The set-up
Five bikes, two riders, four challenges, a datalogger, a stopwatch, a pile of cones – and one winner
THERE ARE ALL sorts of ways to measure a bike’s performance. You could strap it to a dyno and see how much horsepower it makes. You could take it to Santa Pod and time how quickly it can rocket down a quarter-mile of drag strip. You could plonk a Motogp racer on board and see how quickly he can lap a track. Or you could find a two-mile runway, tuck in tight and discover its top speed on the rev-limiter in sixth gear.
All fine ideas, and in their own way each reveals where a machine’s limits lie. But none of them directly relate to what goes on, day-to-day, when you’re riding in traffic on the road. So Bike have devised a set of more relevant challenges, designed to be run at regular road speeds, to see how different motorcycles deal with the kind of obstacles we’re likely to come across. Welcome to the Real World Performance Test. Welcome to the real world.