Kawasaki’s “unofficial” racers – Team 38 – or, more accurately, Team 38 PS-K – is made up of a small coterie of mostly Japanese enthusiasts and Kawasaki factory test riders, although it has in recent years been joined by Kawasaki USA test rider Derek Keyes for the annual Suzuka 8 Hour race. Named after the building number of the Research and Development test facility at the Akashi factory, Team 38 was founded in 1975 as a motocross team, but shifted to road racing in 1978 for the inaugural Suzuka 8 Hour race. The privately-funded and unincorporated team has continued in the prestigious event throughout the 13-year absence of the factory’s official Team Green effort from 2000. This year in July, though, the Kawasaki Team 38 blokes were strangely missing from the Suzuka grid. Why? Because they had another interesting project on the go in the USA.
Team 38 went off on a very different tack after the factory launched its most exciting new model in decades a year or so back – the supercharged H2, with its track-only sibling, the H2R. While a number of the H2s have been dished out to the media, the rare and expensive H2R is a lot harder for bike journos to get their hands on, so the question’s been asked repeatedly. Just how fast is it really? It’s not as easy as simply looking at the specifications and saying “Ah – the H2 has just over 200 hp and can reach 300 km/h, so if the H2R has 300 hp it should do 450.” Why? Because the power necessary to double your speed – everything else being equal – is not linear, but a cube of speed, thanks to its having to shoulder aside twice as much air in half the time when running at full tilt. That means that if it takes 50 hp to force a motorcycle through the air at 160 km/h it’ll take 50 x 2 x 2, or 200 hp, to achieve double that velocity. That’s eight times the amount of power, and the faster you want to go the worse it gets.
With various people quoting sometimes ridiculous hypothetical top speeds for the H2R, Team 38 decided to find out just how fast the blown Kwacker really is in the real world. Their intention was to run the bike at the 2015 Bonneville Speed Week but, after schlepping across to the USA and doing a few shorter shake-down runs at the El Mirage dry lake bed in California they were chagrined when the Bonneville event was cancelled due to a waterlogged surface. It was time to come up with a Plan B, which they found in the form of the Mojave Mile at the Mojave Air and Space Port. There were a couple of things to consider, though. While the Bonneville salt flats offer seemingly limitless space ahead to reach maximum speed, with competitors generally having about 8 km to build up speed, the Mojave track offers racers just one mile (1,6 km) to get to their top speed from a standing start.
Anyway, the short answer to the question above – how fast is the Kawasaki H2R – is VERY! Their 348,26 km/h over the Mojave Mile is within a few km/h of the top-speeds recorded by other reputable testers around the globe, and would probably be improved by a longer run-up. To see the video and get an some idea of what a small object like a motorcycle, with a frail flesh-and-bones rider on board, looks while covering the length of a full rugby field every single second click HERE
You‘ll also be able to see what it’s like to hang onto a motorcycle at almost 350 km/h on a bumpy old airfield runway!
Revzilla also posted a fascinating story with photographs about the Japanese onslaught on the Mojave Mile.
I have a feeling that Team 38 PS-K will be missing the Suzuka 8 Hour again in 2016…
by Gavin Foster.