All right, the title is clearly from my perspective! In truth, international drag racers had little to fear from our exploits, but shit, there were some cool customers driving some trick machines at Bairnsdale recently.

I had the CRF450R tricked up as described in the last post. No, not the bugle tune, you idiot, but my most recent ranting.

Here’s how it went.

The meeting started around 4 p.m. I had no idea whatsoever what went on or how to wear it. So I unloaded the bike in the pits and went down to suss a few things out.

As it happened, I watched a few starts from both in front of and behind the christmas trees, asked a couple of questions and it was all very simple.

It was an 1/8th mile strip, or about 200 metres.

There was no stuffing about. If you wanted to race, you simply lined up. First in best dressed. Line up at the white line and follow the directions of the marshalls. They point at you and direct you to move into the area behind the start whilst those on the grid already do their thing. Then they point at the line and you’re up. Do a burnout if you want and let’s see what you’ve got.

Compared to the cars, all I seemed to have was a fairly pissy burnout. I was nervous as anything, but luckily I was early and got half a dozen runs by myself to work out the quirks and stomp on the bugs.

A clear light came on at the top of the tree when you were close to the line, then as you inched further forwards, a blue light below it came on to let you know you were in the zone. Now you just wait for a half dozen or so yellow lights to flash through to green and off you go.

I ran a bit of front brake and loaded the clutch, then when the last yellow light was on, I let both levers go, just cntinuing to slip the clutch a little.

It was very different. Traction was not an issue, but keeping the front end down was. Second gear, 1/4 throttle, nuts on the fuel cap and slipping the clutch saw the front end want to lift every time.

On the dirt, there’s a bit of slip at the back wheel which allows you to bury the throttle a bit more, but here, it all about ‘control control’. In practice, when I tried more, I got less. Speed that is.

Once the front end was down though, it was full noise.

A bit further down the track though and you can have some fun.

Mostly this was just showing off, giving a tug on the bars as I bashed from 4th to 5th. I was telling myself it was all in the name of traction control, but the chance of her breaking loose on the bitumen at around 120 was zilch.

The new ignition and jetting curve that Pip programmed into the bike was awesome. It went better everywhere, but particularly in the top end, where it had bulk more over rev, allowing me to hold gears longer. It’s the same curve that AJ Roberts uses. Wasted on me normally, but not at the drags.

Have you noticed the complete lack of Suzuki drag bike in the last sequence of photos? Simple answer really, I was smokin’ his butt!

That is, until near the finish line when he came up on me at conservatively 800 Kph, resulting in a dead heat. He reckons he pipped me, but I know I won.

Then I raced a Harley softail. I think he’s still out there somewhere, I beat him by that much. Relegated to air compressor duties well before the lights even came on.

Later, a Buell. Fool. Halfway down the strip I was about 3.6 kilometers ahead so pulled a rudely big wheelie just for fun. Yeah, he might have pipped me on the line, but everyone knew he was a tool, riding a Buell.

The organisers lined up local gun Matt on an RMZ250 to take me on, since we were both motocrossers. Matt is a national level gun rider, but turned up about 20 hp down on my beast, so got smoked.

When it came Christmas tree time though, ‘Pistolis at dawn’, the bullshit went out the window. I went forwards fast and he was forced to contemplate his absurd lack of horsepowers. Notice no Suzuki in this shot?

Could ride but. (New Bairnsdale speak) At the end of our race, I did an impromptu wheelie then burnout for the crowd. He countered with the old ‘go away you silly old bugger, move over for the one handed burnout in circles thingy’. Crowd pleaser that one.

We lined up a special ‘drag’ where we both just did strip long wheelies. Crowd loved that.

Then it got more fun. Drags under lights is way more romantic. Burnouts adopt a whole new persona.

Fifth gear, pinned.

Didn’t help much and in fact I got slower as the night went on. I had worked 17 or 18 hours straight at this stage with hard days before hand and was fair buggered.

The GSXR 750 smashed me in our last duel. I tried too hard, used too much mumbo and not enough clutch, got wheelspin and floundered off the line. We were neck and neck at the 50 metre mark then all I could do was wave goodbye as he buggered off into the distance.

All in all though, it was a hoot. Low cost, lots of fun. I’d recommend a run at your local strip between your mates just for fun and bragging rights.

Don’t bother with road tyres. Just drop the forks, raise the gearing, chuck on some leather and go have some fun. Note to self: get a launch control fork compressor device next time to allow more mumbo off the line.

I started with 30 psi in the back tyre, dropping it to 10 psi on advice. With the hard walled Metzeler street tyres I was running I could hardly tell the difference truthfully. I ran 30 psi in the front for less resistance.

I could have done with a little more spring pre load on the rear to counter squat, but at the time it was way hot in the full Teknic leather suit (I use it to ride the Blackbird to work) and I couldn’t be bothered. I was flying anyway.

However if it was coming down to something serious like ‘Rod versus Wayno’ then perhaps the special adjusting tool (hammer and drift) would have come out.

Near the end of the night, my mate Dwayne, who works with me, had his name drawn from the hat to win a ride in this freakish blown FJ Holden that could pull better wheelies than my CRF.

Dwayne is a rev head from way back. He didn’t let on, but I’ve got a sneaking suspicion that he manned up and hid the latent fear that most blokes would have had. The thing rocked and in a pre run, it launched off the track on two wheels near the end of the strip at about 756 Km/h!

The driver took it easy on Dwayne and backed off halfway down the strip. It was a six second run.