I say yuck. I never understood the whole allure for the streetfighter/naked look.
Anyways, with regards to the ability to utilize all the potential of a bike, You have to really take things in context. If you're expecting to push a sportsbike to any significant percentage of its available horsepower on the street, you're just asking for it. The idea of trying to drag a knee on public roads is just plain reckless. I do my fair share of "spirited" riding but no where near what I see other riders do which they seem to have a death wish to fullfill.
I ride an 04 ZX-10R...hence my screen name. I can say unequivocably I do not and have not explored the full potential of this bike. So some would ask, why would you buy a bike you know you won't push? Well, there's more to street riding than many people think. First, when you're riding on the street, the ability to have torque on tap is a good thing. But you have to have some experience on how to modulate that torque properly. The other thing is at the time I bought my bike, it was one of the few bikes which I felt comfortable sitting on. I'm 6'5" and finding a bike which doesn't make me sick of it after a few minutes ride is pretty tough.
Now I've been to a track school called the California Superbike School run by Keith Code. I went last year and this year for their 2 day camp down at VIR. I successfully completed level IV this past go around. I can say after being on the track, I have zero urge to play around on the street. At the school, I used their ZX-6 bikes which were 07s and 08s. I can say I probably tapped in to about 80% of the potential of those bikes on the track. Maybe slightly higher. Even though I finished all their levels, you can bet I'll be back next year to do another round of the 2 day camp. I managed to shave off 10-15 seconds off my laptop from last year to this year. It'll be cool to be able to start clicking off times close to what the AMA Pro racers do on that track.
