Speaking of weight on land speed bikes, my older, smart-assed, brother said "that bike must make a lot of horsepower to go fast with you on it". I replied that as an engineer, that he had forgotten the theory that weight does not impact top speed and that possibly with his extra thirty pounds, he might even be able to go faster than I do! Then this past weekend, my brother-in-law, also an engineer asked me the same question, except in a more delicate fashion. I told him of my conversation with my brother and he said "I guess that same rule would apply to me". He has a few pounds on me also. It is fun explaining these things, especially to engineers, I know it has them going back to their theory books. I drag racing it is the opposite, for every hundred pounds you take off you can figure a 1/10 of a second quicker acceleration, not sure the theory for bikes.
The exception to the above would have been the late Bill Warner's bikes. He made them somewhat light as he essentially ran a one mile sprint. He would back up at the line to get as much room as possible to accelerate and then blast out of there trying to hit 300 mph every run. That speed is just crazy in many ways. I hope no one else tries it soon except maybe at Bonneville where you don't have to run it so violently. I also think tires are a big issue at that kind of speed. Bill was using tires designed for 200 mph and running them 50% faster with about quadruple the amount of horsepower they were designed to handle.
