Mother Nature Rains On Triumph Motorcycles’ Land-Speed Attempt At Bonneville

I had just checked in at the airport when my phone rang. "It rained last night," muttered a dejected David Price, press officer for the Triumph Motorcycles Land Speed Record project. "We'll be here, but if you don't want to come out, we completely understand." Wet salt at Bonneville meant the chance of setting a new motorcycle land-speed record was narrowing, but Triumph was committed, and so I was too. "I'll be there in a few hours," I responded.

Unfortunately, it was all for naught. Course conditions during the 2016 Mike Cook's Bonneville Shootout never improved to a point that Triumph could get a clean run. Making matters worse, Guy Martin crashed the Triumph Infor Rocket Streamliner twice due to course conditions—once under tow, at mile two, and again the following day, in the early stages of his FIM-required certification run, which would have been limited to 300 mph.

A lot of people would consider the week a failure—a waste of Triumph’s time and resources. But I don’t, and I’d like to think Triumph doesn’t either. That’s not how racing works. Racing isn’t always champagne bottles on the top of podiums or paper slips with record-breaking speeds printed on them. It’s long days spent finding every last bit of power and, in this case, longer nights spent reapplying decals to the carbon-fiber shell of a battered streamliner. It’s supreme dedication, and it’s not throwing in the towel, even when others think you should.

Triumph has yet to prove it has built the world’s fastest motorcycle, but having seen first hand how dedicated it is to the project, I have to believe it will. The streamliner is a thing of beauty and continually evolving, the team still hunting down every last advantage it can find. This time, it was coils that were tested and offered a better spark, for a cleaner burn and better tuning. Who knows what it will be next. But it will be something.

Why keep trying? Because these guys are true competitors. They’ve set a goal, and they’re not giving up until they reach it. They just didn’t reach it this year, that’s all.