[FAST LS1]

I have a lot of friends that ride sport bikes. They've talked before about how fast bikes
are around a road course but I tend to wonder just how fast they are in comparison
to cars? How close hypothetically would a stock C5 ZO6 be in comparision to a
Hayabusa or any other current production bike on a road coarse given a skilled
driver/rider? I remember the old article of the Viper vs the then fastest production bike
in one of the car magazines and the Viper won, so I'm guessing it's close but maybe the
bike would win. That's also taking into acount an expert rider on the bike aka someone
that's crazy.

[jraskell]

Important factors to take into consideration when comparing bikes and cages...

Braking... A bike isn't limited by it's mechanical grip in braking. Any decent road going bike out there can brake so hard the tail will whip right up and over. The best riders will brake right on that edge where the back tire is barely kept on the ground. When you've got it just right, the rear tire will only be skipping lightly across the ground. The high center of gravity of the bike keeps it from reaching it's full stopping potential.

However, unlike a cage, a high center of gravity is actually necessary for good cornering. The lower the center of gravity, the more you have to lean the bike to ride through a given corner at a given speed. If it's too low, you'll be dragging pegs, frame rails, and exhaust before reaching the potential limits of the bike itself.

Mechnical grip. The comparison is not just a simple matter of comparing 2 tires to 4 tires. The tire designs themselves have to be accounted for, and with motorcycle tires, you have a tire carcass that is also curved laterally, so at no point do you have the entire width of the tire in contact with the road. Then you get into tire sizes as well. Many street bikes today are running a 120 series up front and 180 series out back. For any of the cars mentioned in this thread so far, those are considered seriously narrow tires. Many of these cars are running tire widths in the 245-335 range, with the entire width in contact with the road surface, not just roughly 1/3rd or less of the width.

An AMA superbike on racing tires is going to pull about 1.3-1.4 Gs max in the corners. If I'm not mistaken, Formula Cars are capable of upwards of 3 Gs in the corners, and most other professional racing series are capable of better than 1.3-1.4 Gs as well.

And has been already said here, motorcycles require more skill to drive fast, are more dangerous to drive fast, are less forgiving when you push them a bit too hard (although there are some cars that have a reputation for being unforgiving as well, but in general every sports bike is like that).