So as soon as the racing was over and the points had been tabulated, I got on the road, making the most of the bike's effortless mid-range torque as I cut through the lazy Saturday afternoon traffic.

After the FJR1300 had been in production for two years Yamaha NV's publicity mavens ran a web-based survey to find out what owners liked - or didn't - about their bikes and built lessons learned in the current model.

Most European riders had ABS on the top of their wish list – which means their FJRs get ridden year-round in all weathers. Yamaha has flirted with ABS, notably on the astonishing GTS1000 with its hub-centre steering, as well as on some Japan-only scooters.

It was also available on some mid-1990s FJ1200s in the US and Britain but the FJR1300A is the first mainstream model since then from the Triple Tuning Fork to boast this feature.

It's a two-channel system, controlling the front and rear wheels separately, via small pickups reading from slotted wheels inside the disc brakes at each end – which meant increasing the size of the discs from 298 to 320mm in front.

That's not a bad thing, because having ABS means you can make the brakes as sharp as you like and get away with it. In this case the brakes have no more bite than the those on the previous model (despite the standard stainless-steel brake hoses) but when squeezed hard they deliver fearsome retardation, enough to haul this quarter-ton luxury bus down in short order.

Despite riding the bike at silly speeds on wet and dry roads I never felt the ABS working – other than once when I deliberately stomped on the back brake in a car park and felt the lever pulsing gently under my foot.

The motor has been retuned for even more torque, up from 126 to a muscular 134.4Nm, albeit at a slightly higher 7000rpm, while power drops a little, from 106.7kW at 8500rpm to 105.5kW at 8000 – and that just about sums up this engine.

Midrange muscle

Usable power starts at 2500rpm with just a little growling; the curve is smooth and almost linear from there up to the redline at 9000 revs. Sure, there's some annoying secondary vibration over seven, but the power delivery just keeps on getting stronger without steps or jumps.

The bike doesn't feel like it's accelerating very hard – it's just that everything around you seems to be going backwards! Guess that's what they mean by effortless performance.

Even chopping the throttle open and closed doesn't seem to affect the FJR's progress adversely - even though the motor is fuel-injected there's very little "slamming door" effect.

The bike still tops out just under 250km/h with the rev-counter a needle's width this side of the naughty line but the test bike's rear suspension had been set up a little soft for comfort and over 225km/h that translated to a little front wheel nervousness.

It didn't stop me exploring the bike's top end but restricted such excursions to straight roads and perfect conditions.

The five-speed gearbox and shaft final drive are unchanged. The FJR has a vertical gearbox like the R1, a layout notorious for poor shifting.

The FJR's is the best box of this type I've tried, distinctly notchy at low revs but very positive throughout the rev range, positively inviting clutchless upshifts – unusual for a shaftie and a real commendation for the transmission.

Comfortable seating

There have been some revisions to the body panels – not to the seating which remains as broad and plush as ever - but Yamaha has replaced the conventional front indicators with faired-in, car-style units and included a small compartment in the left side of the main fairing, useful for eyewear and cellphone.

The fairing lowers, however, remain flimsy and poorly mounted, a common fault on fully enclosed Yamahas and one I noted on my road review of the first-generation FJR1300.

There's also a quick and convenient height adjustment for the two headlights, very useful for bikes that tend to be heavily loaded for long trips.

Yamaha has also added a car-style immobiliser that works off a transponder in the ignition key. This makes the big tourer almost impossible to hotwire but you can't have spare keys cut locally – if you lose one you have to get the real thing from Japan at commensurate expense.

Reshaped screen

The electrically adjustable screen has also been reshaped to reduce turbulence for rider and passenger and improve protection, according to Yamaha's publicity material.

It's one of the bike's few failures; buffeting on the back of the rider's head has indeed been reduced but at the expense of a fearsome wind roar – irrespective of speed - that gets worse as the screen is raised.

With the screen all the way up you can't hear yourself think and the noise soon induces a headache, so I moved it all the way down and treated the big four like a sports bike, relaxing my shoulders and leaning forward into the wind.

One of the problems with pushing big bikes hard to cover distance as fast as possible is that they get thirsty. The FJR1300A is no better and no worse than others in this respect, recording 7.57 litres/100km over the whole weekend, rising to an extravagant 8.32 on the trip up to Barrydale.

For the record, the 251km took one hour and 42 minutes, at an average speed of 147.6km/h, including the Huguenot tunnel, three small towns and two mountain passes. When Yamaha says this thing is a performance tourer, it's not kidding.

Predictable handling

Inside the limits of the suspension the bike's handling is predictable and slightly slow, to be expected from a quarter-ton motorcycle with a lot of its weight a long way off the ground.

Despite the high, rather wide, bars you need a fair amount of body English to change directions quickly – I found myself hauling hard on the outside bar to dial in enough countersteer when diving into fast corners and more than once the bike ran a little wide because I hadn't hauled hard enough.

On the way back, cruising at 140-160km/h, the handling was lighter, the steering more balanced and less like sheer hard work. The bike settled into a long-legged rhythm whistling along (did I mention that it has seriously wussy exhaust note?) at around 6500rpm with enough acceleration in hand to leave any four-door sedan on the planet gasping for breath without even changing down. Did I say effortless performance?

Heavy rain

Halfway back I ran into heavy rain – and I wasn't wearing waterproof gear. I slowed to around 120km/h and adjusted the screen as high as it would go, putting up with the deafening roar to stay as dry ass possible.

Whatever its shortcomings in the acoustic department the fairing certainly keeps the weather off – the only parts of me that got really wet were my hands and my heels, due to some aerodynamic quirk of the lower fairing panels.

If you plan to use the screen adjustment on your FJR, I suggest you wear earplugs every time you ride beyond the street lights.

The wind roar is enough to do your hearing permanent harm in the long run – and the long run is what this bike was built for.

"We see the FJR1300 as a long-life model," says Yamaha Motor Europe marketing and sales manager Robert Landman.

He's right; it's a superbly appointed luxury tourer with serious speed capability, fully adjustable suspension (you can even tune the rear pre-load on the fly) and striking good looks.

It's a mile-eater with good manners, agile enough at lower speeds to handle small-town traffic with as much aplomb as it does the mountain passes that you'll ride through to get there.