Kawasaki ZX-6R Stunter

So I just pop the clutch and that’s me pretty much inducted into the UK stuntrider hall of fame, right?” Erm. No, not quite.

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During the test that lives within this very issue, I ended up sat astride the kind of bike my ZX-6 will become, with an actual stunt rider telling me what was about

to go down. This would be my first contact with a proper stunt bike and I was quietly confident that I would be better at this than I turned out to be. What I turned out to be was the opposite of a stunt rider. Despite being massively geared down, the front wheel didn’t quite smash a hole in the clouds the second I let the clutch out.

To be honest, I spent ages applying the back brake, which lives where the clutch does on a normal bike. You’d think it would be an easy hurdle to overcome, but it completely threw me and I wobbled round like a dork for a bit. I spent ages watching the Vertical Trix boys up close, listening to the engine note and watching their hands working away. The art seems to be in not using the throttle to adjust the bike, but the back brake and the clutch.

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