[33545]

First off- Congrats! I haven't ridden the long version, but I have ridden standard Lightnings and I've got over 21k miles on my '04 Firebolt. These bikes rock!



As for racing- the bikes can't ride themselves. Outside of racing in a straight line, the only way anyone outruns anyone else is by out-riding them. If your buddy can ride better than you he's going to eat your lunch whether you're on an EX500 or an R1. On the other hand, your XB12 is easier to ride than his R6. You've got a much more usable powerband with way more low end power stuffed into a more stable chassis. His bike makes more peak power, but he has to rev to over 10k rpm to get it. This should allow you to out power him coming off of corners and get a better exit speed.

 

[33545]

Even then the R6 rider better know what he's doing to get away from the Buell. The XB12 has so much more low end power that he should be able to crush him off the line and leave the R6 to play catch up.

 

[33545]

More like- "the only thing that can beat a factory-prepped R6 piloted by a professional is a factory-prepped 600RR piloted by another professional."



McWilliams put his Buell in the top 10 and dropped out of the race due to a fail timing wheel that was fabricated at the last minute when production parts didn't arrive in time.



All of the Buells ran in the top 20 and were climbing until they hit mechanical issues. Two of them failed due to poor castings on the clutch parts. The killer is that the parts they used in testing had held up fine, but the teams wanted to use fresh parts for the race. It tuns out the fresh parts were all bad castings.



McWilliams had climbed all the way to 7th place, Rico and Crevier made it to 11th and 12th, all for a small fraction of the budget that the FX Hondas have on a bike with very limited development time.

 

[33545]

Ditto.



I've got 40k miles on Buells. When a turn signal or tail lamp finally blows I'll know it was from all that vibration.