How Fast Is Too Fast?

Speed, like everything in life, is entirely relative.  You might think you're "only doing 90, gosh!" but the cop writing you a ticket for doing that speed in a 45mph zone probably disagrees.  And when you hit the speed limiter at 155mph in your BMW M3, you might think you're going fast - but the guy in the ZR-1 with his foot planted in 5th shooting for 200mph can't even see your headlights.  And that ZR-1, well, it'd seem pretty mundane from the seat of a Bugatti Veyron.

So what makes a Bugatti Veyron seem a little slow?  Considering a current Veyron Super Sport is good for 268mph flat out, it'd have to be something really, really fast.

But when your hobby is Land Speed Record racing, and your previous record was 278.6mph, that's not all that fast.  See, it's relative.  Bill Warner races motorcycles in Land Speed Record racing, and he just beat his previous record by a fairly wide margin.

Using a custom race bike based on the frame and engine of a Suzuki GSX-1300R Hayabusa, Warner managed to set a new top speed record of 311.945mph at the fomer Loring Air Force Base in Maine.  While a Hayabusa is one of the fastest stock production bikes in the world, capable of almost 200mph bone stock off the showroom floor, it takes a lot of work to add another 100mph and change to that top speed.

httpvh://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q_ZJuSS2s7k

The bike itself uses a mostly stock Hayabusa frame, wrapped in a wind-tunnel tested aerodynamic body for decreased drag.  The engine is a highly modified Hayabusa 1300cc unit equipped with a Garrett GT42x(!) turbocharger.  The interesting thing: there's no cooling system at all for the engine.  According to the owner, the cylinder head is entirely dry, and coated for thermal expansion, with billet cylinder liners.  There's about a 25-second window of wide-open-throttle acceleration before it starts to overheat.  Think about that: from a standstill to over 300mph in less than half a minute, within the space of a mile.

For the record, that's the fastest recorded speed of a sit-on motorcycle ever, by a huge margin.  So I'm going to show some respect to Mr. Warner, because I certainly wouldn't be insane enough to try it.  Even better, he says there's a lot more power left to be had out of the motor - so it's possible we'll see even higher speeds out of this bike!