[smileyman]

Well in my perspective it was a bike designed first for the track, where there was no existing model to update, no emphasis on consumer street sales. Like Honda seems to design a public consumption bike with some tuning latitude and then hot rods it for the track.
It seems to me Kawasaki are trying to pull off their own version of what Aprilia and BMW did. Work up something fresh and current bottom up, rather than taking the existing liter bike and trying to upgrade it and chasing the spec higher in the performance specs...