Elmer Trett was the first motorcycle drag racer to break 200 miles per hour, then the first past 210, 220, and 230, setting the Top Fuel record fifteen times on bikes he built himself over a career that ran nearly thirty years. He died on September 1, 1996, at the same Indianapolis event where the 200 barrier had fallen, two weeks after a 6.06-second run that put a five-second pass within reach. Thirty years later, here is why the NHRA ranked him among its fifty greatest drivers. Read on to find out what made him so hard to catch.