Factory Flyer

Factory Flyer

Rickey Gadson goes for gold on Kawasaki’s mean, green (and now, Y2K-compliant) ZX-12R

RICKEY GADSON HAS A REPUTATION TO uphold. After the factory Kawasaki rider’s blazing 9.52-second/147-mph pass on a lowered, pre-production ZX12R at Rockingham Dragway in North Carolina last November, the detractors were out in full force. It’s all a bunch of hype, they swore. That thing couldn’t be stock. No way, no how.

One week later, at the AMA/Prostar World Finals in Gainesville, Florida, the 33-year-old Gadson, riding the same lime-green ZX but this time fitted with a Muzzy exhaust pipe (reportedly worth 10 horsepower), backed up his previous performance with an eye-popping 9.47-second run at 150 mph. Overnight, dealer requests for the bike rolled in like a tidal wave. At last count, Kawasaki had 5800 orders for 4200 available machines.

Next came the reported production delays. Two weeks turned into four, then six. The rumor mill was in high gear. The bike may be speedy, the cynics said, but it’s certainly not quick enough to eclipse Suzuki’s GSX1300R Hayabusa. Now, Gadson’s credibility was on the line. Would the bike meet the pre-rollout publicity?

To find out, we headed to Pomona Raceway, site of the annual NHRA Winter Nationals, where our sister magazine, Road & Track, had laid on the mother of all quartermile shootouts. Bring your best, they said. The ZX-12R was ready, and who better to ride it than Gadson?

The three-time AMA/Prostar Pro Superbike Champion was jazzed. “All my life, I never wanted to be a factory rider,” he explained. “I just wanted to be a magazine test rider, like my hero, Jay Gleason.”

At Pomona, we met with serious opposition. This would

be no cakewalk. Leading the four-wheeled lineup was Rod Millen’s outrageous, Pikes Peak-winning Toyota Tacoma (described by one onlooker as a GTP car on knobbies), followed by a 650-horsepower Hennessey Motorsports Dodge Viper and a dazzling Lamborghini Diablo SV, the latter being the only stocker of the seven-car bunch.

After a couple runs with the ZX in showroom trim (the best of which was 10.06 seconds at 142 mph), Gadson asked if the bike could be lowered. With the fork tubes raised 1 '/2 inches in the triple-clamps and the rear suspension “dogbones” swapped for a set chiseled from aluminum by Rob Muzzy, Gadson immediately dropped into the high 9s.

Alas, the hoped-for mid-9s never materialized. Wide-open into a slight headwind, Gadson only managed 9.89 seconds at 142 mph, good enough for third-quickest behind the oneoff Toyota and a raucous, 600-horsepower Honda CRX. Gadson was crushed. “Maybe the conditions could have been better,” he lamented, “but anything I say is going to come across like a lie or an excuse. And I don’t want that.” CW Road Test Editor Don Canet, on-hand to run the radar equipment and accompanying computer software, was noticeably awed by Gadson’s performance. “He was flawless,” Canet said. “His shifts were seamless. I guess that’s just part of the Gadson magic.”

So, as it turns out, the restrictions imposed on the ZX-12R by Kawasaki in Japan not only limited its top speed. Acceleration was short-circuited, too. At best, it’s a difficult and frustrating situation, not only for potential buyers-people who put their money down on what was supposed to be the world’s quickest and fastest motorcycle-but for Kawasaki, as well.

Just don’t blame Gadson. -Matthew Miles