Kawasaki employees make up Team 38, an informal, independent group of enthusiasts that benefit from some of the company’s engineering expertise. It has been around for decades — competing in events such as the Suzuka 8-Hours.
Earlier this year, Team 38 took a production H2 to the Bonneville Salt Flats to try and break a record in a production class known as P-PB 1000. The video below is the story of their successful efforts, which resulted in a top speed of 211 mph and a record average of 209 mph.
See more of MD’s great photography:
For whatever reason, I recently started to get the feeling I may need to ride a motorcycle at >200 mph in my lifetime. It never occurred to me before, but I’m starting to think about it. A new H2 would be a good start. Why am I even talking about this?
…because you’re listening to that little voice in your head that says you should go 200 mph across the salty surface of this planet before you have to leave this space rock for good!
I only ever made it to 180 or so, not the same. Thinking I might want the 200 hat too. I won’t ever climb Mt Everest, but I want to believe I could do the ton X 2.
…because there’s a 200 mph club?
They used a relatively slick tire but being an unmodified class I suppose they had to.
Interesting comment from the rider, that it’s harder to move forward with good grip, that power is wasted fighting the grip. I’ve always heard that the #1 obstacle for wheel driven speed at Bonneville is lack of grip vs. aerodynamic drag.
Kind of like pedalling a bicycle equipped with knobby tires vs smooth tires…it takes more effort with the grippy knobby tread.
Maybe it’s a translation issue. Perhaps he means that the surface is soft and slow and it mistranslated to “grip”.
If you ride a slick, untreated tire on a dirt surface, you can indeed be slower because of the loss of forward drive/grip. That is the condition I was referring to in my previous post.
This article is an example of why I try to be loyal to Kawi (I have owned all of the Japanese marks and love them all for their different qualities/souls)
Kudos to Kawasaki for encouraging employees to think way outside the box. The supercharged H2 was the idea of one senior engineer that ultimately led to 300 Kawasaki engineers from throughout the company working together to bring the idea to market. Team 38 is named for the building in which they work at Kawasaki’s Akashi Japan site.