THE FAST BUS

There was a 20-knot cross wind, my elbows were mashed against my knees and therefore sticking out into the breeze, and I couldn’t get my head down behind the screen properly. Despite this, the speedo needle was pointing to 310km/h.

It was 1999, I was at the Australian launch of the then-new Suzuki GSX1300R Hayabusa, and going that fast is something I hadn’t done before and haven’t done since (well, maybe for a nanosecond at the end of the main straight at Phillip Island).

We had 3km of Avalon Airport runway that day, but the conditions weren’t ideal, that’s for sure; the crosswind meant leaning into the breeze just to go in a straight line. A combination