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The drivability and safety of the vehicles is impressive, given the aesthetic constraints. I grew up around motorcycle and car drag racing, and I know how squir

by beat 11y ago

The drivability and safety of the vehicles is impressive, given the aesthetic constraints. I grew up around motorcycle and car drag racing, and I know how squirrelly such vehicles can get! I raced as a kid myself, but quit after one try at racing my dad's bike. It was full-race B-modified Kawasaki Z1, capable of 155mph in the quarter mile. It would start to shimmy around 130mph. Scared the crap out of me! He was mad that I didn't have the guts to just hang on and ride it through.

jacquesm 11y ago
A bike that powerful is something to treat with proper respect and I'm kind of surprised at your dad's reaction. With machines like that it is never the machine that is the limit but always the driver and if you're not confident an accident is just around the corner. Confidence you can fake for humans but machines are fairly unforgiving and the kind of punishment meted out at 130mph+ is not the kind of thing you'd normally wish on your kid. Kudos to you (as a dad...) for knowing your limits rather than ending in hospital. I've had only one major bike spill but it was my first and last in one go, it cured me of my sense that I was in control all the time in a split second (just a bit of loose gravel in a corner that was usually clean, nowhere near 130mph).
- beat 11y ago
  My dad is an asshole. And yeah, race track conditions are very different. A drag race is a straight line over more or less flat and smooth asphalt, that can easily be kept clean. The hard part is the vehicles are so fast that even keeping them straight over the width of a two-lane road is a challenge (especially when the front wheels may not be touching the ground for the first hundred feet or more). I saw a guy get killed racing once, when I was a kid. It was a mixed car/motorcycle event, and the motorcyclists were arguing with the NHRA to get haybales put up around the guard rails at the end of the track. It didn't get done, and a top fuel bike (~7.8 second quarter mile those days) lost control and went into the rail at close to 200mph. That was sobering. I don't ride motorcycles anymore. Too much sense of my own mortality.

by beat 11y ago

jacquesm 11y ago

A bike that powerful is something to treat with proper respect and I'm kind of surprised at your dad's reaction. With machines like that it is never the machine that is the limit but always the driver and if you're not confident an accident is just around the corner. Confidence you can fake for humans but machines are fairly unforgiving and the kind of punishment meted out at 130mph+ is not the kind of thing you'd normally wish on your kid. Kudos to you (as a dad...) for knowing your limits rather than ending in hospital. I've had only one major bike spill but it was my first and last in one go, it cured me of my sense that I was in control all the time in a split second (just a bit of loose gravel in a corner that was usually clean, nowhere near 130mph).

beat 11y ago
My dad is an asshole. And yeah, race track conditions are very different. A drag race is a straight line over more or less flat and smooth asphalt, that can easily be kept clean. The hard part is the vehicles are so fast that even keeping them straight over the width of a two-lane road is a challenge (especially when the front wheels may not be touching the ground for the first hundred feet or more). I saw a guy get killed racing once, when I was a kid. It was a mixed car/motorcycle event, and the motorcyclists were arguing with the NHRA to get haybales put up around the guard rails at the end of the track. It didn't get done, and a top fuel bike (~7.8 second quarter mile those days) lost control and went into the rail at close to 200mph. That was sobering. I don't ride motorcycles anymore. Too much sense of my own mortality.