It's a tough life, being a baby brother, writes John Gilbride.

For a start, you get a wardrobe full of handed down clothes and if your bruv is a grade A overachiever, you've got a lot to prove before anyone will take you seriously.

So when your older sibling is the R1 a motorcycle so awesome and focused that two years after its launch no other 900cc seems able to touch it you've got to play a lot of catch-up before anyone takes notice.

Consequently, Yamaha's R6 had the toughest of all starts to life.

Launched into a market where Honda's blinding CBR600 was king, the expectations weren't just high they were stratospheric. Could the latest addition to the Yamaha stable perform?

The figures speak for themselves. The R6 has just topped the charts as the best selling bike in Britain, knocking its big brother off the top slot and proving that, for once the best things really do come in smaller packages.

One glance at the R6 and it becomes instantly apparent the young pretender did indeed get hand-me-down clothes, it looks just like a baby version of the R1, although thankfully the omnipresent red and white colours weren't passed on in the Yamaha genes.

But the predatory appearance the staring headlamp 'eyes' and beak-like nose, is instantly recognisable, as are the clean, minimalist lines.

Everything about the bike exudes a sense of speed. There's not an ounce of extraneous plastic or metal anywhere, it slices through the air like a knife.

Climb aboard and the low-down bars and high pegs tip you into classic sportsbike-riding mode, you can tour on an R6 but frequent stops and roadside stretching exercises will be a fact of life.

But it's true what they say: no pain, no gain. For riding the R6 is one of the most rewarding experiences you can have, it's so precise, so responsive and just so damn fast you'll be grinning like a loon in seconds.

The revvy engine is superb and utterly addictive. The Kawasaki ZX-6 beats the Yamaha in the acceleration stakes, but only by the tiniest of margins and the R6 sounds so fantastically frenetic, so effortlessly powerful, it's impossible not to be first delighted, then hooked.

Another hand-me-down from the R1 are the brakes, some of the best stoppers in the business. Twin discs on the front, a single on the back, and if you want to go from flat out to dead stop in an instant, these are the boys for you. Phenomenal.

The R6's classy cockpit is so understated it should be on display in a New York loft apartment, and the headlights are nothing short of fantastic.

The screen is fairly small, but that's actually a blessing in disguise, at higher speeds the force of the wind eases the pressure on your wrists. Ride an R6 for any length of time and wrist-ache will become an old enemy.

On the downside the R6 turns lightning-quick into corners but manoeuvre it at slow speeds, say a tight U-turn, and it quickly becomes apparent that the bike has about as much lock as a tractor. And if you're over 6ft, you'll probably find this bike a bit too cramped.

The mirrors are vibration-free, but not brilliant unless you like admiring your elbows as you ride, and while there's a pillion pad, don't be fooled, this isn't a motorbike made for two. It makes far more sense to give them the bus fare and blast off solo.

The R6 is, without a shadow of a doubt, one of the best bikes on the road.

Its very nature may make it a little hard to live with at times, but the ultimate fact is that that if you enjoy hard-edged sportsbikes, the R6 really should be in your garage.

It's true what they say, Big Brother really is watching you. And in the case of the R6, Big Bruv must be watching very hard indeed, hoping to discover just how such a young upstart managed to steal the thunder so effectively.

FACT FILE

Price: 6,599

Insurance group: 15

Top speed: 149.9mph

0-60 (secs): 3.6

Weight: 169kg

Seat height: 820mm