When you think of the world's quickest motorcycles, you're likely to think of traditionally powered machines. Stuff powered by ground-up dinosaurs and long-decomposed plant life, extracted from the soils, refined at massive plants, and sent to your local gas station or refined again and made into the jungle juice that is race gas.
You'll think of MotoGP bikes, Suzuki's dominant drag motorcycles that somewhat resemble the Hayabusa, or even some of the land-speed motorcycles that cross the Salt Flats just over the mountains from my house. They are, after all, the essence of speed in the modern era.
But the real king of speed, the almighty hammer of acceleration, doesn't use gasoline. It doesn't even use pistons. Instead, this force of nature, uses something far older than gasoline, something that powered massive ships, locomotives, and even a few cars back when the predominant mode of transportation was the horse.
Yes, the quickest accelerating motorcycle ever is powered by steam. And that's wild.
Appropriately called "Force of Nature," the motorcycle is powered by a steam engine which, according to its builder, Graham Sykes, "uses the latent energy of super-heated pressurised water released through De laval nozzles, where it turns to steam and creates the thrust to propel the bike forwards." Basically, it's a steam-powered rocket, pushing out super-pressurized steam from the nozzles, propelling the motorcycle forward at speeds that are not only eye-watering, but record-breaking.
The only downside? It takes about 4-5 hours to heat up the 100-liters of water to the point where the bike can run a sprint down a drag strip. But when the tank is ready and pressurized, you'd best hold on tight, as you're about to meet Mach Jesus. No lag, no build up, just open up the taps and you're basically at the finish line before you know it.
And now, after an Easter weekend event at the famed Santa Pod Raceway in the United Kingdom, "Force of Nature" and Sykes hold a few new records, including the quickest accelerating steam motorcycle, the quickest motorcycle in the 1/8th mile, and the second quickest motorcycle in the quarter mile. Just how quick is it? It covered the quarter mile in just 5.5039 seconds. Feckin' hell, that's quick.
According to Sykes, who spoke to our friends over at Motorcycle News, "Looking at where we were last year with the, with the previous [smaller] bike and where we ended up, we’re right at the beginning of the learning curve again with this one. I think that we can probably go 0.6 seconds quicker over the quarter mile. So, we should be able to run into the high fours. That’s the target we’re aiming for."
The shed-based engineer added, "We’ve all gone fast, and many people have gone well over 200mph, so there’s nothing new there, but the acceleration rate is astounding. It’s the fastest accelerating vehicle in the world, other than a top fuel car. It’s not the sort of bike you can just say ‘I’ll have a go on that, hold my beer’."
And after watching this motorcycle go, I gotta say, his "hold my beer" comment ain't wrong. You know that meme "Here, there, and gone"? Yeah, it's talking about this motorcycle. I cannot even imagine what it's like to ride, but I'd imagine it's as if you rode a bolt of lightning. I'd probably try it, though. What about you all?
