2006 Kawasaki ZX-14 Top Speed - 12 O'Clock

The world goes by pretty quickly at 204 mph-it passes beneath your wheels at 299.32 feet per second, to be precise. When you're trying your best to hang onto a turbocharged Hayabusa at that speed, there's not a lot of time to think about anything beyond hitting your shift points, staying out of the windblast and overcoming the intense self-preservation instinct that screams at you every inch of the way to JUST SLOW DOWN before you freaking kill yourself.

I recently had the opportunity to experience those emotions firsthand at the Super Streetbike Top Speed Shootout, held in conjunction with the East Coast Timing Association (www.ecta-lsr.com) on their airstrip race course in Maxton, North Carolina. Even now, 48 hours later, I'm still flying high on the adrenaline from that day. I had planned to break the double-ton barrier on our ZX-14 project bike. That goal was nixed due to poor preparation (and parts packing) on my part, but thanks to the kindness of John Bullock III who lent me the key to his 320 hp turbo 'Busa for a few runs, I was still able to transport my body to the far side of 200 mph at "Maxton Monster Mile." As someone who has done plenty of crazy things on two wheels, let me tell you that the sensation of going 200 mph on a motorcycle is not to be missed.

It's also no easy feat, especially not on a standing-start, mile-long course like the one that the ECTA runs at Maxton. A mile sounds like a long distance, and you would think that hitting top speed on a high-horsepower sportbike would be as easy as turning the throttle to the stop and holding on to the finish line. But at anything above 175 mph you are covering a surprising amount of distance per second, and you run out of room to accelerate very quickly. After day one of our two-day event, my best speed on our Project ZX-14 was "just" 187 mph, and I was going through the speed trap before I could even shift into sixth gear. I raised that number to a more respectable 196 mph the next day, and that required treating those runs like a 5280-foot drag race-launching the bike at 7500 rpm, full-power gear changes with the air shifter, and generally doing everything in my power to squeeze every last bit of acceleration out of that bike.

And going faster isn't much easier on a more powerful bike, as I found after my first pass on Bullock's Hayabusa. Even with 120 extra horsepower available, my first pass on the turbo 'Busa was only 194 mph, two mph slower than I was going on my ZX-14! Managing all that power and effectively putting it to the pavement was even more difficult on the turbo bike, and I wasn't the only one to find this out. We had 38 bikes total enter our Shootout. Well over half of these-maybe as many as 75%-were serious turbo or nitrous bikes that, on paper at least, should easily exceed 200 mph in the standing-start mile. In reality, though, only 22% of the total Top Speed Shootout motorcycle passes made all weekend happened in excess of 200 mph.

Quite a few sh*t-talkers bragging about going 240 mph "on GPS" went home with their tails between their legs, unable to break 200 mph on the Monster Mile. They found out that there's a huge difference between rolling on from 100 to 200 mph when you've got all the room in the world on an abandoned highway, but getting there from a standing start in one mile is a different animal. And we all gained huge respect for the land speed racing veterans who go 240, 250 or even 260 mph on bikes at Maxton. Amazing.

I think even those who fell short of their personal speed goals would agree that the ECTA speed trials are one of the most thrilling and exhilarating things you can do on two wheels. Look forward to full coverage of the Top Speed Shootout in our next issue (deadline restrictions kept us from cramming it in this one), and in the meantime, make plans to join us for the Shootout at Maxton again next year.

Is doing the double in your future?