Dangerous clearly never went to finishing school.
And so it was that SBOTY concluded yet again with the Aprilia as top dog; a bike unrivalled around the technical Navarra race track, having showcased its utter brilliance for another consecutive year. But that’s not to say everything else was a league apart. Far from it. The one thing that came to the fore during our sunny Spanish spankings was the capability of all the bikes, which were on occasion split by the smallest of margins.
So what gave the better bikes their edge? Ultimately, it came down to individual idiosyncrasies such as the sophistication of electronic rider aids, or how conducive a braking package was to the demands of the track’s abundance of heavy anchorage points. Some bikes seemed to want to help you out of corners, while others wanted to launch you through their screens. The differences were very real and very plentiful. And no steed was perfect.