FIRM FOUNDATIONS KAWASAKI ZX-10R

Let’s be honest, Kawasaki’s unveil of its 2021 ZX-10R (and RR) caught a few of us off guard. It wasn’t just the unique – or should that be questionable – styling that prompted a wave of harsh feedback online; the spec also got a hammering, with a common thought being that Kawasaki had taken the easy route to market without putting in the graft associated with a wholly new proposition. I guess the feeling was that Kawasaki had simply upcycled their flagship litre bike (again) with little more than a nip, tuck and a botched facelift, while focussing on the changes necessary to gratify the legislative fun-police demanding that the ZX-10R became Euro5 compliant. The cynic in me thought exactly this – and it was only on arrival at the model’s UK launch that my opinion began to change.

Pre-encounter, this bike had registered as a nine-pinter at best but in the flesh at the presentation, this digitally denounced monster began to grow on me. Its angles started making sense, its integrated wings were actually quite fetching, and seeing the model’s discotheque-dash had finally been pied off and replaced by a saucy TFT number made me