Kawasaki Ninja Bike Top Speed 400 km/h - Record Breaking Speed - Motorcycle Review

Kawasaki Ninja Bike Top Speed 400 km/h - Record-Breaking Speed - Kawasaki’s Ninja family has been a household name for over three decades now, and the factory aims to keep it that way with a couple of new-in-2019 models in the litre-bike range: the ZX-10R base model and its KRT variant. Toward that end, Kawi boosted power through a number of individual improvements in the engine. The engineers also added a few items that will certainly endear these siblings to the hearts of the race fans and wannabe knee-draggers out there and the electronics were upgraded with even more fandanglery on the menu.
The Ninja family has always served a dual purpose — that of a race machine and a civilian vehicle — and this new-in-’19 generation is no exception. The Ninja ZX-10R follows the superbike style that sees fairly complete coverage of the body and leaves a lot to the imagination. But it is purpose-built and wind tunnel-tested, with little in the way of the superfluous, to provide low-resistance penetration with low-turbulence reintegration of the cooling air with the slipstream.

One of the more telling features is right at the leading edge of the front end; it’s a ram-air port set right in the nose between the dual recessed headlights, and it is not just another vanity detail. It gulps air from the pressure wave at the entry and channels it directly into the airbox for a low-tech boost to volumetric efficiency with a concurrent increase in power.

Now don’t get me wrong, I like the factory’s thinking here, but I happen to know a thing or two about this subject, and the truth is that at legal interstate speeds, the power gain is negligible ’cause the ram-air pressure is just too low at that speed. Still, it’s cool, and it speaks to the lengths to which the factory went to bring racebike tech to the unwashed masses.

Up top, a bubble screen punches a hole in the weather for the pilot to tuck into, and in another move to reduce drag, the front turn signals are integrated with the mirrors. Behind the glass is an all-electronic instrument panel that rocks a bar-type scale for the rpm with a digital LED screen and a handful of idiot lights for the rest. Down low you’ll find the usual maw created by the cowling with the radiator tucked away within, and that waste air reintegrates with the slipstream through the strategically located vents.

Dead-short control bars pull the rider forward over the 4.5-gallon fuel hump that drops precipitously to the narrow waist where tank, saddle, and body meet. An upswept subframe lofts the pillion and gives the “10R” a nose-down/tail-up attitude, and if you don’t fancy hauling a passenger around, you can opt for the accessory seat cowl that conceals the pad with a cover that sports a tailbone bumper for the pilot.

Too bad Kawi went with a subframe-mount mudguard/turn signal/plate holder combo instead of a hugger, but I suspect that was a move to make it all easily removable for actual track use. Toward that end, the factory also offers a race kit for this machine just for that purpose.

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Production Bike World Record - 0-400 km/h in 26 sec
Kawasaki Ninja H2R
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