No-one likes being the new kid at school – especially when you have a few ‘issues’. Debuting the ZX-10R at the power-mad playground of the Sepang circuit in Malaysia, Kawasaki diligently got the school run route spot on and the uniform certainly looked great, two parental wins, but we learned within a few corners that the Ninja in this form might struggle if it got into a fight with one of the other kids in the class
So while the ZX-10R struggled to pull itself out of the uphill fourth turn on track (a second gear corner all day long, but down to first on the Ten) the blame for this lethargy lay 6,000 miles away. You may have noticed that the European Union has copped a lot of flack this year, and when it comes to the performance of the ZX-10R the embattled institution is going to receive a lot more. Regulation (EU) No 168/2013, or Euro4 to give it its colloquial name, nearly halved every measured limit to pass the test. The belching out of carbon dioxide, hydrocarbons and nitrogen oxides had to be curbed – and this could only be done at the cost of power.