Most times, when you see a drag race matchup, there’s an inherent question about which vehicle will come out on top. With multiple vehicular and pilot-related variables in play, there’s plenty of room for speculation and/or debate. Ultimately, of course, none of it really matters once they’re flying down the runway.
This drag race video is a little different, though—particularly if you’ve been following along with some other Bike World x Carwow drag racing videos in recent time. Here, we have a three-way battle between a KTM RC16 MotoGP bike, a KTM Super Duke R Evo, and a Porsche 911 Turbo S. The MotoGP bike is piloted by none other than Dani Pedrosa, while the Super Duke R Evo is piloted by Bike World’s Chris Northover, and the Porsche by Carwow’s Mat Watson.
As Northover says at the beginning of this video, the question here really isn’t who’s going to win. It’s going to be Dani Pedrosa and the RC16. Rather, the point of interest in this race is just how close the Super Duke R Evo’s performance is to that of the extremely technologically advanced MotoGP bike. Naturally, of course, seeing what happens against the Porsche 911 Turbo S, its all-wheel-drive advantage, and its braking systems versus both bikes is also of interest.
There are, as ever, three races here. First, there’s a quarter-mile from a standing start. Next, there’s a quarter-mile from a rolling start. Finally, there’s the brake test—who can stop in the shortest distance from a speed of 100 miles per hour.
The results may not be surprising, but they are interesting to see—particularly since the racers are captured on video from every angle, so we can view it from multiple points around the action. From a standing start, the 911 gets off the line best of all, but the MotoGP bike quickly passes it and wins the race outright. Meanwhile, the Super Duke R Evo road bike comes in third—which was, again, to be expected. You can see that Northover is fighting to keep the front wheel down and stop doing wheelies as he gets off the line, a struggle that’s clearly detrimental to setting a fast time.
The rolling start is kinder to the Super Duke R Evo, but it’s also kinder to the MotoGP bike as well—which quickly wins outright once again. With this type of start, the 911’s all-wheel-drive starting advantage is lost, and the comparative power-to-weight ratios of the bikes both have a better chance to shine.
The brake test ends up being the closest battle of them all among the three. Here, you’d probably expect the 911 to brake the quickest—and you’d be right. However, the Super Duke R Evo managed to come to a complete stop before the MotoGP bike.
More impressively, the difference between where the Super Duke R Evo stopped as compared to where the 911 stopped is very close, indeed—as the angled views show us. The MotoGP bike isn’t far off, either—all in all, it’s the closest grouping of stopping distances we’ve seen so far in this drag race series. At the end, we get a pair of smoky burnouts from the bikes to send us all off on our way.
