[roger albert]

Agreed. It's a pretty clear case of having been too aggressive early in the design cycle, and then having to band-aid a lot of fixes into place to meet (almost) the target power. That bike had a ridiculously long gestation period. Really 5 years from the first sneak-peak-test and Intermot (03?) until generally available to the public (08ish). That's 2 generations for most manufs. The 8R with kit parts and some tweaks looks good, and the guys here think it can reliably make another 30hp. I'm skeptical, as I think it will have oiling and breathing issues (crazy low crankcase volume - the same thing that delayed it so much in the first place) but we'll see. I'm in any event glad a fairly heavily backed one is going to be running our regional series, just to throw in some more flavor. Looks like an Aprilia team will be there too, so it's looking to be interesting. I'd consider a s1000rr, but frankly am not on pace with the fast literbike guys, and have no business up there embarassing the bike or myself.