This Is Strictly,

a track bike,

 built with one purpose in mind, to win the pan European Sultans of Sprint race series,

 if the name sounds familiar it is because we have featured the race before, in case you have not read the rules here is a brief run down, the race series is open to anyone with an air-cooled European twin and a penchant for insanity, rather than just awarding points for running the quickest time down the short-range drag strip, extra marks are given for bike presentation, hair-raising moments on the track and how much the support crew drinks the night before the race meet, in other words just my sort of race! back to the motorcycle, it is a hybrid between a Ducati 1000cc engine from an 2004 Ducati Multistrad and a 1977 Honda CB750 frame, and as you can imagine, there’s no small amount of work switching from a trellis frame to one from a traditional Honda four, in part they said they did it for a challenge, 

 the motorcycle was built by Mellow Motorcycles, and here CEO Flo Hubert explains what he did to it, he says, ‘We modified the air intakes, the gear box (only 4 gears left for lighter weight), polished all the intakes and funnels inside the engine, installed forged pistons, upgraded the ECU, mounted titanium headers and a CNC machined clutch cover for lighter weight.’ the engine was mated to the Honda frame because ‘at Mellow, a stock frame is just not what we’re about’, not keen on doing things the easy way, why would you want to do things the easy way? a KTM 640 swinging-arm was also fitted, and the footpeg and seat position aligned to get the rider, Amir Brajan, in a drag racer crawl, all up the motorcycle weighed in at 147 kilograms fuelled and oiled, well down from the standard motorcycles weight of 200 kilograms without fuel,

 the heart of the beast,

 just to add a little madness and insanity over the standard motorcycle it was also fitted with nitrous oxide! the final sprint round had the team with a home ground advantage, held at Glemseck 101 in Stuttgart the track was only forty kilometres away, they found themselves facing off with another local’s bike, Schlachtwerk’s Yamaha TR1, after the smoke cleared the result was evident, the guys from Mellow had won! to many it just looks like another slightly different motorcycle, but I really appreciate the amount of blood, sweat and tears that must have gone into it production, well done chaps! photographs by Kayadek Photography, you can follow the team on their Facebook and Instagram pages.