Warp Speed Ahead!

Leaning against the car door as the motorcycle races toward us, the silence is almost eerie. High temperatures and the near-100 percent humidity of a Carolina summer makes the air wool-blanket heavy. Off in the distance, the old passenger plane carcasses that litter the abandoned airstrip at Maxton, North Carolina, shimmer in the haze. The sound of the motorcycle starts as a low whistle, then grows into something similar to a rainsuit snapping in the wind. Traveling at 227 mph (or 333 feet per second) the rider flashes through the timing lights before the sound of the engine--a roar not unlike a jet plane--even reaches me. I watch the rider, Top Fuel motorcycle pilot Wayne Pollack, aboard Rich Yancy's 400-horsepower, turbocharged Suzuki Hayabusa, fighting to get the two-wheeled bullet slowed before the tarmac ends. I am speechless.

Nowadays we tend to be jaded about high speeds on motorcycles. One-hundred and fifty mph is No Big Deal--there are literally dozens of motorcycles on the market that can achieve this number the minute they roll off the assembly line. Many will hit 170 mph pretty easily, and one or two will get you into the 180s if you have the cojones and the real estate. But there is a huge difference between 180 and 200 mph. Aerodynamically, motorcycles are crude machines, and the physics of airflow management mean that even tiny gains in speed above 180 mph require enormous amounts of horsepower.

The amount of horsepower required to overcome aerodynamic drag rises as the cube of speed. Consider this: 160 hp is enough to push a stock Hayabusa to nearly 190 mph, but it would take closer to 225 hp to get that same bike to 200 mph--65 more hp for just 10 more mph on top. Going 200 mph on a production-based motorcycle is a huge accomplishment--indeed, there are only 42 riders in the East Coast Timing Association's (ECTA) elite "200-mph" club. Two-hundred and twenty-seven mph is simply amazing--only slightly less difficult than riding your Ninja to the moon. And at 227 mph, Yancy's super-'Busa is just warming up.

Located two hours southeast of Charlotte near the South Carolina border, Maxton is the final frontier in the pursuit of top speed. A World War II-era military airstrip that hasn't seen active duty in decades, the place is now mostly a graveyard for retired passenger planes, save for the five or six weekends a year when the ECTA marks off its one-mile, standing-start race course. The ECTA has certified land-speed-record attempts for motorcycles (and cars) at Maxton since 1995.

Record chasers make up a small, tightknit society that operates on the outer fringes of the motorcycle world. Chasing ultimate speeds is an esoteric, sometimes ugly pursuit. There are no factory teams, no major sponsors and little media attention. Even after you spend countless hours and mad cubic dollars to break through the 200-mph barrier, the most you can expect--beyond the respect of other racers--is a paper certificate authenticating your achievement. Truly a labor of love.

The Maxton "racing surface" underlines the unpolished nature of land-speed racing. For starters, the strip is hardly what you would call "billiard" smooth. During a sighting run down the course in ECTA President Keith Turk's pickup, I considered suggesting a few 55-gallon drums of Round Up to kill the weeds growing through the cracks in the surface. Riders go how fast on this mess?

Luckily, I held my tongue. Talking later with motorcycle land-speed legend Scott Guthrie, I learned that Maxton is actually pretty smooth and clean compared with conditions at the nation's better-known LSR venue, the Bonneville Salt Flats.

And with little more for facilities than two Porta-Potties and a portable hot-dog stand, Maxton won't be confused with Laguna Seca. But the level of enthusiasm and camaraderie between riders and event organizers more than makes up for these shortcomings. Riders are here for one reason: to go as fast as possible, and hopefully take home a record.

The ECTA sanctions literally dozens of classes for motorcycles. There are five basic classes: production, modified, altered, sidecar and streamliner. These five classes are then subdivided into 14 subcategories ranging from 100cc to 3000cc bikes. On the day we were there, the bikes lined up on the grid ran the gamut from a 50cc Aprilia Tetsuya Harada-replica (ridden by Ursula Tullberg, who set a new class record of 69.174 mph) to vintage two-stroke roadracers to modern, turbocharged Hayabusas and Ninjas.

It's the latter of these machines, the modern superbikes vying for a spot in the 200-mph club, that garner the most attention, of course. Getting into the club is no small feat. First you have to work your way through the ECTA ranks, qualifying at 125, 150 and 175 mph before being allowed to make an attempt at an honest, electronically certified 200 mph. And then there is the small matter of building yourself a bike capable of achieving those speeds.

No one knows more about building bikes for Maxton than Guthrie, proprietor of Scott Guthie Racing and the closest thing to a guru as land-speed motorcycle racing has. Guthrie has a trailer full of bikes with him today, including an evil-looking, black '99-spec Hayabusa that formerly belonged to Wayne Pollack, another partially streamlined 'Busa and a turbocharged Kawasaki ZX-9R. Guthrie is one of the first riders I see make a pass, his first one on the ex-Pollack 'Busa.

Maxton's starting line is a simple affair, consisting basically of three staging lanes leading up to a simple "start here" sign where a marshal stands to oversee the procedures. Guthrie coasts up to the line on the black 'Busa and prepares to launch. Lowered and lengthened six-inches-over with a custom-made, chrome-moly swingarm, the bike runs a mostly stock engine with a Nitrous Express 100-hp kit. Between Pollack and Guthrie, the bike has made more than 100 runs at Maxton, 35 of them at over 200 mph. This bike is also the record holder in the MPS/F-1350/4 class (Modified Partial Streamlining/any fuel/under 1350cc) record at 209.883 mph (with Pollack on-board).

The marshal signals and Guthrie launches the bike briskly, but not too hard. With a mile to go before the lights, there's little need to burn the clutch with a drag-style start. Less than a minute later Guthrie blasts across the line at a smidge over 200 mph--a good warmup for Guthrie.

A few minutes later Guthrie returns to the line on another of his motorcycles, this one an insanely fast Kawasaki ZX-9R turbo. Street legal and with a stock wheelbase, turn signals and a license plate, this Ninja looks tame at first. But underneath the bodywork lurks a Mr. Turbo kit turned up to 24 pounds of boost, which helps kick out 279 rear-wheel horsepower on pump gasoline. Just before the run, Pollack mentions some problems he's been having with this machine--it seems the bike has been lifting the front wheel at around 190 mph lately, forcing him to shut down early, but the bike has run over 200 mph on occasion. The bike runs progressively faster throughout the day, but the handling gremlins keep the final best top speed to 197.684 mph. But never mind--the Ninja isn't really meant to be a land-speed racer--Guthrie is an ex-roadracer, and this is actually his Sunday-morning streetbike!

Guthrie's real racebike comes out next--another Hayabusa, or should we say, "Eye-a-buser," this one wearing an exaggerated tailpiece that looks more like something you'd see on the back of an airplane than a motorcycle. Whatever it is, it works; Guthrie's first pass trips the lights at 219 mph. More impressive, however, are some runs put down by Rich Yancy, another Maxton regular riding his beautiful, 400-hp turbo 'Busa. Yancy's immaculate bike is painted in striking, #8 Budweiser racing colors just like Dale Earnhardt Jr.'s NASCAR racer, a nod to Yancy's day job as a lead fabricator at Dale Earnhardt Incorporated. Built by Yancy and tuned by Lee Shierts of Lee's Performance Center, the bike is chock full of custom-crafted bits that showcase Yancy's skills as a fabricator. Unlike Guthrie's radical, stretched and streamlined racer, Yancy's bike runs at stock wheelbase. In fact, Yancy regularly rides the bike to work.

Yancy makes a few passes in the morning, but he seems stuck at 220 mph. For starters, Yancy is a pretty big guy, and he seems to be having trouble hiding behind the fairing to stay out of the wind. Also, he says he's having some stability troubles at the top of the track. Yancy discusses these with Pollack, and after talking they decide that Pollack should make a pass on the bike.

Pollack leaps on and immediately rips off a 224-mph pass, but not without some drama; just before the line the bike launched into a scary weave, moving around enough to blow his foot off the footpeg as he entered the speed trap. Pollack was actually backing out of the throttle as he approached the timing lights.

More speed looked possible, but not until the wobble that was stopping Pollack from holding the throttle open was sorted out. Yancy thought it might have something to do with the tires; he'd been running a Michelin race slick on the rear, with a low-profile street tire up front, both at the recommended (roadracing) pressures. But now he was concerned that the lower pressure recommended for roadracing was allowing too much sidewall flex, causing the weave. He decided to change the slick for a regular street tire in the rear and increase the tire pressure on both ends to see if that cleared up the weave.

A tire change cleared up the weave, and then some. Pollack climbed aboard the next morning and the bike was transformed--lofting the front wheel in all of the first four gears. Pollack blitzed through the timing lights at a mind-numbing 236.7 mph. Not only was this a new land-speed record for motorcycles at Maxton, it was also the fastest speed ever run by any type of vehicle (cars included) on the crumbling, half-century-old surface. Once the tire change sorted the handling out, Yancy's Hayabusa became the fastest stock-wheelbase production bike on the planet.

Maxton: the final frontier. Warp speed ahead!