Jim at this stage, was a little way behind. Being from the rural part of England, he's not quite as happy flat out around cars as I am and, more to the point, the last time he was following a Hayabusa this close, the chain snapped and flew over his shoulder. Luckily, this was in Gatso infested England where we were only doing about 80kph, but I imagine he was considering what might happen should it repeat the performance at over 300kph...

The last post before the Swiss border is a wholly inadequate Italian services, swamped with locals getting their last taste of genuine expresso before the more insipid version over the frontier. We made it here in about 35 mins and, rejecting the cafeteria on the grounds of delay, simply juiced up with extra lead Italian petrol and headed for the last Peage 2kms down the road. One good wheelie out of here and the final stretch to the faintly fascist frontier is actually a very interesting set of bends on a carriageway elevated high above the lake and town where a wide running Busa is not the bike to be on.

Granted, normally Hayabusas actually steer remarkably quickly for their size and can be made to follow through just as nimbly when you're hangin off the inside. But when you're in a more normal road riding mode, ladled with baggage, the following weight becomes much more of an issue and one that can catch you out if you use the Hayabusa's initial turn in speed to the full. The ZX-12R, by contrast, is a little more leisurely steering wise, and there's no disguising the weight. But once into the turn it's a master of mid corner speed and actually feels like it holds a tighter line than the Hayabusa, with or without excess baggage.

The beauty of bikes generally is that they always get across borders quickly. Like the rest of the world's population, Frontier police just seem to think of bikers as mad eccentrics, in no way switched on, devious or savvy enough to be smugglers - of course, we all know otherwise... Anyway, by the time you could say Colombian marching powder, we were over and into the mountain fortress courtesy of the Swiss motorway stickers we'd previously prised off our van and car...

Now from the border at Como to the famous Gottard tunnel (famous because it's free and all the others across the Alps are around £15.00...) is about 80kms, and we'd already taken 45 minutes, so we allowed ourselves no more than a further half an hour which is no foregone conclusion as this part of the Swiss motorway lopes around the lakes and is thus quite curvy. Additionally, the Swiss are not a race that take kindly to be overtaken at 200kph an hour, especially up the inside, on the hard shoulder, between the lines of traffic or, most enjoyably, on one wheel, and with the advent of mobile phones it only takes one cantankerous cantoner to hail the police and it's game very definitely over, as I found out to my horror a couple of years ago when a 230kph inside lane undertake had me being pulled over at gunpoint and fined £300!!

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