The Triumph is a Year 2001 version. The rerferences to a first-year effort are as such because the bike has not changed since it's intro. That is, unless you count a re-mapped Fi system that still doesn't work correctly as a new bike.
And as for why we weren't "bashing the TT last year," this is because we didn't have one from Triumph until a few weeks ago. Which is, again, why it took "3 or 4 months" to finish this.
And as for why the Kawasaki was left out of the "original" shootout, to reiterate: Kawasaki was not able to provide us with a bike in time, even though we held the shootout for them for more than two weeks.
The CBR? It's my personal favorite all-around bike. I would have voted it tops here, though there are still people (some of whom test for us) who do not get on well with the F4i and who would have relegated it to something other than top spot here (just like they did in the "original" shootout). And since the requests we got for this shootout were the winner (of the "original" shootout) versus last year's winner versus the new kid Triumph TT, that's just what we did.
Please note: it was never our intention to do two seperate shootouts. We were all set to do one huge shootout with ALL contenders in every conceivable situation (ones that we could conceive of, anyway) set with track times scheduled, sticky rubber for all bikes involved, dates to be gone from the office for lots of real-world back-to-back testing etc. But we were missing two very important bikes. The readers knew this and, as stated above, requested THIS shootout. So we did it for them.
Do not think your points (all of you posters) are ignored. They will be addressed based on merit and changes will be made.
So, here's looking to the future, hoping manufacturers get us their bikes on time when they say they will, and for making MO's tests what you want them to be (within reason, of course. We have a hard time explaining to the women in our lives why we NEED nude women in our content).
-minime
Note: We just received a very cool new instrument that will allow us to provide you with everything from 0-60 times, quarter mile times, maximum acceleration (both positive and negative) in G's, and even some other things that might not be relevant, though we'll have to spend some time with the gadget to find out for ourselves.