Top Gear is my absolute favorite show. And watching car races where the cars can't touch each other and just go in a line is absolutly a snoozefest.

NASCAR in HD on a giant screen is hugely entertaining. But on a small screen in low def it just looks like they are going round and round.

 

That's kind of the feeling I have with my new bike. Of course my most recent experience with bikes was my '01 RM250. I guess most anything will feel big and slow after flicking that around.

BTW, howdy neighbor. I'm not too far from you- about an hour east of Dothan. Lived in Troy for 6 years before we moved on over to Gee-ore-gee-uh.

 

Top gear's my number one too! Watched the one last night with the Stig revealed, also the Vincent Black Shadow vs old Jag and steam train...Hilarious stuff .

 

Your bike prolly can go just as fast as 'you' were going in the BMW, you just dont have the skill nor confidence to do it (not saying I do either lol). But ultimately yea that BMW can go faster than our bikes can.

 

I've raced exotic sports cars on a local mountain road, and I've stayed behind the bigger (wider) cars like Corvettes and Vipers without hardly trying. They have to stay completely in their lane or they are rubbing against the guardrail on one side. For them to get any speed, they have to cross the double line on curves. When they start going completely in the other lane, I back off.

I've also raced smaller cars like WRX's. The smaller size allows them to move in their lane. But bikes can go from tire track to tire track in a lane, straightening out the curves, whereas cars can't. And bikes, especially the CBR, can out-accelerate any car out of the corner.

Does anyone remember Honda's ad on TV for the VFR? I think it was in the mid 80's. Freddie Spencer is talking to the camera while a Nissan 280ZX (I think) takes off around a race track. Freddie is putting on his helmet and gloves, saying how great the bike is, and then takes off. The camera shows an aerial view of Freddie gaining on the car and then near the finish line, Freddie passes the Z.

 

Sounds like a nice advert Slowpoke , but you gotta admit the Nissan 280Z was a piece of ****!

The point is though , a car that is purely designed to go around a track in the fastest possible time is gonna beat a bike designed for the same purpose e.g. Formula 1 Vs MotoGP.

I'm not a formula one fan , think it's boring as hell , I much prefer bikes to cars , but for ultimate speed around a race track the car will win

 

Very true, with the increased contact patch per tire times 4, and the ability to carry more horsepower to weight ratio and the addition of down force, the car will win around the track. (down force is key)

There is a lot of drag per HP with a bike.

The speed record for a two wheeled vehicle is 580.833 km/h (360.913 mph).
The speed record for a four wheeled vehicle is 737.794 km/h (458.444 mph).

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of..._speed_records

 

It sounds like there might be other reasons (hard to make down force predictably when you are flipping the body work from side to side) why putting those gigantic rounded tires on a superbike to increase the contact patch to match or exceed the ratio in a car might not solve the problem.

So that's what we need, gyro-controlled moving bodywork!

Sure, I need to go faster. Right.

 

One of the US cycle mags did a test like that four or five years back, with Kevin Schwantz piloting a 475hp Corvette around the Willow Springs track, then a GSXR 1000. He was eight seconds per lap faster on the bike. He also did an acceleration/braking test that was in fashion then, dragging to 100 mph, then braking to a stop (0-100-0). The bike was stopped before the car reached 100mph.

A year or so later, I read that someone had compared track data between F1 cars and WSB bikes. The cars were faster due to their much wider race tires, light weight, and 800-plus horses. They are far better than any production cars out there. The racing motorcycle was just slightly quicker than the Gixxer Schwantz tested.

Schwantz and others have said that the bikes we can buy have about 90% of the performance of WSB racing bikes. The Corvette couldn't touch an F1 car.

That makes a good sport bike one hell of a deal.

Craig

 

I just watched the Top Gear last night where Richard Hammond tried to drive a Formula 1 car. Extremely interesting. They are almost impossible to drive at all and even harder to get to their top performance capabilities. I have a whole new respect for those guys (the real drivers). I can see how a car that is drivable by mere mortals just can't have the characteristics of those cars. As an example, they don't have much grip until you heat up the tires (which they preheat for you), and if don't drive hard and let them cool, you will lose it. And you can't take off slowly because they have so little torque that there is a circuit that pushes the clutch in for you if it senses you are going to lug the engine. It was kind of bizarre, he couldn't make himself push it hard enough to stay on the track.