Fired Blade

HONDA CBR 1000 RR-R

- Harry Fisher

Let’s get this out there straight away; I can’t ride superbikes. I’m too slow and not skilled enough to get within even 50% of their potential. Maybe I’m too old as well.

But it doesn’t stop me lusting after them; it doesn’t stop me recognising and being in awe of the performance or of the engineering that goes into them. And it doesn’t stop me desperately wanting to be able to ride them properly and taking every opportunity to try to do so.

Superbikes may have lost their sales crown in recent years to the allconquering adventure bikes but that doesn’t stop the manufacturers spending enormous amounts of money constantly developing them to ever more unimaginable heights. It’s almost as if they feel they have to have that flagship bike in the range to justify the equally enormous sums they spend on racing, be it in World Superbikes or MotoGP; no good racing if you can’t ‘win on Sunday, sell on Monday.’

In fact, it is World Superbikes and the Irish and Isle of Man TT road races that are probably keeping these machines in existence. After all, both series have classes that feature bikes that start with a road bike platform and have varying levels of alteration permitted. Take away the superbikes and you effectively kill productionbased road racing.

But no matter why they exist; let’s just rejoice that they do.