Honda CBR300R Racebike Breaks Lap Record at Chuckwalla
- 8 years ago
We all enjoy motorcycles in a slightly different way, and one of the ways Senior Road Test Editor Ari Henning enjoys them is to race. He often disappears for the weekend to drive to a club-racing contest, and usually comes back with an armload of trophies. Being that he’s spent most of these races aboard an adorable little CBR300R we assumed he was racing against children and rookies. Cute participation plaque, Ari, but seriously, how fast could you really be going?
This on-board footage we found on his GoPro tells the story. It’s from a race at Chuckwalla Valley Raceway in desert of southern California (where the Motorcyclist staff occasionally tests sportbikes) in which our esteemed colleague set a new lap record aboard his tiny, trusty steed. A lap time of 1:58.66 is a pretty arbitrary number, but consider this: To cover Chuckwalla’s 2.7 miles and 17 turns Ari averaged 81 mph, just 11 mph slower than a stock CBR300’s outright top speed of 92 mph. And, of the less-than two minutes it took to do the lap, the bike was wide open for one minute eleven seconds, or 60 percent of the lap.
This on-board footage we found on his GoPro tells the story. It’s from a race at Chuckwalla Valley Raceway in desert of southern California (where the Motorcyclist staff occasionally tests sportbikes) in which our esteemed colleague set a new lap record aboard his tiny, trusty steed. A lap time of 1:58.66 is a pretty arbitrary number, but consider this: To cover Chuckwalla’s 2.7 miles and 17 turns Ari averaged 81 mph, just 11 mph slower than a stock CBR300’s outright top speed of 92 mph. And, of the less-than two minutes it took to do the lap, the bike was wide open for one minute eleven seconds, or 60 percent of the lap.