There was great buzz with the arrival of Honda’s CBR1000RR Superbike to the shores of America in December of 2003 for off-season tire testing at Daytona. It marked Honda’s return to an inline four-cylinder Superbike for the first time since 1982. The bike,which was built by HRC in Japan, came very close to winning the AMA Superbike Championship in it’s first season. Miguel Duhamel had a phenomenal year on the bike, but Suzuki’s Mat Mladin was at the peak of his career and held off Duhamel during the 2004 AMA Superbike Championship.

This is a shot of the bike stripped down in the pits between practice sessions. It was a rare shot of the bike without its bodywork since the Honda crew was quite protective of the machine when it first came over. The bike was a thing of beauty. It was easily the trickest looking superbike of that era looking much more similar to a GP machine than a streetbike.

The 2004 Honda CBR1000RR when it first arrived in America for tire testing at Daytona International Speedway in December of 2003. (Larry Lawrence photo)