May be way out here, but when I was at Jerez earlier in the year they were saying Rossi did 1.43 and Schumacher did 1.17. It's not possible for us plebs to even dream just how fast that is. I've been around Silverstone in a Le Mans car with a BAR test driver at the wheel and that was astonishing - it was like the old Mouse run at Alton Towers or a level version of Nemesis. Fantastic technology, amazing to experience, so why is it so dull to watch? That said, some of the MotoGP races were like that this year, you had to go down to 10th place to see a dice/overtaking.

WeeJohnyB

Surely this was not a fair race with an out and out racing machine - F1 car - against a racing bike derived from a road bike and a stock boat. Haven't they also been having problems getting the Fireplace off the line which meant that Rutter was always playing catch-up in half the races?

I think the whole thing was a bit non-scientific to be fair. All a a bit showy for the tv. A fairer comparison would undoubtedly have been a motoGP Honda with a top flight rider on board but somehow I doubt there would have been much difference in the outcome.
Also we don't know how seriously anyone took it. Did BAR just turn up and run the car as it was or did they actually set it up for a drag race - gear it for a lower top speed, loads of downforce... same for the bike, did they bother to set it up properly? As far as I remember, they didn't tell us, so it makes the whole thing pretty academic imho.