Recently, I was proven right.  Not that’s a surprise, because I’m always right.  Except when it comes to women, but that’s different; understanding women is akin to being able to do calculus in your head, play the piano, juggle, and do it on a high wire 1,000 feet in the air.  If I offended anyone who needs to sit down to pee, fuck you and your “sisters” who make our lives miserable and take time away from useful activities like drinking beer and riding motorcycles (Bitter much? and as always Mad Bike Boy's views are unlikely to have any relevance to themotorcyclereview.com or any of the companies affiliates etc... Ed.).  Anyhow, I digress.  I’ve been saying for a long time that improvements to modern bikes are incremental, but overall sports bikes are going backwards. Performance Bike magazine, written by a bunch of good bastards who actually like bikes, put this to the test.  They wanted to compare a mildly worked K1 GSXR1000 against a K9 (and K10 really) and see which would be fastest.  Now, being as I’ve steadfastly refused to trade "Scoot" (a K2) in for a newer prettier model; I sat up and paid attention, or what passes for attention since my last concussion and rehab episode.  And before you send me emails telling me why I’m dumber than a concussed Wombat... Don't bother... The fact is I’ve ridden them all and I like what I have!

So, PB had a small budget and spent money on the K1 – upgrading the brakes, doing some head work, fitting K5 headers and an aftermarket can – and they tweaked the bouncy bits as well. Mine has all that and quite a lot more thanks to Pops Yoshimura and a contemptuous disregard for my credit rating.  I wish I had of known about bolting K4 SV1000 calipers to the pointy end; that would have saved mucho dinero...The math is pretty simple.  Power to weight is simple.  Put 22 pounds worth of lard on your back and then go run up some stairs.  Dump the lard, and do the same thing, and suddenly, it seems easier.   Now add 22 pounds of shit to a bike and see what happens; Suzuki took a K1 and added 22 pounds to it and called it a K9.  The K1/2 has much better low end stomp, and if you can take that, and amplify it using a little engine work, then better becomes much better.  Torque is your friend.  Imagine trying to knock a wall down, would you rather use a tiny hammer and hit the wall hundreds of times, or would you just grab a sledge hammer?

The K1/2 is lighter, and you can get good torque out of it.  It’s not as modern, nimble, or as flickable as the K9, but imagine adding a set of lighter wheels – carbon BST’s would be my recommendation.   Scoot has also undergone a Jenny Craig's diet, so the gains are amplified further.

Imagine the shock and surprise when the K1 lapped a French racetrack faster than the K9.  Now, keep it in perspective, if you dump the useless greenie hippy catalytic converter, do some head and suspension work, and then go mad with cams and full system from Pops, the K9 would be fasterer again.  But, you’d have some serious capital tied up – for the same money you could poke and stroke the K1, buy the carbon wheels, buy a track bike, learn to ride the wheels off it using the California SuperBike School, then you’d be faster again.  Because as should be obvious to you all by now, 95% of the speed of a rider on a modern sportsbike comes from the loose nut on top of the bike.