~ Auto Buzz ~: TURN & BURN II VIDEO: Kawasaki Ninja H2 The supercharged Kawi is hard to launch well, but it's explosively quick to 180 mph.

Thursday 27 August 2015

TURN & BURN II VIDEO: Kawasaki Ninja H2 The supercharged Kawi is hard to launch well, but it's explosively quick to 180 mph.

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Kawasaki H2 Price: $25,000 Weight: 501 lb. Horsepower: 189.8 hp @ 11,090 rpm 0–180 mph: 16.04 sec. Distance to 180 mph: 2859 ft. While launching the Yamaha YZF-R1M was a relative walk in the park, the supercharged Kawasaki H2 was entirely different. “It’s hard to feel what it’s going to do because of the nature of the engine and the boost,” Canet remarked after a few practice runs in which he experimented with the launch, traction, and wheelie control systems. On some runs, the H2 felt planted in third gear, able to take full throttle. On others, Canet said the bike wanted to snap its front wheel up way too high for comfort. After working with the Kawasaki tech on how to best set up the H2, Canet decided to launch the heavy 501-pound machine with all electronics off. That way, he’d have full confidence for the whole run and not worry about how much front wheel lift would be allowed in each gear by the particular settings he had chosen for that run.

With everything switched off, he launched the H2R at only 5,000 rpm, leveraging the supercharged four-cylinder’s midrange power. It worked. Canet’s runs looked much smoother, with the rear hooking up beautifully and the front barely aloft, both under the control of his skilled right wrist. What can we say? With a full day of testing on a bike as electronically complex as the H2, we might have found an ideal setting for the conditions. Or we could simply hand control to Canet and watch a human computer handle it with the aplomb of a guy who’s been testing bikes for decades. The choice was easy for us, and at the end of the day, the H2 was quickest bike to 60 and 100 mph. And it hit 180 mph in only 16.04 seconds, 1.2 seconds more quickly than the winning ZX-10R in our first visit to Lemoore. Impressive. One can only imagine what the track-only H2R, with 100 more horsepower, would have managed on this glorious runway.