If you ride a motorcycle long enough, someone will inevitably ask you, “What’s the fastest you’ve ever gone?”, usually with a strange look of joy in their eyes. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve been asked this question, but it’s a lot. The strange thing is that when I answer I don’t feel the same excited energy as the person asking me the question; I feel almost tired.
I never thought about the reason for it until I saw this clip of Pedro Acosta talking about speed.
The KTM Factory MotoGP rider was recently on the Gypsy Tales Podcast, and the 3-hour episode is a great way to amp up the Bruno Round of the season this weekend. The Spaniard goes into depth with questions that leave you dying to hear the answers, but one of the more surprising topics is speed and the feeling it gives.
The interviewer tries to understand how different the impact of speed is when you jump from a Moto2 bike to a MotoGP machine. Straight-faced, Acosta told him that once you get above 240 kmph (149) there is no point in going fast. According to the Spanish rider, riding at speeds of 240 kilometers per hour and 360 kilometers per hour is “the same nonsense”.
“I think there comes a point where you don’t start feeling the speed anymore. I think when you go past 240 (kilometres per hour), you don’t feel the speed anymore because it’s all the same,” Acosta said. But Ryder highlights that the difference becomes apparent when you need to hit the brakes, and until I heard Acosta explain it so simply, I never felt like I understood it that much.
The reality is, anyone who has gone over 150 mph on a motorcycle knows that the fun isn’t in watching the speedo numbers rising, the joy is in seeing how much current you have if you’re forced to do so. At 150 mph, you get the acceleration, but once you get there, it’s all about staying in a state of flow and keeping yourself alive.
