In the end, a grand total of 38 streetbikes came from as far away as California and Canada to compete for one of the prestigious "Fastest Streetbike in America" prize jackets provided by Joe Rocket for the class winners of this contest. At times the event looked more like a rally of the Turbo Hayabusa Owners of America, as by far the most popular machine there was some variation of that bike. Balancing out all the 'Busas were a few Big Kaws (three brandy-new ZX14s and a smattering of ZX-12Rs, too) along with a bunch of GSX-R1000s, a couple of R1s, a straight-nasty naked Yamaha V-Max, some motards and more. The only type of bike that was underrepresented was 600s. Despite having two classes available for riders of 600-sized machines, when the event kicked off on Saturday there wasn't a single middleweight machine in the paddock-naturally aspirated, power-adder or otherwise-to take part in the competition. You 600 riders out there are weak!
In the months leading up to our event, the chatter on various performance-oriented Web pages was unstoppable. Working off of dyno numbers and gearing charts alone, it seemed like every turbo 'Busa owner in the world thought he could come down and click off 220-plus mph passes at Maxton all day long. But, as seasoned land-speed veterans are fond of saying, "It's easy to go 200 mph-at home!" On the brutal and unforgiving Maxton Monster Mile, big speed isn't so easy to achieve. At the end of the two-day event, just two of those 38 bikes managed to break the 220 mph barrier (ECTA veteran Rich Yancy and stand-out privateer Chris Bletsas), and there were as many blown-up bikes being loaded into trailers as there were riders who broke 200 mph. Even with all the high-horsepower bikes on tap, when we got done and crunched the numbers, only 17 of the 38 riders there made a pass over 200 mph. Looking at the total number of motorcycle passes made that weekend (294 runs), only 22 percent of them were over 200 mph, with the average motorcycle speed at the event coming in at 173.2 mph. (And, remember, these were nearly all liter or liter-plus displacement bikes!) Going 200 mph is not easy, as many of the entrants discovered. Even with huge-horsepower bikes and a moderate level of riding talent, there is much more to breaking the double ton than just tucking in and banging on the shift lever for a mile.
That said, there were a few tuners/riders who absolutely blew us away, with longtime ECTA racer Rich Yancy topping that list with his remarkable 233.936 mph pass that locked up the "Fastest Streetbike in America" title. Riding his stock-wheelbase, turbocharged, Dale Earnhardt Jr.-themed Hayabusa (Yancy's day job is working in Dale Junior's NASCAR race shop), Yancy set the bar high when he clicked off that speed on just the third run of the weekend. What's more, Yancy's runs reinforced for us the validity of our no-jockey ruling. Yancy's bike is the all-time ultimate speed record holder at Maxton, having gone 260.288 mph at an ECTA event last year with the diminutive Lee Shierts in the saddle. Yancy, who stands a towering 6 feet 5 inches tall and outweighs Shierts by a few dozen pounds, too, has a harder time hiding from the wind compared to Shierts, which ultimately cost him nearly 30 mph but made for a much fairer contest. Not to mention the fact that he has to hold onto the bike at those speeds! When Yancy came over to the impound area after his first and fastest run, he turned over his timing slip to us and said: "That was scary. I sure hope that's fast enough to win this event, because I'm not sure I want to do that again!" Luckily for Yancy, a speed of 233 mph was more than enough to take home a jacket, and the enviable title "Fastest Streetbike in America."