Simply the best…just like Dangerous.
So after six months of organising, costing all the money from our piggybanks and enough sets of delectable Bridgestones to keep a whole race paddock content, SBOTY reached its climax after just two flying laps on the slick-shod Aprilia… and by no small margin. Judging this bike by its proven track pedigree, there was little doubt that it would do pretty well at Navarra but there were no guarantees it would or could beat the rest. A lot of the bikes we’d expected to be right up there simply weren’t, and in fact my first laps on the RSV4 felt about as awkward as the time I got caught with a porn mag by an elderly relative.
Owing to the bike’s lack of grip, less aggressive pickup out of the tighter bends and tendency to run deeper into corners than a snooker ball, I wasn’t holding out much hope for the most winning SBOTY bike of all time. But just before utter desperation started kicking in and with four laps of abuse still in the offing, I came in to check the suspension. Assassination attempts usually involve guns, or at least a rusty crowbar, but I’m sure the fully wound in compression and rebound adjusters were meant to be a more artistic take on such a happening. Being short of time, and in a bid to be fair to the Aprilia, I twiddled the adjusters to the middle of their ranges before heading back on track to round off my stint. Like remembering the antics from a drunken night out, instantly I was reminded of the chassis’ corner speed-loving brilliance, and how hard it could be pushed mid-corner without ever coming close to its limit. Feeling the polar opposite to the bucking and sliding mess it had been moments earlier, the RSV4 was keen to make the most of its new lease of life.