The motorcycle lap-record around Phillip Island is held by the current World MotoGP Champion, that salty Spanish smile-fest, Mark Marquez. It’s a ridiculous 1:28.108.
His MotoGP mates are only a few tenths of a second slower.
So according to the laws of physics, that’s how fast a human being can belt a motorcycle around Phillip Island.
But not this human being.
Or any normal human being.
Not even the likes of the Australian racing legends I shared the track with at the world launch of the 2017 GSX-R1000R could get around that quick. They were all lapping in the high 30s.
Me? I was lapping just under two minutes, which I feel is a perfectly acceptable time for chunky, middle-aged men with no aspirations to ever have sponsorship sewed onto their leathers.
Let’s understand that Phillip Island is a ‘proper’ racetrack. It’s the only ‘proper’ racetrack in Australia. It’s wide, it’s beautiful and it’s fast.
Proper fast.
Seriously nail-your-balls-to-the-wall, eat-the-seat-with-your-pooer, look-there’s-Jesus! fast.
And just so you’ll have an idea about what happens if you ever find yourself riding out of pit-lane and onto one of the fastest racetracks on earth, it’s this…
Leaving pit-lane, you do the right thing and turn your head to see if there’s someone belting down Gardner Straight at 5000km/h. If there is, let them by, because you’re only doing 90. They don’t have to give way to you and couldn’t if they tried. So making like a gentleman as you enter the arena is on you.
Then accelerate as hard as you can and prepare for a gentle downhill entry into Doohan Corner, which is Turn One. And it will be gentle because you haven’t had the one-kilometre run-up you’re going to have the next time you see Turn One. 
How beautiful and wide it is! How well-cambered!
If you’re thinking this you’re going too slow, because all you need to be thinking is how not to die as you enter Southern Loop in the wrong gear and on the wrong line.
And you will. Because Southern Loop has many entry points and even more apexes. The racers will tell you it has two. And that’s probably true for them. For people like us there can be as many as seven apexes and possibly even nine. I have found eleven, but I was hungover.
You don’t need to hit all of them, but you need to hit as many as you can, or you will fly off into Bass Strait and sink to the ocean floor like a rock.
So pick a gear that won’t murder you if you get your throttle inputs wrong and try to make it the magical two-apex left-hander it is – just understand it goes blind halfway through. Of course, you will be doing about 120km/h as you search for those apexes, which is a speed certain to maim you if you crash.
Come out of Southern Loop and get on the taps like a thousand mad bastards. Turn Three awaits! Stoner Corner! One of the fastest and most awesome left-handers ever! Casey smokes the rear-tyre all the way through here!
Don’t do that. Don’t even try to do that. You’ll end up high-siding yourself into orbit.
Happily you can see where the track is going, so you’re good to nail your throttle open and lean to the left.
It’s awesome sailing through this bend as fast as you dare, and you’re thinking: “Yeah, this is it! I could do this for ages!”
Except you can’t.
And you can’t because Honda Corner – which is right there in your face just as you’re getting into the groove outta Turn Three and watching your speedo climb over 200km/h.
But you won’t see the Honda Corner hairpin because you’re looking at your speedo. What you’ll see will be the paddock garages and that flat space where the rich people have their corporate tents during the races. You’ll only see this briefly, because your arms and legs will part company with your body as you pinwheel across the infield as the darkness claims you.
So do not look at your speedo. Gear down, brake everything, and prepare for the right-hand hairpin.
Now the racers will tell you to go all the way down into first. Do not listen to them. They think that like them, you actually know what you’re doing.
You don’t. Do not go any lower than second. Hell, even third is perfectly acceptable, because while Turn Four is a hairpin, it’s a sizeable hairpin. And if you’re in third, then you’ll be making a very calm and civilised entry into Turn Six after you leave Honda. Leave it in second and it all gets very hectic very quickly.
Don’t worry about Turn Five. You kinda just go straight past it without any turning going on because you’re still kinda coming out of Honda all the way until you start coming into Turn Six.
Turn Six is Siberia. And it’s called that because lots of people have died in Siberia and been eaten by wolves and bears.
It’s a stupid corner and one which racers will tell you is best taken “flat out in fourth”.
They’re lying. If you can take Siberia flat out in fourth then you need to call the Factory Ducati MotoGP team and tell them Lorenzo rides like a gibbon and you’ll take his place for a million Euros less. 
Basically, Siberia is the kind of corner you need to exit wide. How you do that is entirely your business. I like to do it slowly and with dignity, but if you’re feeling salty, then get on the power early and let the bike drift out wide, but haul back some before you go onto the grass. That’s where the wolves and bears are. Oh, and the geese, which are the size of wolves and bears. But they’re worse because they fly. And they do that at random intervals which have nothing to do with there being a motorcycle near them. Sometimes they fly when there is a bike and sometimes they fly when there isn’t a bike. It’s always their call.
Remember, there are lots of geese. They can afford to lose a few of themselves to attrition, so they don’t care if they die.
So now out of Siberia hard on the gas and some righteously fast left-right bollocks though Turns Seven and Eight. You’re good to really lash out here because you can see where the track is going and what it’s doing and somewhere far away is this hilly thing called Lukey Heights (Turn Nine). On your way to there, there’s a hayshed near Turn Eight. Trust me when I tell you you will never see it, nor should you ever look for it. All you need to be doing is keeping the bike as upright as possible and wringing its neck, not looking for buildings storing stock-feed.
And then up we go. Turn Nine fires you straight into the Sun as you gun it up the brilliant uphill left-hander. All you can see is sky.
If you’re going really fast, maybe you’ll see God too.
If you crash here you will see more sky, then earth, then sky, and then God. It’s only a cliché because it’s true.
But if you don’t crash, then all you’ll see after cresting the hill is MG.
MG is short for Mother of God. Because just as you imagined yourself being received into the embrace of Jesus, you will now imagine dying at the blessed feet of the Mary Magdalene. Even if you don’t believe in Her.
MG is another hairpin. But it is much tighter and far more horrifying one than Honda. The approach, a very steep downhill section, is much shorter than you think it is because you’re going much faster than you think you are.
And then just as you’re congratulating yourself on not meeting Mary, you’re in all the wrong gears and in all the wrong places for Turn 11. But it doesn’t matter. Pick something approximating third and dive into Turn 11 with a will, because what happens next is stupendous and even more terrifying than all that has come before.
Turn 12. It just goes on forever. And if you’re not doing 180km/h with your knee on the deck and your spleen, kidneys and colon in your mouth, you’re doing it wrong. It is a sensational corner. Racers love it because it genuinely terrifies them. Screw it up here and they haven’t mined enough titanium to screw you back together.
But just as you think you have nothing left to shit yourself over, you come out of Turn 12 and onto the main straight. Or the “down the chute”, as those racer bastards refer to it.
Welcome to one of the fastest and longest straights in the world. Speeds in excess of 330km/h are common down the chute.
But not for you. Or me. We shall be pleased with something less than 300.
Lean forward. Try and put your chin on the petrol tank. Don’t bother if you’re on a Harley – the people watching on the pit wall will only laugh and wonder if you’re having a stroke.
Everyone else adopt the position for going really fast by trying to make yourself as aerodynamic as possible. You’ll understand why this is important at the end of the straight when you sit up and the wind-blast tries to tear of your head and hurl it into the main street of Cowes.
But before you get to end of the main straight (which of course you can’t see because the main straight slopes down just past the second overbridge and it looks like you’re accelerating into the ocean), you’ll need to redline it in every gear you have left, which should be fourth, fifth and sixth.
If you’re going from fifth to sixth at the second overbridge, you’re really motoring and you’re very special.
And you’re entering Turn One at what will seem like 5000km/h.
This is problematical unless you are Marc Marquez.
Perhaps a lower gear and touch of brakes?
No?
Off you go then. Be happy in the knowledge the fist-sized rocks that once filled the run-off area at Turn One are now much smaller. And will officially hurt much less when you hit them like a meteor from outer space.
Made it around Turn One?
Great stuff.
Now do it all again.
Just go faster and let the words of the great Hunter S Thompson guide you on your way…
“Faster, Faster, until the thrill of speed overcomes the fear of death.”
Words by Boris Mihailovic