In Europe, the Sultans of Sprint competition produces some of the wackiest drag bikes, year on year. It’s written in the rules: contestants vie for gold over an eighth-mile track, but points are also awarded for imagination and creativity.
It means we end up with some very eccentric motorcycles, like this BMW-powered race bike.

‘Achilles’ is entered into the ‘Factory’ class at Sultans of Sprint, and was built as a side project by an engineer and a designer who both work on the car side of BMW. And it’s completely bonkers.
To kick off the project, BMW themselves donated a box fresh R1250RS. We’ve sampled the 1,254 cc boxer motor in the RS and it’s sweet, offering up 136 hp and 143 Nm. It also features BMW’s new ‘ShiftCam’ tech, which is effectively a variable valve timing system that turns the 1250 ballistic at full tilt.
Philipp Ludwig works on bikes under the Kraftstoffschmiede moniker, and he?s a Sultans of Sprint veteran. He’s been racing in the series since its early days, and nabbed a few ‘Freak’ class podiums last year with his heavily modified 1998-model BMW R850R.
But for this project, he called in reinforcements?teaming up with designer Krzysztof Szews from Man & the Machines.

Philipp would do the heavy lifting, with Kris taking point on design. ?Designing a piece of motorsport equipment requires industrial design in its purest form,? he says. ?There is no need for i...