The rear brake actually has a lot of stopping power and you can use it most anywhere you want with confidence. Of course I don't recommend slamming on the rear brake in the middle of a turn but the balloon tire will actually hold on to the road a lot better than one would believe. I really did have a few corners where the tire was dancing around from left to right under max braking and this is how you will know that you ARE on the edge. But just under that thresh hold you should feel nice and confident. Keep up that pace and you'll find out how fast the brakes will fade so be very careful - the predictability of the handling really drops off at speed. Anyhow the rear tire has a lot of grip under braking for how hard the compound is. Under acceleration in the dirty corners I expected it to have a more grip and that's the only complaint besides the sidewall flex. Metzeler supplies a much better Adventure tire that is the next tire that this bike will receive.
Now the rear suspension was set pretty damn hard from the factory. After my back started hurting from the bumps I started fiddling with the knob and ooooh yeah the suspension softened up quite well! The rear shock does a great job on the Vstrom. I was really surprised how well it worked at speed all day long. We hit a big variety of back roads and I had a great time going over all sorts of potholes, curbs, dirt culverts, up embankments and peeling out in the dirt after overshooting a couple of turns... damn brakes!! If you back off the damepening to go easier on your back the bike handles a lot betteer over rough terrain without suffering much consequence on the street at all. They did a great job on the rear...
the front completely blows though.