MPG

We all do it. Even if we don’t admit it. Traffic light racing. Silly and purile maybe, but when another bikes lines up alongside and the lights turn green, you going to just let him go? How to do it. And the best bikes to do it on...

1984. A great year for films, a seminal year for music, and the year Kawasaki stole Suzuki’s Katana 1100 thunder with their all-new watercooled GPZ900R. Overnight, superbikes had suddenly entered the computer age

If you’ve only really been into bikes for the past three years, your perception of BMW is probably exactly as the marketing types in Munich would like it.

While doodling a sketch for a potential drag race bike back in 1992, Ducati designer Miguel Angel Galuzzi unknowingly created the basic principle of a new streetbike. A year later Ducati released the Monster, so called because of an apparent dispute over its name.

Although most power-hungry bike journalists would have you believe that motorcycling is all about top speed and how quickly you can get there, the rest of us know it’s more about isolated moments of pure fun when it all comes together through a given section of road. And in oh-so many ways, Kawasaki’s new Ninja 250R delivers just that.

World Superbikes was simply massive in this country in 1995. While GPs were dominated by Mick Doohan and turning into a predictable procession, WSB was tough, gnarly racing and incredible to watch.

Ducati have added another fantastic bike to their already very good range. Replacing the S2R1000 the new 1100 has made use of the trellis frame and sub-frame from the 696 and the 1078cc air cooled DS engine from the existing range. Hypermotard heads mean 95bhp and 73ft lbs in a bike with a claimed dry weight of just 169kg.

If you can’t beat them, get the rules changed so you can then build a bike with all the bits you need to dominate the racetrack out of the box. Ducati’s 1098R is pure WSB homologation magic...

One man’s beauty is another man’s toad, or some such proverb is often quoted when referring to a visually challenged offspring. Usually behind the proud parent’s backs.

There are at least 1,843 good reasons why Yamaha have taken the trouble to develop the YZF-R125. That’s the number of CBR125Rs that Honda sold in the UK last year. Add to that all the CBRs flogged in Europe and in the two previous years, and it adds up to a convincing reason to build a serious challenger.

When I’m asked what is the best race bike I’ve ever ridden, my answer is unquestionably the Honda RVF750. It had smooth power but was rapid, handled like a dream and was ultra stable into the bargain. The first time I rode one was practicing for the Suzuka 8 Hour in 1987 while I was contracted to HRC in 500 GPs.

�� Let’s cut to the chase. The DN-01 looks like nothing else on Earth. I like it. A lot. It will get you noticed and it is a vision of the future, with its organic, sweeping lines, pull back bars, single-sided swingarm, chunky rear hoop, and chilled-to-the-bone riding position.

It’s chucking it down. I can’t really see where I’m going as yet another errant Fiat Punto rental car appears out of the low cloud halfway across my side of the road. I’m soaked to the skin, I’m on an unfamiliar road high in the mountains and I’m not too sure of the way back to the hotel.

A peach from triumph, made peachier

Perhaps because KTM are best known for producing some of the best off-road competition machines of recent times, when the RC8 arrived a year ago many people expected KTM’s first attempt at a pure sports bike to be filling half of every superstock race grid by the end of the 2008 season.

If ever there’s been a bike that reflects the way motorcyclists have changed over the last couple of decades, it’s Yamaha’s Tenere. The original XT600Z Ténéré, launched in 1983, was a direct descendent of the XT500 that had won the first two Paris-Dakar rallies a few years earlier.

Just a few years ago the very idea of serious enduro riding on something with BMW on the tank would have been preposterous. Huge trans-globe adventure busters, absolutely. Rounded commuters with off-road style, brilliant. But a serious, sharp-edged dirtbike to take the fight to KTM and the Japanese? BMW? Don’t think so.

“Having seen both bikes in the flesh I tell you, you wouldn’t even look at the orange paint scheme once you have seen the white one. It’s stunning. But both bikes just ooze quality and style.

The 2008 Fireblade CBR1000RR does everything it says on the tin, but lacks a wow factor.