apologies for being a prize numpty - but having never been on a trackday, never watched a Moto GP or anything like that, was wondering what the story was with half decent motorbikes compared to the supercars on Topgear.
Just how fast would the best road bikes go compared to the fastest supercars?
bike would be faster than supercar (ferarri, lambo etc), but would be beaten by lightweight track car (ariel atom).
Truthful answer is “it depends”.
If the track is open and flowing a bike has a chance. If it’s twisty the odds are against a bike.
in most cases the car is faster than the bike…
if your talking propper fast cars like super cars or evo’s/scubbys
the bike has more acceleration than most cars but cant go round corners as fast.
I would’da thought that you’d need a Supermoto for the tight twisty stuff and a sports bike for the faster bit of the TG track. I doubt that the bikes would beat Ferrari’s etc? I was discussing this with my work colleagues about getting The Riot on TG with a motorcycling Stiggy!:hehe:
The Top Gear Track
Track dependant of course… I was just thinking of the couple bike vs car challenges 5th gear have done. The bike whooped the car both times (supercars). Like I said though, superlightweight sports cars like thet atom have the acceleration of a bike with increased cornering so…
I could be wrong Mu… Well, anything is possible…almost?
here, look at this…
Yes Sir, I remember that those vids very well. But is the TG circuit tighter than that? From the map above it looks quite open, but on the TV it looks more Micky Mouse?
Good vid there 
Awsome! love haslams wheely last corner
as stated it all depends on teh type of circuit.
circuits biased towards power will favour the bike as we can get more of it down quicker and sustain it, as neither the car or the bike are liable to hit top speed then acceleration to a suityably high speed will be what matters.
on tight twisty tracks where it comes down to brakes and handling, a car will always have the advantage because they have more friction, we can only bend the laws of physics so far.
but even so we’re still alking about over £100k of super car edging out a £8k bike by a matter of seconds or less, which will always come up.
some tracks you can research yourself, such as nurburgring, where the fastest production times are 7.22 for a dodge srt10 viper, and 7.21 for a MV augusta F4R 312. that said a porsche 956 racer did it in 6.11
Clarkson did a bike vs car at Thruxton you’ll remember. Anything Clarkson does should be taken with a very large pinch of salt in my book, but I was disappointed by the result all the same. What are the car/bike lap times there?
i got a bit worried with the brake distance!! i thought bikes could stop quicker!!:ermm:
Normal a bike would out brake a car, but most of the super cars now come with carbon based braking systems.
Also factor in the driver and rider, and weather conditions.
Top Gear actually did an article with a car vs bike race on their own track and IIRC it was the car that won. The bike again, IIRC, was a CBR600 and you could have got the impression that the bike was capable of a bit more than they showed! 
Good reply Kevsta .
Rider/driver, warm/cold, dry/wet, open circuit/tight and twisty and so on.
The problem with generalisations is that they all wrong. And in case you missed it, that was a generalisation.
You need the same driver, same circuit, same weather, matched machinery (difficult that one) before you get a reasonable comparison.
Reportedly, Schumaker equalled his F1 Ferrari time on a bike on the Ferrari test track. If true, that starts to become a comparison.
The BBC should make a top gear for bikes.
Our race car does Brands Indy circuit in 51 secs, a good rider on a 600 can do the same - Rhalf at SBK’s quickest lap of the Indy circuit on his 675 is 51.75 (I think)
Our cars got around 360 bhp
