Bonneville Salt Flats, Utah - British motorcycle firm Triumph is again taking aim at the motorcycle world land speed record.
Riding a fearsomely powerful two-wheeler called the Castrol Rocket, rider Jason DiSalvo will attempt to beat the 605.697km/h record set in 2010 by Rocky Robinson in a Suzuki-powered streamliner, and possibly become the first motorcycle to break the 400mph (643.74km/h) barrier in the process.
The Castrol Rocket is an attempt for Triumph to restore its legacy of record-breaking, which stretches back decades. Triumph held the title of World’s Fastest Motorcycle from 1955 to 1970 with the exception of a brief 33-day period. The Triumph streamliners to carry world records were the Devil’s Arrow, the Texas Cee-gar and Gyronaut X1, the last being timed at 395.28km/h in 1966, a mark that stood for four years.
That’s also how the immortal Triumph Bonneville got its name.
The venue for this record attempt will be the famous Bonneville Salt Flats in Utah, the home of land-speed record-chasing in the US.
Although it rides on two wheels, the fully-enclosed, torpedo-shaped machine barely looks like a motorcycle. The 7.77m carbon-fibre/Kevlar body rides on specially developed Goodyear “Land Speed Special” tyres to ensure the bike handles perfectly on the salt surface.
It’s powered by a pair of methanol-fuelled, twin-turbocharged 1.5-litre Triumph Rocket III engines, producing a combined output of more than 750kW. Carbon brake discs and two parachutes are employed to slow down the appropriately named two-wheeled rocket. - Star Motoring
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