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For six years the TOP 1 ACK ATTACK team has returned to the legendary Bonneville Salt Flats hoping to exceed their own land speed record of 376.363 mph (605.697 km/h), and for six years they have seen the salt flooded and shrinking. If the builder Mike Akatiff and pilot Rocky Robinson were going to reset the record books, they needed better salt.

This need for speed resulted in the fastest motorcycle in history being bound for Bolivia for the Top Of The World Land Speed Challenge August 3-8, 2017.

“Mike Akatiff and the TOP 1 oil company want to be the first 400mph motorcycle, so they approached us about three years ago and asked if I was interested in going to Bolivia,” says Mike Cook. “Hell yeah!” After organizing the Land Speed Shootout at Bonneville for more than a decade, LSR racing legend Mike Cook knows more about what it takes to set a record than any man alive. He will be handling logistics and timing/FIM coordination in Bolivia, just as he does in Bonneville. Cook and TOP 1 execs went to Bolivia back in March to survey the salt to find a suitable place to lay out a course and grease the skids for TOP 1 to take over the Salar de Uyuni salt with the Bolivian brass.

“André Rodrigues has been working for years to make this possible. We met with Álvaro Marcelo García Linera, the vice president of Bolivia… what a gentleman he is,” says Cook. “He said you have your race track… go set the record!” The following day, the group travelled to Uyuni to survey the salt. “We were only able to lay out 20 miles of perfect salt course because we were running low on gas.”

“I’ve always known the Bonneville Salt Flats as being two miles wide, at the most, and maybe 10 miles long,” says Cook. “You come here to Bolivia and it just takes your breath away! There is salt 100 miles in any direction.” In fact, the remote Salar de Uyuni is the world’s largest salt flat at 10,582 square kilometers (4,086 sq./mi). “The salt is more than a foot deep for miles in any direction,” says Mike Cook. By way of comparison Bonneville’s crust is only a couple inches deep at its best.

“I have been 300mph on a quarter inch of salt… here we were standing on salt more than a foot thick,” exclaims Cook. “Honestly, we could go racing next week.”

“The conditions are perfect, the ACK ATTACK is loaded into the container and all systems are go,” notes TOP 1 VP of Sales & Marketing Frank Ryan. “Thanks to Mike, André, Phil Gillies and all of our TOP 1 distributors in Latin America there is no reason why Top Of The World Landspeed Challenge can’t succeed in beating 400mph. Special thanks to the Bolivian Ministry of Tourism and vice president Álvaro Marcelo García Linera for sharing our vision and making the record attempt possible. Together TOP 1 and ACK ATTACK can do the impossible!”