Kawasaki officially unveiled its 2011 World Superbike-spec "Ninja ZX-10R" ahead of the upcoming WSBK round at Germany’s Nürburgring racetrack.
“The new race bike has been eagerly anticipated by everyone involved in the Superbike racing project for a while now,” says Steve Guttridge, race planning manager of Kawasaki Motors Europe.
The production version of the 2011 Kawasaki Ninja ZX-10R will be unveiled in October at the Intermot Show in Cologne, Germany.
The marketing team at Kawasaki has cleverly been drip feeding pictures, sounds and video of the new Kawasaki ZX-10R in recent months, but at Nurburgring on September 2, KHI pulled the sheet off a non-running race bike in Team Green livery. Staff were tight-lipped about the bike's performance – Ian Lowry was also lapping on a 2010-spec WSB ZX-10R - but the lap times were said to be encouraging. It's thought that the Almeria bike wasn't running a full-spec WSB superbike engine, rather it was running a Japanese superbike tuned motor, which is a souped-up superstock lump.
We hope Kawasaki manages to produce the same result...
In contrast to the usual procedure for building a hypersports production machine, where it is first designed for street use and then adapted for race duty, the 2011 ZX10R was designed and developed first by the race department, with the street model being based off of the race unit. Kawasaki will entrust the bike to the Kawasaki World Superbike Racing Team, run by Paul Bird, which will enjoy comprehensive technical support from the main factory.