KAWASAKI ZX-10R....

If you go all the way back to 2011, when the ZX-10R was last completely replaced, and fast-forward to present day, its evolution goes something like this: 2016 new frame and swingarm and power up to 197bhp, plus IMU-based rider aids; 2017 - RR spec introduced so a cylinder head could be homologated for racing even though the 'go faster' parts weren't included... the head was modified only so they could be added later; 2020 - ZX-10R got the cylinder head and pistons from the RR; 2021 new aero... and that's pretty much it.

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It would be easy to scoff at just how little it's been updated over the years and bemoan how the updates applied to the Kawasaki have been so specific and targeted at race teams that they are totally irrelevant anyway. I mean, how can a cylinder head that is there only to accept 'go faster' parts but doesn't get them as standard be considered as an update? Yet, Kawasaki has the perfect answer... seven World Superbike Championships and three British Superbike Championships.

The records are so impressive and dominant that you don't even need to start citing Superstock or Endurance Championships to make it look more impressive than it already is.

The race circus moves so fast that it's easy to forget just how brilliant the ZX-10R was in its day, which is a neat metaphor for where we find the bike is positioned today. Maybe it's a victim of its own success. Kawasaki dropped on a formula that was so good to begin with, it just needed to keep tweaking it here and there to keep it in front of the competition and so consequently, now that the competition has caught up, there's nothing new to take to the fight.

Or maybe it has played a commercial masterstroke and saw which way the superbike market was going and deliberately chose to reign in the spending on developing a bike for a sector that's selling fewer and fewer units, instead sticking with the same bike to act as a price point spoiler in that sector by offering a much cheaper alternative.