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Autocar invited Two Wheels Only along to their London Land Speed Record attempt at London City Airport on Saturday 15th July to see how a bike stacked up against several billion pounds worth of flash motors, writes editor and all-round God, Tim Dickson.
“At the end of the day though I think they wished they hadn’t bothered – we trounced the four-wheelers by a fair old margin. Even the BBC and ITV news crews, who were filming the event for that day’s London evening news shows, were selectively blind to the ZZR1400’s success and reported that a car, not a bike, was fastest on the day.”
Not that it was easy. London City Airport’s runway is only 1300 metres long, which is a bit short for the big Kwak to get into its stride. Tim says: “It was a case of keeping it pinned until my bottle ran out, then hitting the brakes, rather than holding it flat-out for ages then coasting to a halt. On the second of the three timed runs I stopped about eight inches short of the end of the runway. On the final run I got a bit too brave and ended up running onto the grass at the end, turning left to avoid the airport’s fuel dump and coming to a halt next to a couple of Lear jets. If we’d been running the other way I’d have been in the Thames. Still, it was the fastest run of the day, so it was worth it – 183.4mph, beating the £300,000 McLaren Mercedes SLR by a healthy 7.8mph. The ZZR’s restricted to 186mph so it would have been nice to hit that, but given the lack of run-off I’m happy enough.”
All the speed data is currently in the hands of Guinness, the world record people, to be ratified as an official London Land Speed Record. Although whether they dare print that an £8995 bike beat a £300,000 car is another matter entirely…https://www.two.tv/BikeNews_Article.asp?NA_ID=1161″ />
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