FEATURE
It's absolutely undeniable that each of these bikes are more than capable of delivering decent performance, offer decent build quality and are good fun to ride. You'll be hard-pressed to not enjoy yourself on any one of them – but don't mistake our enthusiasm for them because they are filling the void left by the now extinct supersport class… they aren't even close to doing that.
First of all, there's the price point. These bikeshardcore, cutting-edge sportsbikes. For example, the 2006 Yamaha R6 was the first production bike to be fitted with ride-by-wire engine management, it had titanium valves and even chrome-nitride valve springs to help the engine spin up to 18,000rpm and make 130bhp. It also weighed 20kg less than the lightest bike on this test and that's just for starters, so clear your mind of any comparisons between the two classes.
