One caveat: Kawasaki recently placed a “technical hold” on ZX-10Rs, withdrawing shipped models from the market until it solves a still-undisclosed problem, rumored to be within the engine but not something that could cause catastrophic failure. Kawasaki is playing conservative with this issue, but you can bet they’ll have it sorted promptly.
The Kawasaki was my early favourite. It steers beautifully, holds a line, is agile in the chicanes and has a storming amount of power. If we had left all the bikes on standard suspension settings, there's a good chance the Kawasaki could have taken the victory in this track test.
All the other bikes here are set up to be stable and reassuring on the road, with relatively soft set-ups and slow steering. It's not until you adjust them - speed up the steering and stiffen them up that they become useful on the track.
The Kawasaki ZX-10R needs hardly any tweaking for it to work straight away. That's why it's such an unstable, scary monster on the road when you accelerate over bumps at speed. But on a straights, and is faster than the Ri. But compared to the Yamaha you have to wait too long for the power to chime in when you get on the throttle, so it feels slower coming off a corner. Taking the corner in a lower gear won't catch the R1, either - the lower gear slows you down too much going into and through the corner.
Anyway, you can’t buy a cheaper TC-equipped sportbike than the ZX, ringing in at $13,799. A racetrack-developed ABS system adds $1000 to the price.
