Drag Bikes at the Airport

The UK's London City Airport is situated a few miles to the east of the City of London not far from the Canary Wharf / Docklands business area.  No surprise then that from Monday morning until Saturday midday, LCA is an important air transport hub for business travellers to and from all parts of Europe.  However, once a year the runway is used for an entirely different purpose as it plays host to a sprint meeting for classic motorcycles.  Sprinting is just like qualifying is in drag racing - the competitors race the clock not each other.  The 2004 meeting was held on Saturday the 24th of July.

The pits had a somewhat surreal atmosphere, the machinery was mainly of 1960s and 1970s vintage, whereas the backdrop was very much 21st century architecture.  The only car invited to the meeting to do a demonstration pass was Paul 'Flymo' Harvey's 357 inch Cleveland powered Super Pro ET entry.  This car was built in the 1970s by Ray Hoare who raced it then in Pro Comp with a twin turbocharged Chevy engine, he called the car 'Turbo Saxon'.

John Hobbs raced competitively between 1965 and 1979 on a variety of nitro-burning supercharged Triumph-powered drag bikes.  His last machine was aptly named 'The Hobbit' and featured two Morgo-barrelled Triumph lumps which were good for very low 8 second times.  At one time John was the 6th fastest man on two wheels in the world.  Nowadays John, who is well into his fifties, likes nothing better than to put on the same leathers that he wore in 1979 and take The Hobbit out for a spin in the summer sunshine.  He is a little kinder to the engines now than he once was, but this was still a very creditable 8.99 second 162.7 mph lap despite clearly struggling for traction.

Unlike John Hobbs, veteran drag racer Steve Woollatt still rides competitively on the latest in a line of bikes named 'The Dealer'.  On a fully prepped surface Steve would expect to see sub-6.5 second elapsed times and 210 mph+ terminal speeds.  The picture clearly shows that the surface was not up to a 1,000 bhp drag bike but, although completely over-powering the surface, Steve still carded a magnificent 7.31 / 186 albeit at the cost of some damage to his engine.
 
I hope you have enjoyed this snapshot of the 2004 London City Airport motorcycle sprint.  If you would like to see more pictures visit www.theaccelerationarchive.co.uk, select 'Recent Pictures' from within the Alan Currans Collection, and click on '2004'.  Most of the LCA pictures are on page 2.

Alan Currans