KEY POINTS:
Back in 1962 when little-known Kiwi Burt Munro set his land speed record of 288.02km/h on a 1920 Indian, the news hardly raised a whimper outside the aficionados.
At next year's August speed week at the very same Bonneville Salt Flats where Munro made a name for himself,
another Kiwi will be attempting to set a new production motorcycle world speed record.
Company director and motorcycle fanatic Paul Heard and his team are going to travel to Bonneville via New Zealand, Australia, Japan, China, Great Britain and Italy, attempting to break the record as they go. The idea is to break the existing record of 299.148km/h, held by Roosevelt Lackey on an MV Agusta F4-1000R, first in New Zealand and incrementally go faster in each country, finally setting the outright record at Bonneville.
"I've always had and been interested in motorcycles," said Heard. "Growing up in the Philippines the biggest motorcycle around was 100cc and I spent all my time trying to get more power out of them and make them go faster.
"I'm a bit of a speed nut, not on the roads though, and have always wanted to go faster and faster."
Tauranga-based Heard has enlisted seven-time New Zealand motorcycle racing champion and current Suzuki rider Andrew Stroud, whom he has known for years, to pilot the bike at each attempt. And it's no ordinary off-the-shelf bike either, it's one of only 1500 1000cc Ducati Desmosedici RR manufactured, and is in effect Ducati's 2006 MotoGP bike with a headlight.
The bike is capable of 350km/h and while this is a daunting figure to your average motorcyclist, Stroud is no stranger when dealing with speed, having stopped the radar at 314km/h on his race-prepared Suzuki down the back straight at Pukekohe. He also set the fastest speed of any motorcycle at Daytona on the Britten V1000 in 1994, clocking in at 304km/h.
"It's a really exciting project and the bike seems more than capable," said Stroud. "I can [identify] with the Burt Munro movie because I went off to America on my own when I was young trying to make it all work."
Although Stroud has a proud history racing motorcycles all over the world, this will be his first attempt at a land speed record.
"Going 320km/h plus is not so much the problem as we do that sort of speed all the time when racing," said Stroud. "The problem is wheel spin on the salt at Bonneville. You have to be aware of this because at 300km/h you're pushing so much wind and having so much horsepower the bike will tend to spin the wheel. So you've got to learn a bit of slide control."
Heard, as well as being a superbike team owner, also holds a land speed record. He stopped the radar at 295.53km/h during the Carterton flying mile event on his production MV Agusta F4, and chuckles when talking about it. He now claims he went nine kilometres an hour faster than Munro. And it's this desire to follow in the footsteps of Munro that's part of the driving force behind the record attempt.
"It all started when I was invited to go to the MotoGP at Philip Island, Australia, last year as part of a Ducati trip and they were launching their new bike [the Desmosedici RR]," said Heard. "I realised they were making enough of them to qualify as a production bike and that I could use one to break the land speed record, so I bought two of them. One for the record attempt and another as a back-up."
Heard soon realised if he took the bike to Bonneville, it would be more than capable of breaking the speed record for a 1000cc production bike.
The New Zealand record breaking attempt will take place in November at Auckland International Airport. The publicity generated by Jonny Reid in an A1GP car racing against a Boeing 777 plane helped smooth the way for Heard's attempt.
There is already a great deal of interest from the Ducati importers in the various countries where record attempts will be made and Top Gear in the UK is keen to film when the team hits their shores. The Italians are keen to showcase the bike as one of their own, and have stated there is no other record attempt planned during the same time period. However, it's the Americans who are probably the keenest.
"The Americans are the ones who are incredibly enthusiastic about it," said Heard. "The risk is so high [of destroying] these bikes and most of the people buying them are collectors. Tom Cruise was the first person in the US to get one followed by Brad Pitt and Jay Leno."
At this stage Heard has committed to having the two bikes and is prepared to fund the project himself and has arranged for a documentary team to film the whole adventure.
