Nigel Patrick started Drag Racing in 1977, riding his 1000cc Kawasaki in the Street Class. He scored a win at the end-of-season Santa Pod race, beating Steve Woollatt in the final.
At the start of 1978, Nigel had prepared a neat, turbocharged Rickman Kawasaki to enter the Pro Street class. From high tens at the season opener, he went ever quicker. Running into the nines by the end of May, when he also recorded the first 150mph speed, Nigel was soon into winning ways as he became the rider to beat. Class-leading times of 9.4sec were achieved during 1978.
Following the 1978 season, he picked up the Motor Cycle Weekly Drag Bike Racer of the Year award, and also the Scrutineer’s award for Best Prepared Bike.
In 1979, Nigel became BDR&HRA Competitions Committee vice-chairman. On track, progress continued into the low 9-second bracket, with more wins. A 9.10sec pass was recorded en route to winning the September World Series event.
1980 would be the final year for Pro Street as a group of riders sought to ban turbochargers and replace the class with Pro Stock. Nigel ran a slowing 8.96sec in April, to stamp his authority, before clocking a stunning 8.66sec/156mph class record in early May, at his last event in the class.
He was the only rider outside the USA to run under 9 seconds on a petrol burner.
Nigel then proceeded to qualify the road-based machine in the elite Superbike eliminator on only his second attempt. Nigel teamed up with renowned custom bike builder Uncle Bunt (John Reed), who built his first drag chassis for Nigel to evaluate, with the successful petrol Kawasaki engine slotted in. After a couple of dial-ins, he recorded 9.06/150.
Breaking new ground for 1981, Nigel experimented with the turbo motor running on methanol. At Santa Pod’s Mayday event, he won Senior Bike. At the biggest European bike event of the year, the Long Marston Transatlantic race, Nigel was amazingly Pro Fuel no.2 qualifier with 8.39/16 – back on straight 5-star petrol.
He was only 0.12sec behind the quickest rider in the world at that time; US superstar Bo O’Brochta. Nigel unluckily broke a chain in the Pro Fuel semi-final. At this time Nigel had started his own business, selling motorcycle turbo-tuning equipment, plus related bike parts. However, he received an offer from top US racer and businessman Russ Collins to become development engineer at RC Engineering, working on the latest rear-engined Honda drag bike. He emigrated to California, taking his own bike. Now with access to C16 fuel, he broke into the sevens straight away. He worked at RC for two years while also managing to pick up the Dragbike No.1 plate riding an injected Honda Top Fuel bike, along with the NMRA Funny Bike No.1 plate as well.
Patrick Racing was started in late 1984, and Nigel would go on to carve out a big reputation for his company with head work, and later for building complete Harley motorcycle engines. He is rightly proud that he was the first to CNC-port a cylinder head for motorcycles, with pioneering five-axis CNC machining. He was also the first to make production billet cylinder heads in the motorcycle industry.
In the late 1980s, Nigel was running in Pro Stock bike, and in 1988 he won the Dragbike championship. This was despite crashing at 175mph at the Sacramento round, at a time when the rear slicks were struggling with major sidewall issues.
His bike was destroyed, but after building a complete new bike in just six weeks, Nigel still managed to take the Pro Stock championship.
In the early 1990s, he led an NHRA Pro Stock team to Japan on a number of trips. Nigel won the 1991 USA-Japan race in Pro Stock at the Fuji circuit in Japan. Work pressure then curtailed his riding, but he continued to manage race teams in the coming years.
In 2001 Patrick Racing teamed up with Yamaha and took on the AMA Prostar Hot Rod Cruiser class, racing the Yamaha Warrior. In the next five years, Patrick Racing won five straight championships and set 28 records along the way.
2018 saw Nigel coming out of riding retirement to race a turbo Hayabusa he had constructed. Now in his seventies, he has proceeded to win four Western Pro Extreme championships so far, and is the current champion. His No.1-plate bike runs times of 6.2 seconds at over 200mph.
It is for the breadth of this highly respected racer/development engineer/team manager’s achievements on both sides of the Atlantic, on the track and in the workshop, that Nigel Patrick is inducted into Membership of the British Drag Racing Hall of Fame.
Profile by Keith Lee