Ramón Forcada builds a seriously extreme Tenere 700
MotoGP know-how meets trail ambition as the Yamaha Ténéré 700 is rebuilt into the race-minded, hand-crafted PURA 01.
The team at Yamaha Málaga Center has teamed up with MotoGP veteran Ramón Forcada to build something rather different: the PURA 01.
It started life as a Yamaha Ténéré 700, but the end result lands much closer to a purpose-built rally tool than anything sitting in a dealer showroom. The aim isn’t aesthetics or personalisation for its own sake, with Forcada at the helm, the path this bike has been on is one of pure performance, efficiency and the connection to the rider.
You may also like to read our Yamaha Tenere 700 review
The headline number is a claimed 20 kilos reduction in weight over the stock bike. To shed that much weight, it’s clear we aren’t just talking about the usual bolt-on diet. Indeed, the Pura 01 has been on a ground-up diet, components have been swapped, assemblies rethought, and excess weight trimmed wherever it could. Less mass means quicker acceleration, improved agility and less rider fatigue when the terrain gets rough.
Boosting performance is the bike’s power output, which has increased by just under 10bhp (as stock, the Tenere 700 puts out roughly 70bhp). The increased power comes thanks to revised intake work, updated electronic management and a sharper, faster power delivery curve. It’s not about peak numbers, though. The goal is responsiveness. A standard T7 is eager, although its maker claims this one wants to race.
Forcada has applied MotoGP-style thinking to trail riding: chassis-to-rider communication, throttle feel and stability when ridden hard. Ergonomics have been redrawn with the rider standing, giving the bike a slimmer midsection, tweaked geometry and better weight distribution. In short, it’s now built around off-road control rather than on and off-road comfort.
Each Pura 01 will be hand-built, with the manufacturing process tailored to the rider’s profile. That places it well outside the usual production-bike mindset. Yamaha Málaga Center is keen to press that this isn’t just a showpiece. The Pura 01 has been developed with rally raid and Dakar-style terrain in mind — the sort of riding where weight, electronic accuracy and structural reliability aren’t preferences, they’re survival tools.
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Simon (AKA Toad) has been working within the motorcycle industry for more than twelve years, and a member of the motorcyclist family since birth. Growing up around British-built single and twins, it was inevitable that a life on two wheels was on the cards, from a very early age!
