claimed it would easily get into the nines, but Gadson had no idea of his own. There was no frame of reference; his bread and butter is sportbikes. He decided to take it out on the street for a ride before loading the trailer for the track.

“First off, the tire pressure was way too high; it would spin the rear tire when I was testing on the street,” Gadson said. “It had 40 pounds in the rear. But man, it is a great streetbike. It’s rock-solid, the ­suspension is great. I hit some good corners, and damn, is it stable. It’s comfortable, smooth. It’s ­nothing you’d expect, that’s for sure. They turned what was a sedan into a GT.”

Finely balancing rear-wheel traction and front-wheel lift is what Gadson does best. (Meekail Shaheed/)

Gadson locked up a private test day at Silver Dollar Motorsport Park with a fully prepped track for the Rocket 3 R. He also invited six-time NHRA Pro Stock Motorcycle Champion and builder of the fastest drag baggers, George Bryce, along to check out what the Rocket would do in 1,320 feet. Bryce would be ­Gadson’s barometer as to just how fast the Rocket is in the heavyweight cruiser world.

Right out the gate, with reduced rear-tire pressure but stock-from-factory suspension settings, Gadson and Rocket tripped the lights at 10.701 seconds at 126.02 mph. That might not have seemed quick for the forum soothsayers, but Bryce was floored.

“Rickey, do you understand what that means? This is a motorcycle without any modifications; what you just went is a fully, and I mean fully built bagger. After ­spending $20,000,” Bryce explained.

Triumph increased the Rocket 3’s displacement 164cc yet cut weight and size from the longitudinally mounted inline-triple. (Meekail Shaheed /)

This was the first run, a baseline. Now it was time to get to work, to do what Gadson does best—fine-tune the setup to shave hundredths and then thousandths of seconds from that first exploratory run. A damping adjustment here, a pound of air pressure there; little things matter and Gadson knows them all. Thirty years of winning or losing by pieces of time faster than a lightning flash has given him a skill for setup that few can match but most admire.

First thing: His initial tire pressure decrease was too much. The track was perfect. Too perfect, in fact. The bike would either wheelie or bog because traction was so high; finding a balance to widen the margin between the two made getting off the line more consistent.

10.686 seconds at 124.56 mph.

Now that the rear tire was sorted, the next link in the chain was clutch-lever adjustment. “I was concerned on how the clutch would hold up, and what the feedback would be like,” Gadson admitted. “This was some serious abuse on it, but it never changed its feedback; it never got hot on me. And of course, there’s still the same clutch in it.”

It’s all about how the clutch locks up. A softly sprung clutch lets the rpm run away and slips; a stiff clutch is too abrupt and can spin the rear or bog the engine. Gadson adjusts the lever in or out depending on a clutch’s feel: Too soft is closer to the grip so the clutch has more time to lock up; too stiff, take up is set near the end of travel to get the revs up before the lock. The Rocket 3’s torque-assist clutch was consistent all day long with a quick lockup, and pickup stayed in the ­middle of the lever’s path all day.

After all mechanical adjustments are complete, Gadson adjusts himself to cut a last few thousandths from the timeslips. (Meekail Shaheed/)

10.625 seconds at 125.83 mph.

Now Gadson could turn his attention to suspension tuning. Keeping the front end from coming up too high required nothing more than a flat-blade-screw screwdriver trained on the 47mm Showa inverted fork’s rebound-damping adjusters. Nearly closing the ­rebound-damping circuit at just one click out slowed the extension of the fork and halted the momentum of the bike pivoting around the rear axle. Gadson describes this as turning the front end into dead weight.

10.607 seconds at 124.55 mph.

The rear suspension was too soft and in need of more compression damping and slower rebound. Clockwise clicks to both adjustment screws let the rear settle just fast enough to take the shock out of the system when the bikes weight shifts to the rear without a bounce-back that would unload the tire.

10.586 seconds at 127.37 mph.

Now he had to adjust himself; body placement is the final piece of the puzzle. He needed to get out of the air as quickly as possible. “Although the handlebars are the lower ones, those bars are high as hell for me,” Gadson said. “Even in a tucked position, your hands are up in the wind and as high as your shoulders. Once I hit second gear, I’d move my left hand in and grab as far inside the handlebar as I could—like a flat-track racer.” His throttle hand had to stay out in the wind, but Gadson would tuck his elbow next to his body.

Final result: 10.562 seconds at 126.41 mph.

After 17 passes, what does it mean that one of the greatest drag racers of all time was able to carve 139 thousandths of a second from the Triumph’s initial elapsed time? That’s a bike length at the end of the quarter-mile, absolute domination in an actual race. But really it shows how truly fast the Rocket 3 R is for such a big motorcycle. Its consistency also begs for choice mods to launch it harder and burn the quarter-mile faster.

Rickey ­Gadson (Meekail Shaheed/)

Gadson was left impressed with the stock Rocket 3 R, citing an aggressive look and repeatable performance that goes hand in hand. It’s no longer a sleeper; it’s a block-to-block bully. “It says 2,500cc right on the valve cover for everyone to see,” Gadson said. “If that’s not intimidation for your ass, I don’t know what is. Come on and try me.”

2020 Rocket 3 R

Displacement:	2,458cc
Horsepower:	134.7 hp @ 5,600 rpm
Torque:	142.5 lb.-ft. @ 3,900 rpm
Weight:	677 lb.
MSRP:	$21,900

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