Tire shake is the bane of every drag racer’s existence that makes enough power to experience it. One could make a list of about 5,432 reasons that tire shake happens and they range from over powering the track the under powering the track, to hitting the wheelie bar too hard, to improper suspension adjustments, bad tire pressure, and the list goes on and on. As you will see in this video, it is not just the four wheel competitors that experience it, but high powered two wheel racers fight this battle as well. The motorcycle you will see here is called the “Overkilled Cat” and it is a European Top Fuel bike. That’s long form for saying that it is bat shit crazy.

Because this is filmed in slow motion you get an idea of how things are happening here. You will see the rider open the throttle and the front end of the bike come up. Shortly thereafter you will see the rear tire get into a weird quiver which manifests itself into tire shake not a moment later. The tire begins to ball up and cup really bad as the bike continues to pour on the power.

It does not take long for the driver to get out of the throttle and settle things back down. We see this over the course of seconds in a slow motion video but during the actual race? This whole sequence was over in about a second or perhaps a shade more. The shuttering can be seen most clearly through the body work which gets to flopping pretty good before this is all said and done.

Press play below to see tire shake in slow motion –