The evo lads doubled over in the corner, rolling around, crying with laughter at how boldly he spoke of the bike's 'incredible' 85lb ft of torque

Their response was masked by laughter, so we had no idea what they were saying, but nevertheless invited these two leatherettes to the Autodrome to show them what we thought was blatantly obvious - that our cars can beat a bike, hands down

Sadly, the supercharged Atom from the Mad Hatta feature wasn't free for the day's fun, so Motoring Editor Bassam and I wheeled out our Fast Fleet two-seaters to air two fingers to the biker boys. Bassam merrily rolled out his brand spanking new 1500cc Radical SR3 racecar to challenge any race bike variant and I was more than happy to demonstrate the lethal legs of the yellow Caterham Gulf 7, again, to prove a road-legal car can eat a super bike for breakfast.

Yet faced with a life's-worth of confidence from the evo camp the bikers were in extremely high spirits, no doubt caused by the tightness of their leather trousers. They kept counting the number of wheels we had, and laughing out loud. But we had the last laugh when we watched them waddle uncomfortably around in their tight threads. A foregone conclusion they assumed, but the Caterham had eaten bikes off the line before, actually many times before, and Bassam's Radical has the potential to be the quickest car we've ever lapped the Club Circuit of the Dubai Autodrome with. But still the mocking ensued. Is that a children's toy, the bikers joked, pretending to trip over the fully carbon Radical in Pit garage 2a? Yeah, very funny ladies, but may I point out the rather glaring gayness about bike ownership; leather, tight slacks, gloves with tassels and that when you take your mate (usually male) out for an evening's jaunt he'll too be wearing leather, tight slacks and gloves with tassels (probably in matching colours) arms clasped tightly around your waist, his nether regions glued to the small of your back. Oh so manly, I'd say!

And to labour this point Noel arrived for today's bike-beating straddling a Passion red Ninja ZX 10R. Crikey, even the colours sound like they've been lifted from the Revlon Lip-Glide lipgloss collection. But then again you could opt for Candy Plasma blue, Lime green, or Ebony - which worse still sound like a colour choice for something dangling from a clothes hanger at Miss Selfridges, rather than on the order form for a super bike.

Jim, waving the flag for Kawasaki, seemed the smarter of the two bikers, arriving with his bike in the back of a white van - clearly to avoid the embarrassment of being seen on a lime green motorcycle in leathers in broad daylight. Actually, the bike strapped down in the back of the van was the machine designed to topple Bassam and his arrogance. But no sooner is Jim out of the van are the evo lads doubled over in the corner, rolling around, crying with laughter at how boldly he spoke of the bike's 'incredible' 85lb ft of torque @ 9500rpm. But then Jim started to list a few technical tasters that successfully caught the attention of Bassam and I, distracting us from the rib-digging we'd been giving him from the long list of pre-prepared 'why bikes are designed for girls' jokes that Bassam had kindly researched from Google.com the night prior. The 998cc sounded weak but liquid-cooled, Mikuni 43mm throttlebodies and six-speed transmission wooed. But then we fell about in fits of hysteria again, when Jim mentioned the dual floating 300mm petal discs. Petal, you say Jim?

Thing is, nobody in leather was laughing - and there were a few of them milling around. Furthermore, bikers don't seem to mind if they fall off their bikes and break their heads, or legs. Nor do they fear death so it would seem, which is a little worrying, whereas Bassam and I don't want to put a dent in the cars, our pride, or our heads for that matter. We do the maths and eventually ease up on the jesting and smooth over our differences by showing them our helmets, for the third time...

At 175kg, the red road bike is obviously lighter than both of our cars, with a top end gain of 50kph, but the two-wheeler has less power, a smaller engine capacity and no torque to talk of. Yet the Kawasaki is technically quicker, 4/10ths of a second quicker than the G7 260, the quickest road car we've tested to date. So the question on our lips was, does this on-paper statistic translate into the real world, or in this case a 2.6 kilometre racing circuit. The temperature was perfect, as was the circuit - virtually free of sand.

All four modes of transport had six laps apiece to prove their worth. First up was the yellow yob, which posted consistent 1:13's, shaving a clear second of our previous lap record. Bassam, today's delegated racing driver for the four-wheel team, doesn't even complete his six laps, pulling in after only four. Yanking up his visor he shakes his head. 'Man that's twitchy. I started to really push and had to back off. It'll easily go two-seconds quicker but I don't have balls big enough to take it to the limit today.'

The Kawasaki road bike was up next. However impressive to look at and to hear charging down the pit straight it was slower. A lot slower, actually, with a best of 1min 21.6, compared to the Caterham's 1min 13.6 - an 8sec difference. And the fresh-out-of-the-box bike-engined Radical, well that was in a league of its own, making a mockery of the competitors and the twists and turns of the Autodrome - managing a best of 1min 2, dead. The race bike, well, it lost too.

The battle between the race car and the race bike, both of which race mirror to mirror at the National Race meetings at the Dubai Autodrome, was a contest that everyone present expected to be much closer. But a 1min 15sec demonstrated the race bike was no match for the 'carbon creation' or the Caterham for that matter. That said, the following day, a similar bike recorded a 1min 9sec on the same circuit, at race qualifying - the quickest time of the day. Even if we take this time, instead of the 1min 15sec, Bassam had still timed a near identical time gap of 7 seconds between the car and the bike, proving the obvious - that our cars are better than any road bike - or race bike. Furthermore, this storming lap places a new king at the head of the Knowledge leader board. All hail the carbon Radical.

Caterham G7 260
Engine: 2261cc Cosworth 16v
Max power: 260bhp @ 7500rpm
Max torque: 200lb ft @ 6200rpm
Weight: 565kg
Power/weight: 460bhp/ton
0-100kph: 3.1sec
Max speed: 250kph
Lap time: 1:13.06

Kawasaki ZX10R
Engine: 998cc, liquid-cooled 16v
Max power: 160bhp @ 7500rpm
Max torque: 85lb ft @ 9500rpm
Weight: 175kg
Power/weight: 1111bhp/ton
0-100kph: 2.7sec
Max speed: 299kph
Lap time 1:21.06

Radical SR3 1500
Engine: 1500cc Powertec
Max power: 252bhp @ 9500rpm
Max torque: 158lb ft @ 7000rpm
Weight: 530kg
Power/weight: 483bhp/ton
0-100kph: 3.1sec
Max speed: 257kph
Lap time 1:02.00

Kawasaki ZX6R
Engine: 599cc, liquid-cooled 16v
Max power: 107bhp @ 14000rpm
Max torque: 40lb ft @ 11700rpm
Weight: 167kg
Power/weight: 651bhp/ton
0-100kph: 3.1sec
Max speed: 258kph
Lap time 1:15.00