BIKES: Landspeed Racers Set Guinness Book Record

Motorcycling Lifestyles

BIKES: Landspeed Racers Set Guinness Book Record

Erin Hunter and Andy Sills are avid high-speed riders and have achieved 15 world and national landspeed records with streamliner motorcycles as well as “traditional” race bikes.

MotorcycleUSA.com Staff | http://www.motorcycle-usa.com | Posted April 11, 2012 Charlotte, NC

Erin Hunter Achieves Guinness Book Record with Andy Sills

Longtime Landspeed racers Andy Sills and Erin Hunter recently received the Guinness Book of World Records record for fastest motorcycle ridden with a rider and a pillion at an average two-way speed of 181.426 MPH across the Bonneville Salt Flats. Their qualification pass on the timed mile with Andy as pilot of the 2011 BMW S1000 RR and Erin in tow was 182.358mph. They then switched configurations for their return pass – Erin as pilot and Andy on pillion – which timed across the mile at 180.503.

The attempt was an expeditionary effort with an eye towards developing rules or standards for two-up Landspeed racing which could potentially become a subset of the sport. Many were also eager to
see if two people racing in active partnership could produce a leverage and weight combination that would
generate higher speeds than a solo rider.

While most modern bikes include a passenger seat, the pillion position is often perceived as just “along for the ride.” That is precisely why Erin and Andy contested the precepts of ‘two-up’ riding by racing together across The Salt during Mike Cook’s 2011 Top Speed Shootout, an international event officiated by the AMA and FIM. Their point was to help riders rethink the promise of “two-up” - goodbye passenger, hello active second-seat rider. So-long Lone Ranger, howdy Partner.

The two were committed to not utilizing any extraneous aids or devices to hold them to the motorcycle – no handles affixed to the tank, for example. They choose a BMW S1000 RR (from BMW San Diego) for its undeniable horsepower – but certainly not for its second-seat aerodynamics. The pillion is high and decidedly in the airstream. They were secured to the bike only by each other, the bars, the foot pegs, the race position and their grasp. Experienced racers who’ve each independently been over 200mph on solo motorcycles at Bonneville, Erin and Andy worked up to our maximum speed incrementally, respecting the envelope but pushing to find its limits. They also shared equally the responsibilities of both positions on the motorcycle. Girls don’t just ride in the back, of course!

Both concurred that the second-seat is exponentially more difficult than pilot’s seat. “We’re both strong athletes, but riding the pillion at extreme-hurricane-force 181mph is the most physically challenging thing either of us has ever done. It’s not for the weak or faint of heart,” said Andy.

The Cook Top Speed Shootout is a unique invitational meet with a limited number of entrants, many of which go over 400mph. Conditions for the 2011 event were suboptimal due to heavy rains the week
before that left the course unusually hard and bumpy. Unpredictable cross- and head-winds added to the challenges.

Read details about the adventure here:

Monday morning, September 19th, The first day of the meet. Temperatures are in the 80’s, and the wind is calm. The Cook organizers had been working for days and nights to drag a suitable racecourse across the salt, but they can only do so much due to recent rains. Much of the course surface is extremely hard and uneven, the usual state of the natural salt ground. Other large sections of the course remain soft and mushy from rain. The soft will slow you down, the hard will rocket you forward, and the bumps will project you up into the raging torrent of a 180+ mph jet stream and upset your tenuous hold on things. Multiply by two, crank it up to gale force air speeds, and this is no joy ride. It’s land-speed racing at Bonneville, where the edge can become a cliff in a cosmic instant. We accept the offer for the very first run on the course, which plays to our strategy: run early, run often.

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