ROAD NEWS
KIWI BREAKS BONNEVILLE SPEED RECORD
Kiwi Walter Rands-Trevor has again made the huge trek to the Bonneville Salt Flats with his Kawasaki ZX-10R... and set a new record on his home-brewed bike. We ' ll let him tell the story... I travelled to Bonneville this year with Harris Family Racing, I’ m Pippa Harris’ s partner. This was my fourth time racing a bike at Bonneville( as well as two other attempts to get here that were rained off, where I didn’ t get to race). My bike is a 2011 1000cc Kawasaki ZX10R, which I enter in two classes. The first is MPS-G( Modified Production, Partial Streamlining, Gas), the record is 212mph and out of reach for me, however I use it to dial the bike in for the conditions on the salt. The other class I run in is M-G( Modified Production, Gas) which is for what are called Open ' bikes, i. e. naked bikes with no streamlining. The record was 187.484mph( 301.726km / h). On previous trips the M-G record was 184mph then 185mph and I had been within 0.5mph and 0.25mph respectively, so I knew I could get close to the record.
12 KIWI RIDER
It’ s been a few years since my last run at Bonneville, so I had to do some licensing runs first, which I did in MPS-G. In total I did five runs in that class for licensing and tuning. My best speed was 197.8mph, about on par with my previous personal best on the salt. Unfortunately, course conditions prevented me doing a 200mph pass this year which was one of my goals for this trip( I have done 200mph in NZ, just not on the salt). We then reconfigured the bike for M-G; all fairings are removed but we also have a different intake and dash mount plus a few other bits to help get me out of the wind as much as possible, within the rules for the class. The class change means going through tech inspection again( we had a clean pass from them in both classes) and running under a new race number. Then I was able to join a queue for my first M-G pass, which unfortunately was in the heat of the day, but we were lined up alongside Lincoln Harris and his roadster, which was cool. Riding a naked bike at 180mph +