An Italian land speed record attempt inspired by the work of John Britten is developing a brace of V8-powered machines intended to achieve more than 400km/h.

Going under the name Record Motor Cycles, the new firm is led by Roberto Crepaldi, who founded the CR&S that won the 1995 B.E.A.R.S title using Britten’s innovative V1000, long before the same brand went on to produce the CR&S Vun and Duu models. He’s been joined by former Aprilia and Honda MotoGP engineer Giulio Benaredelle, whose background includes development of the Aprilia RS125 and RS250 racers during the firm’s Valentino Rossi era before working as technical director at the Pramac Honda and Konica Minolta Honda teams in the MotoGP class.

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They’ve developed two new record challengers, both intended to compete in the FIM partially streamlined class with purpose-built V8 engines mounted longitudinally.

The faster bike is a 294kW 2500cc machine named Tribute to John Britten and painted in the same colours as the VR&S team’s V1000 race bike. The second machine is smaller, at 2000cc, to compete for the record in a lower category, and is named ‘Pride of Italy.’ If either bike hits its 400km/h goal it should be fast enough to take the record in its individual class.

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