100% this.

Nah, the decision to lead in the wet was right, because his pace was much better than Jorge.

If you haven’t been to Misano for this GP, I don’t think you can fully grasp it. It’s 3 miles away from Rossi’s home town (that he still lives in), and it’s 90,000 Italians packed into a TINY seaside race track to see their idol... literally their embodiment of a god.

I rode it on the road all day a few times. Like any sport bike, my knees started shouting in steady-state highway riding (or traffic). It wasn’t physically demanding and it feels light and has a roomy cockpit in general (compared to something like a Ducati 1198). If you’re my size though, spend the $150 to get some…

I wish every manufacturer would sell a non-legal track version of their bikes to save everyone a few bucks and headaches.

I read an interesting thing from Kaming Ko (who owns the Ducati GP11 VR46 bike) about why he reneged his reserved spot to buy the street legal RC213V-S. He said for the price he could buy an actual Aspar RC213V-RS MotoGP bike (Hayden’s bike, I believe). So for over $200,000 (after grey market sport kit ECU) you still…

R1-M also has the semi-active Ohlins forks. The computer has great data-logging and allows you to access it all via an smart-device app. Both bikes do have “RACE MODE” dash display that has a thumb-actuated lap timer for live timing.

I loved how the bike behaved under braking. It was a LITTLE bit excessive, but it suits my style so I was cool with it. Perfection would be a tad less engine braking in the ECU map, and a rear shock (TTX or equivalent) setup perfectly. Dani would probably prefer a lot less engine braking to help keep the rear wheel…

Not something I ever noticed. I thought it was very smooth, more so than the previous generation’s engine.

Note: I also think both of us felt like we went slower on the R1-M (where we were recording lap times) purely because we were TERRIFIED of coming back with that thing on the crash truck like “Sup...”

There’s a reason why this isn’t going to be a short reply, and I want to balance complaining about “what we were given” with “Holy shit these bikes are stock.”

They had the ABS turned off for us. If I were to buy one for track/racing, I would remove the entire brake pump system all together to save weight, clear all codes in the ECU with a re-flash (that would happen anyway for new exhaust and fuel map). For the street, it’s one of the better systems I’ve encountered. When…