by Laurie Laine Guidry

Imagine riding your 1200cc Kawasaki Ninja ZX12r street bike up to the
starting line of your local drag strip, knowing you are going to demolish your opponent as the lights flick from red to yellow to green. The feeling of pure ecstasy overtakes your racer-infused mind. You glance to your left
to stare down your soon-to-be-humiliated opponent and—What the heck! Is that guy really going to try to race your sexy-smooth rice burner with a lawn mower?

Yep, he sure is. His name is Cory LeBoeuf, and he is the owner of a 144 mph lawn mower dragster which he custombuilt in hopes of breaking the lawn mower land speed record.

The Chauvin man has custom-built one of the world’s fastest lawn mowers—a 1975 Z1 Kawasaki boasting 1295 ccs, five gears and the ability to reach speeds of 144 mph in as little as 1,800 feet. “I built this lawn mower dragster to, pardon my French, be a smartass on the strip,” Cory says.

And accomplish that goal he did. Having taken part in 27 drag races against street bikes, Cory has humiliated 22 eye-rolling, guffawing opponents with his lawn mower. Beginning in 2005, Cory began racing his machine all over the Gulf Coast against hi-booster bikes including CBRs, Ninjas and Honda GSXRs. While many of his opponents initially snickered at the thought of a lawn mower keeping up with a high-powered street bike, he began to turn heads in the racing arena.

Teaming up with local and national sponsors such as Sears, Summit Racing, Motorcycle Performance Specialties and a list of others, Cory began building his dream a little more than three and a half years ago.

“I’ve always been infatuated with drag racing and wanted to race something not everyone could have,” Cory says. “When I got the idea in my head, I just ran with it,” he said.

As a lawn mower mechanic for Sears, Cory loves working on these machines and developed a deep understanding of their structure and abilities. He teamed up with a fabrication shop out of Oregon as well as local mechanics and cosmetic groups and built his dream machine—Outlaw.

Having invested more than $20,000 into this 5-foot-long, 3-foot-wide, 300-pound dragster, he plans to break the land-speed record for a lawn mower in September when he travels to the Bonneville Salt Flats in Utah to perform a daring two-mile run with speeds pushing 150 mph.

With only a helmet and leather body gear to protect his frame, Cory has listened to the disapproving lectures from his wife, mother and mother-in-law. “It’s too fast and too unsafe. I have tried to convince him to stop riding it too many times to count,” his wife Sharmon says.

Sharmon and their 6-year-old daughter attend races and car shows with him to support his hobby but spend their time on the sidelines praying for his safety.

“There’s no roll cage and no seat belts to keep me safe. So after I attempt to break the land-speed record, I’m just going to bring it to car shows and things of that nature,” he said.

He uses the mower to ride around his neighborhood but not too often since the 116-octane alcohol used to power the machine runs about $9.75 a gallon. “I’m lucky if a gallon of fuel lasts a mile. It’s not cheap to run; that’s for sure,” he said.

Storing the unit in an insulated, humidified storage space adorned with security cameras and baking lights, Cory spends his evenings and weekends hand-polishing the aluminum frame up to 12 hours each week.

“I told him in my next life I want to become a lawn mower because he pays more attention to that than he does to me,” Sharmon said jokingly about the machine.

Cory admits he’ll probably keep the machine forever since no one but him would be foolish enough to invest $20,000 into a lawn mower that cannot even cut a blade of grass. PoV

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See Cory LeBoeuf and Outlaw in action on youtube.com:
youtube.com/user/lawndragsterman.

Outlaw’s stats: 107 mph in 1/8 mile in 6.1 seconds

ESPN 1490 is sponsoring Cory’s trip to Utah, and if he breaks the record, he will appear on the Ellen Show.