Cliff Gullett

[Gator]

Motorcycle Land Speed / Bonneville 239mph crash.

R.I.P. Cliff

God Bless You

[pro70z28]

R.I.P.

[WildcatOne]

RIP, Cliff. WC1

[draglist]

Farewell. bp

[Bret Kepner]

I realize there aren't too many hardcore Bonneville fans on this board so I'll skip the details but Cliff rode Jack Costella's magnificent motorcycle streamliner which uses a two-stroke 500cc unblown Yamaha engine. He had astounding success at Speedweek; running gasoline, he broke a 32-year old 195 mph Don Vesco record with a 219 average and then bumped that record up to 226. They added nitro to run in the unblown 500cc fuel streamliner class and went after the sixth oldest record on the books, the (exactly) fifty-year old 212 mph mark set by the Triumph of John Thomas. They got it at 230!

Last year, Cliff got both the SG and SF records in the 350cc class with the same machine.

The crash happened at the annual BUB motorcycle event two weeks after Speedweek. He made a 237 mph pass earlier in the day but wasn't running 239 on the crash pass as the hideously lacking newswire reports indicated.

Here's a shot of the machine, Jack Costella's 23-feet long, 22-inch wide, 23-inch HIGH "Nebulous Theorem VII":

[draglist]

Thanks for the tribute to this great racer, Bret. bp

[Big Erik]

RIP Cliff........thanks for the info Bret.My father in law has built a few land speed iron head harleys, and helped on the motors for the J&P cycle streamliner.he also built the motors for his buddies 56 porshe ..........he said other than Vesco Cliff was THEMAN!!.........GODSPEED.........ERIK

[RH]

Real loss for the dry lakes bunch
Those guys are really a different breed and unlike anything else in motorsports.I respect them greatly.
RIP.