KTM’s MotoGP bike pumps out 270 hp and while that’s a lot less than the Rimac Nevera, it also weighs less than 1/10th as much
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The Rimac Nevera is the quickest production car ever conceived having stormed to 60 mph (96 km/h) in just 1.74 seconds a few months ago while also hitting 124 mph (200 km/h) in 4.42 seconds and 186 mph (300 km/h) in 9.23 seconds. There’s no other production car that can match these figures but is there a motorcycle that can give the Nevera a run for its money?
Eager to give the Nevera some competition, CarWow couldn’t just pick any standard production motorcycle, as none of them would compete. As such, it made a call to the KTM MotoGP team and had them bring along their current race bike as well as MotoGP legend Dani Pedrosa. To spice things up even further, a supercharged Suzuki Hayabusa was also recruited for a series of races.
The speed at which the Nevera gets off the launch is truly something to behold but remarkably, Pedrosa on the KTM is able to keep very close to him. This is in part thanks to a system used by all current MotoGP bikes that lowers the front and rear ends to improve traction off the line and eliminate the possibility of them doing a wheelie. The modified Suzuki does not have such a system and was left spinning its rear wheel, leaving it trailing the other two.
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Watch: Can A Porsche 918 Spyder Hang With A KTM MotoGP Bike In A Straight Line?
The second race is even closer between the Rimac and the KTM. Once again, it is the EV that has the advantage off the line but as the speeds started to accelerate, the KTM started to close the gap. Unfortunately, it couldn’t overtake the Rimac and crossed the quarter-mile in 8.6 seconds compared to the 8.5 seconds of the Rimac. The turbocharged Suzuki needed 9.6 seconds.
Surprisingly, the Rimac and the KTM are also very well-matched in a rolling race and remain almost even beyond 330 km/h (205 mph). It was the bike that claimed the victory across the half-mile in the first rolling race but in the second, the Rimac beat it by just a couple of feet.