Sorry to bring this up again, but I just did some math (exciting stuff) and I calculated that the Rapier craft in WipEout 1 move at roughly 500 km/h.

Here's how I did it: My time trial record on Firestar is 2:08:1 with a lap record of 41.7 sec. Firestar is 6.3 km long. 3 laps is 18.9km dividing that distance by my time is about 0.147 km per second or 530 km/h. Since im using turbos and such we can low-ball the speed as about 500km/h on Rapier.

I can only assume the Phantom craft in 2097 are faster.