2019 S1000RR

The year 2019 saw the first total reinvention of the S1000RR since it came out, and typically for BMW, it didn’t hold back.

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The fourth generation – generations two and three were evolutions of the first – was a brand-new concept that arguably BMW didn’t need to come up with at the time. The third-generation S1000RR, launched in 2015 and claiming about 198bhp, was dominating the race track and the showrooms and was still comfortably winning group tests in magazines at a canter, but BMW went ahead and moved the goal posts again.

The fourth-generation S1000RR got a new engine which – crucially – featured BMW’s take on variable valve timing to give the S1000RR a massive boost of midrange power that nobody knew it needed... it didn’t need the boost, but it got it anyway. Marvelling in this new-found midrange power, I recall the first time I rode a 2019 S1000RR. I took it down to 28mph in sixth gear, which was as slow as it would go without me using the brakes to make it go any slower.