A 990 MotoGP bike was a wild animal at Laguna Seca. Advanced electronics smoothed out the brutal 240 horsepower being blown through the back end of the more violent machines but even with power-deadening trickery riding MotoGP was at times 'little more than hanging on' as Nick Hayden put it. What's more 990s sounded like an explosion in a mine shaft. Deafening, frighteningly loud.

800cc MotoGP bikes at Laguna Seca look to be what they are: a completely different animal than their predecessor. While a 990 was a more point and shoot race machine, or point, shoot and hang on, the 800 rewards precision and a rider who can be smooth. To a degree, anyway.

However these are not race bikes muzzled into submission. And they sound interesting indeed.

The Ducati sounds most like the 990c of old, thanks no doubt to its screamer engine design. The 800cc Ducati's exhaust note sounds like a cross between a two-stroke pre-big-bang 500 GP bike and a Ferrari F1 car. It's a wall of sound; in some sections of the track you must plug your ears when the Ducatis come by, it's actually painful if you don't.

The factory Honda RC212s sound like one would expect a Honda to sound, V-4-ish, not completely unlike how Rainey's VFR Superbike sounded in the 1980s. The Kawasaki and Suzuki don't have the same snarl as the Ducati but they do build revs amazingly fast, shrieking to the shift point.

Rossi and Edwards' Yamahas sound like the baddest muscle-car Detroit ever made. They don't really idle, they just sit there, running at about 3500rpm, at the ready any time a rider feels like going fast. The M1 800 comes out of the corner, winds up and is gone in a snarl. No wheelspin.

The Roberts Honda, with the new chassis and ridden by Kurtis Roberts, from trackside looks as competent as any other non-Ducati GP bike.