ROUNDING OFF

At this point, I'm supposed to pick a bike from the group as my winner, but when it comes to it, the truth genuinely is that it's impossible. How can you pick one 200bhp bike over another 200bhp bike as better, when they are all capable of making your jaw drop and encourage expletives at their sheer violence?

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Having had a couple of days in the presence of the bikes assembled, we should be grateful to their manufacturers for not giving up on the sector and, to a greater or lesser degree, carrying on with the challenge of making the best better. It's that divergence of effort and investment which has arguably evolved the sector into one that's better than it ever was due to it being far more diverse that it ever was.

Once upon a time, when everyone was trying to make the most powerful, most advanced superbikes, they were all broadly the same. Today, the sector is much more interesting, and with Suzuki announcing that the GSX-R1000 is set to make a return as a cleaned-up version of the one it discontinued, the menu just got bigger. Add into that mix the much-anticipated and soon-to-be-delivered Norton V4 and I'd say big sportsbikes are soon set to be back in a pretty decent place.