FEATURE
DUCATI DOUBLE-DUCK
P54
Until then, in spite of being
the dominant European road-
racing brand for so many years,
Ducatis had always been strang-
ers to the salt, with sightings
of desmo V-twins at America's
annual festival of speed compris-
ing the Bonneville Speed Trials,
only very rare. But in setting an
improbable desmodromic speed
record on his much-modified
999cc desmo V-twin S4RS
Monster, a 2007 bike, which
has now officially become the
World's Fastest Monster, as a
humble, relatively impecunious
enthusiast Mark Bjorklund dem-
onstrated that you don't need to
have copious sponsorship and
liquid money to be successful in
the pursuit of speed.
Yet nothing comes easy, and
to create his record-breaking
motorcycle Bjorklund had to in-
vest some serious time and lots
of ingenuity, as well as rely on
the help of his brother Carl and
Jason Omer, his co-constructors
in building the Ducati, plus their
friend Tim Clossey. But having
achieved his ambition of writing
his name in the record books in
2012, it was back to the day job
helping maintain the Electron
Hydroelectric Project inland
from Bellingham, in between
running Super Rat Customs in
what spare time he had. But the
dream of returning to the salt
flats with another bike to go after
a different set of records was
never far from his mind—salt fe-
ver, right?! Let's leave it to Mark
to explain what happened next.
"The real head scratcher was
coupling the engines together."
