RockMoto

Quick: Tell me what does better lap times around a race course, one that somewhat resembles a fast mountain road, with a nice mix of elevation changes to go with all the lefts and rights. Pick either a Yamaha YZF-R1 sport bike…or the new Honda VFR1200F, that weighs a claimed 591 pounds ready to go, has a generous, passenger-friendly 60-inch wheelbase, single-overhead cams, anti-lock brakes, shaft-drive (yeah, SHAFT-DRIVE) and can be had with factory options such as saddlebags, a trunk, heated grips and a 12V accessory socket?

So which bike is faster? Well, you’re wrong.

Unless you’re inebriated or have a very large red Honda wing tattoo prominently displayed on your dermis, I know you picked the R1. But the correct answer is VFR.

Okay, it was a bit of a trick question. I neglected to mention that the R1 is the 1998 model, the original. And yes indeed, Bike Magazine of Britain just compared Honda’s latest V4 to sport bikes throughout several eras and found that the VFR was 3.75 seconds a lap faster around one of their test tracks, Millbrook's Alpine Loop, compared to the first R1, which was revolutionary for its shocking blend of low weight and high horsepower and arguably the best sport bike of the last century.

Wrap your head around that one.

And now picture this science-fiction scenario. You order your new VFR with the Time Travel accessory, you set the Wayback dial for the summer of ’98, press the button and you and the bike vault through the spacetime continuum (with a lot of exciting digital special effects) to one of your favorite monthly track days that you frequented a dozen years ago.

Please, geeks, bear with me. This is just a blog, so no Stephen Hawking commentary. Let it go.

Anyway, your best riding buddy is there with his brand-new R1, proud and holding court, and you roll up in the paddock on your VFR, having just traversed the wormhole. The onlookers crowd around, wondering all about this wild looking sport-touring-like bike they’ve never seen and they ask dozens of breathless questions. They don’t even notice the extra few pounds you carry, the salt to go with the pepper, and the dreaded diminishing hairline. You then unload your one-piece racy leathers from the tail trunk, put ’em on, along with some fresh knee-pucks, and detach the removable luggage from the bike.

Your R1 friend and the track rats wonder if you are serious. They snicker. They make a few choice comments. They’d start Tweeting about it except that Twitter hasn’t been invented yet.

After dialing in the VFR’s tire-pressures and suspension, you then proceed to the open session of the track day. You carefully warm up the tires and then you really get on it, mercilessly hunting down your R1 buddy, and everyone else riding a street-legal sport bike of the time, as if they are mortally wounded rabbits, and you absolutely stomp on them, lap after lap on your big, comfortable, smooth, SHAFT-DRIVEN, ABS-EQUIPPED VFR. You humiliate them. Utterly.

Now your pal and everyone in the pits wants to know how this could possibly happen. They are dumbfounded, shaking. Their wee 20th-century brains are somersaulting in their throbbing skulls. They want answers, now. But before you can even start to get into it, you receive a call on your new iPhone 4G (why, yes they can also receive phone calls from the future). Certainly, dear, you can pick up a few things from the grocery store on the way home. You have room in the saddlebags, so no worries. You re-attach the hard luggage, depart the scene, re-ignite the wormhole and ride off into the future, headed post-haste for your local dairy section. The end.

How’s that for a “Twilight Zone” episode?

The thing is, we’re all riding off into the future. The Golden Age of Motorcycling is now. It’s also tomorrow. And the year after that and the year after that. I love old motorcycles and I have a few cherished ones myself. But two-wheelers, phones, computers, hardware, software, you name it, all have made dramatic, unthinkable strides thanks to the real-world science fact of relentless technological development. We all benefit from wave after wave of clever people with pocket protectors, CAD/CAM and data acquisition devices...and genius bike engineers downloading details from pro racers and test riders endlessly circulating on tracks around the world. It never stops.

I’ve been spending some seat time on the new Honda and it’s great. More than most people could ever hope to want in a motorcycle. Even without a Wayback button. And yeah, among a million other giant leaps for humankind, a new VFR beats an old R1 around at least one racetrack on the planet.

That’s just crazy but you really just gotta love it. - Ty