Sport Bikes Vs Sport Touring: Which Are Actually Faster?
Sometimes, it can be tough to spot the difference between a sport bike and a sport tourer. From a distance, all you see is a wind-cheating body fairing and some slick LED headlights, but then you notice the taller windscreen for less buffeting and the hard-sided saddlebags for carrying a week's worth of clothing. Yep, it's actually a sport touring bike coming at you.
Like their sport bike counterparts, sport tourers are designed to provide good road handling, ample power, and an exhilarating riding experience overall, but with more creature comforts than superbikes, which are often little more than street-legal versions of racing machines. Sport tourers typically provide such niceties as a larger fuel tank for increased range, a comfort-oriented seat, a quiet shaft drive, and heated handlebar grips.
Sport touring drivetrains don't escape the comfort treatment either, with engine tuning and gearing that emphasizes a wide, useful powerband rather than finicky peak horsepower. We've clearly set the tone that sport tourers are configured more for cargo capacity and reducing fatigue over long distances, but can they trade blows with their sport bike siblings at the racetrack? Or might they be even faster? In an epic comparison, motorsports retailer RevZilla's Common Tread blog set out to uncover the truth.
That luggage is literally a drag
The Common Tread staff pitted three sport touring motorcycles against each other, as well as throwing a conventional sport bike into the mix as a benchmark. The three sport tourers consisted of a 2022 Kawasaki Ninja 1000 SX, a 2021 S 1000 XR from BMW, and a 2022 Aprilia Tuono V4 with a touring package. Lastly, a Kawasaki ZX-10R represented the sport bike contingent.
In a top-speed test, the sport tourers were clearly hampered by aerodynamic drag caused by their hard saddlebag-style luggage pods. The Kawasaki ZX-10R was able to reach a top speed of 181 mph, followed by the fastest of the sport tourers, the Aprilia Tuono V4 at 173 mph. Not coincidentally, the Aprilia featured the smallest — almost comically small — saddlebags of all three sport tourers. This point was truly hammered home when an improperly latched saddlebag fell off the Kawasaki Ninja 1000 SX during a top-speed run and it picked up 4 mph versus the same run with both pieces of luggage installed.
The tradeoff for comfort is minimal
The next feat of strength was a series of quarter-mile drag races, which ended predictably with the ZX-10R trouncing all competitors via the dual advantages of lightest weight and highest horsepower. However, on a 1.4-mile road course at New Mexico's Arroyo Seco Raceway, the line between sport tourer and pure sport bike became more blurred. The Aprilia Tuono V4 posted the fast lap time of 1:13.17 (one minute and 13.17 seconds), followed by ZX-10R sport bike at 1:14.44. The BMW S 1000 XR posted a time of 1:15.56 and the Kawasaki Ninja 1000 SX was the slowest at 1:17.00.
So are sport tourers faster than true sport bikes, with other things like engine displacement and vintage being equal? Probably not in a top-speed competition or a drag race where less horsepower, more weight, and greater aerodynamic resistance is a hindrance. But through the twists and turns of a road course — which more accurately represent real-life conditions — the sport tourers can hold their own and occasionally even win against sport bikes. Not to mention that you can pilot one on a true adventure rather than just the occasional day trip to the mountains.