Graham Sykes’ motorbike runs down the quarter-mile in just 5.5 seconds. The steam-powered bike dumps all of its power in just 2.9 seconds. The machine pulls 6.8 Gs, rivaling what a fighter pilot endures. Going fast on a motorcycle is a completely different experience from going fast in a car. If something goes wrong at high speed on a motorbike, or while accelerating quickly, you know you’re going to slide and tumble down the road, whereas at least in a car, you know you’re cocooned in bodywork and a hit will be softened by the airbags. This ever-present danger of being on two wheels doesn’t faze Graham Sykes. Sykes, a 62-year-old precision engineer from North Yorkshire, is the builder, owner, and rider of ‘Force of Nature’, the world’s quickest-accelerating motorcycle. Rather than running on dinosaur juice, as you might expect, this bike is actually driven by steam, and the world recently had the chance to see it in action at Santa Pod Raceway in the UK. Read: New Hypercar Startup Wants You To Ride It Like A Superbike, Not Sit In It The way this thing launches off the line is truly staggering. The sprint to 62 mph (100 km/h) takes just 0.4 seconds, and during this recent run, he covered the quarter-mile in 5.5 seconds at 192.94 mph (310 km/h). The only motorcycle to go down the quarter-mile quicker than this is a rocket-powered bike ridden by Frenchman Eric Teboul, setting a time of just 4.976 seconds. Teboul’s run came in September 2022 at 290.51 mph (467.53 km/h) aboard a hydrogen peroxide rocket bike. The Force of Nature owns the marks at shorter distances, taking the eighth-mile in 3.17 seconds at 203 mph (326.7 km/h) and the 1,000-foot run in 4.53 seconds at 193 mph (310.6 km/h). Sykes started building his steam-powered motorbike in 2022, and it’s now in its fifth iteration. Development continues, and he believes a further 0.6 seconds can be lobbed off its quarter-mile time, allowing it to dip below the 5-second mark. At a separate run at Santa Pod Raceway, Sykes cut his best time down to 5.44 seconds. What Powers It? Operating a steam-powered motorcycle like this is rather complex. A small burner running on kerosene or vegetable oil generates heat, which is then channeled through a manifold into six burner tubes. This heat is then transferred to the bike’s 120-liter pressure vessel, which contains deionized and demineralized water. Temperatures reach up to 250 ºC and pressures reach 580psi, providing Sykes with thrust for approximately 2.9 seconds. The team is chasing more than three seconds of thrust by cutting the turbulence and cavitation that interrupt the flow. Speaking with MCN, Sykes says the motorbike pulls up to 6.8Gs under acceleration. For mere mortals like ourselves, that’s a terrifying figure and rivals the G-forces experienced by fighter jet pilots. At that peak, an 85 kg (187 lbs) rider momentarily weighs the equivalent of 578 kg (1,274 lbs), which is why Sykes pins himself to the bars and gets his feet up the instant he releases the launch button. Screenshots Paul Donavan/YouTube
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