TAKING CONTROL

How controlling are you? I don’t mean in your relationship, silly, but with your bike. See, if you’re not in control, you’re the one being controlled and that often means you’ll spend a lot of your time in the gravel trap… or your lap times are so slow they’re best counted by a sundial, just like Boothy’s. Motorcycles are feisty things, constantly challenging physics in more ways than you can shake a stick at, while delivering a pace so ferocious they can make cornered lions seem cute. The point is, with contemporary production bike horsepower figures through the roof, controlling such towering outputs is no mean feat, despite whatever hi-tech gadgetry you’ve got littering your dash. So the question is, how do you take control of a nigh-on-200bhp, fire-breathing, will-hurt-you-if-it-can, motorcycle? That’s the question we’re set to tackle with this issue’s episode of our track bike builder project, but just to recap in case you’ve been living under a rock and missed the inaugural part of our GSX-R1000 track bike build, last issue we placed the Suzuki on a strict diet and managed to lose 29kg in weight with the help of some sexy components and a load of expert insight from the boys at Hawk Racing. Shedding weight from every imaginable extremity, and binning a load of road-focused gubbings while we were at it, the Gixer was transformed from a 202kg bruiser into a sleek and sexy size eight, weighing in at just