Super series round 4
26th-28th August
Avon park Raceway
Long Marston
Stratford upon Avon
This was a big event on the British Drag racing calendar. There were top fuel dragsters, funny cars and bikes, also rocket cars and just about every class of straight line racing you could imagine, including the Super twins.
The weather was unpredictable to say the least, so hot that you need factor 30 sun cream one minute then a monsoon the next. The delays because of the weather and the delays because of multiple breakages and oil downs meant this round was never finished. The points gained were the points added to the championship. This could work for and against many racers as you will see further on.
I was told about this statement on television the other day. "these are the fastest dragsters on the planet" said by Jeremy Clarkson as he pointed to snow mobiles 0-60 in just under a second ? Wow thats fast on snow and ice, but that isn't the fastest dragster on the planet. Jeremy if you every look at this site I hope you stand corrected. Barry Sheavills 0-100 in 1.1 seconds, 0-60 in 0.6 seconds and he isn't the fastest on the planet. But he's quicker than most.
As you can see from the thumbnails above there was a wide selection of racers here.
The two pictures above are of a show down between two dragsters the times are shown on the right hand picture. One hitting 236mph in quarter of a mile.
Above are burnouts. The burn out warms the tyres making them much stickier for a quicker launch.
The set above are of the top fuel bike ran by Ian King. One the run above he did 193mph in 6.9 seconds. This is a long way from what this bike can do:-
The engine is a puma 1327cc, nitromethane injected with supercharger. The gear box is 2 speed with multistage clutch. The brakes are ISR calipers which grip Spondon discs which when trying to stop a 1000bhp machine are very necessary.
The bike is capable of 0-60 in 0.7 seconds. 0-100 in 1.1 seconds and a staggering 0-230 in 6 seconds.
Ian ran a 198.24mph in 6.766 seconds on the Monday.
Here we a couple of Jet cars, Fireforce 1 and 2. These things put on a real show. The roar from the engines is unbelievable, the smoke and flames out of the back all add to the excitement then whoooooooooosh 6 seconds and 260mph later its over. WOW!
The big daddy of European Dragsters, Barry Sheavills. 0-200+ in three seconds 0-300 in 4 seconds...maybe. The television crews were here in force. 0-300mph was what Barry aiming for. He went up against Andy Carter, who had said he would give Barry a run for his money. He did, also setting a track record of 5.222 at 255.68mph. On the Monday they went at it again and again something went wrong for Barry and Andy won. The time was a track record again:-274.39mph in 5.266 seconds.
A couple of other nice machines here.
A special thanks George Laycock (above) for the ticket at the gate.
A big Harley supertwin.
A little Yamaha Supertwin.
Now then what happened to Rush on his championship leading Yamaha then. Where do I start, he firstly didn't have his regular crew, however what happened would have happened if they where there. So don't let anyone blame the crew. He burned out and got stuck in 5th whoops. He launched in 5th, the clutch disintegrated he rolled over the finish line collecting some points.
Luckily he had a spare set of clutch plates, on what was to be the final run because of weather, oil downs and every other kind of hold up possible the oil filler cap blew. Once again our hero managed to roll over the finish line and collect some points. Had the race meet not ran out of time there would have been more rounds and Rush wouldn't have ran because of the damage to his engine. Thus instead of being a few point behind he would have been miles behind with everything to do.
