Triple R Racing
When Edward Turner designed the hemi-head Daimler 2.5 litre, (152 cubic inch) engine in 1959, never in his wildest dreams could he have envisaged that the modest 140 horsepower it produced would be increased by Team Triple R to approaching 2,000 horsepower, with world-breaking performances to match. It was used in the Daimler SP250; more about that later.
‘Team Triple R, the epitome of a shed built, British engine racecar team’
Team Triple R (Robin Read Racing) has been together for more than 44 years and includes Robin Read, Ella Chapman, Mark Evans, Bertie Hopkinson, Bill Mears and Damian Burke.
Mark Evans’s role is crew chief; he’s been involved since 1982 and aside from running his own successful company his contribution to the team, both in commitment and helping financially, has been significant.
Ella has been mixing nitro and packing parachutes since 1990. It’s a responsible job and yet is carried out without drama, hence she is called the ‘fuel and chute fairy’ because if you blink you’ve missed it!
Bertie is proudly an old school ‘handle-winding’ machinist, making bespoke parts without the luxury of Computer Numerical Control machining programs or equipment. ‘Billet Bertie’ at one time made most of the connecting rods used in Top Fuel motorcycles around the world. He also machined the first generation of billet cylinder heads for a Daimler, no mean feat!
Bill, for many years a start line marshal and area rep for BDR …
Motorsport UK
How times have changed. Sixty-five years ago, the first encounter between the Royal Automobile Club and the emerging American sport known as Drag Racing was awkward. Then, the RAC governed the UK’s four-wheeled motorsport and had rules and regulations for everything with which it was familiar. In America, Drag Racing, with its principal sanctioning body the National Hot Rod Association, was barely a decade old as an organised sport. To the RAC, it was an alien interloper when it arrived on Britain’s shores in 1961.
Drag Racing’s first public manifestation here was a dragster built by Sydney Allard, the London sportscar manufacturer and entrepreneur. Allard had raced at Le Mans and had twice won the Monte Carlo Rally, the only driver to do so in a vehicle of his own manufacture. Latterly, he had developed an interest in sprinting (for which the RAC had rules) and thought one of those new-fangled American dragsters might help further that interest. To comply with the RAC’s sprinting rules, Allard was obliged to fit an engine cover (a ‘bonnet’) and front-wheel brakes, which explains why the car, now housed in the National Motor Museum at Beaulieu, appears not to resemble the American dragsters on which it was based. Moreover, its design was culled from a 1959 American magazine and was already two years out of date compared to its transatlantic counterparts in the fast-developing sport.
By 1964, Drag Racing had overtaken sprinting as Allard’s prime interest and he collaborated with NHRA’s president, Wally Parks, to import America’s leading drag race stars to race on a selection of British airfields. RAC rules at that time did not countenance advertising on competition cars, and the RAC scrutineer at the opening event at Blackbushe in Surrey refused to allow the American cars to run while still adorned …
Phil Baimbridge
Phil Baimbridge’s upbringing saw his father pursuing grass track and speedway sidecar racing, as both mechanic and passenger, before moving onto four wheels in Hot Rod racing. For Phil, it was motorcycles that he enjoyed. His street bikes included a 3-cylinder Triumph Trident, and it would be triples that held a special fascination for him.
In 1983, Phil and a couple of friends bought a blown 500 Triumph competition bike and had a try at sprinting. That quickly led to Phil acquiring a Laverda engine, and he modified a chassis to suit the Italian 1,200cc, 3-cylinder motor. Initially run in the Top Gas class, when Phil first tried out drag racing at Long Marston, the bike was soon fitted with a nitrous kit to give it some more urge. This resulted in high 10-second times, running in Competition Bike, under the bike name of Bolognese Sauce. A blown Triumph was then bought and led Phil to experiment with nitro – which proved to be an explosive introduction, with the bike aptly called Tribulation.
The sport had made a move to Japanese motors, and Phil had planned to build a new bike, using Kawasaki power. However, when Eamon Hurley’s bike came up for sale, he saw it as a better way to make the initial transition. This provided him with two years of competition, and running a quickest time of 8.2sec. He also scored a victory at Drachten in The Netherlands. To progress, a new John Clift chassis was specified. At this time, Pete Davies was working on the first Puma billet bottom end, and Phil was among the first three racers to …
Tony Betts
Tony Betts first encountered drag racing early in the 1970s when he and a group of friends visited Santa Pod. In his late teens he ran a Morris Minor, painted hot orange, on the street and joined Romford’s Eastern Cruisers. Then he bought Minormite which ran 12’s at North Weald powered by a Jaguar 3.8 straight-six. This served him well but the quest for lower ETs and higher speeds had begun. Frank Bennet was selling his Phantasm Pop which Tony renamed Robopop, a play on the title of the 1987 film. Even during those early years he knew he needed something which kids could relate to and depicted the film’s character on the boot lid. His legendary sense of humour was also evident here with ‘Part Man – Part Machine – All Pop’ displayed along the side. Tony and Elaine had three young children and a tent in the pits which often flooded. He remembers his young son Dean crying his eyes out when a dragster beat him in the Competition Altered class. Elaine once asked what racing the car was like and at North Weald she lay across the behind the driver’s seat on a run – the blacked-out windows meant no officials could see her!
Dave Collis had sold his beautiful Vauxhall Firenza, and it caught Tony’s eye in Bill Felstead’s garage. He bought the rolling shell and visited the 1987 Gatornationals in Florida. Soon a 454ci big-block Chevy was on its way to Britain. Tony named it Spirit of Frenzy and the family now enjoyed the luxury of a coach as a transporter. After a lot of fun in different classes, including Super Gas, time came to sell the car and Joey Carabott visited Tony in Canvey Island, Essex, to take a look. Tony insisted he …
Andy Willsheer
Laurel Wreath Image: Julian Hunt
Andy Willsheer first encountered Drag Racing when he visited Santa Pod Raceway in 1972. While he had read about the International Drag Festivals of 1964 and ‘65 which had brought leading American racers to the UK, it was BDRHoF inductee Brian Chapman working on the same construction site as Andy who encouraged him and his brother John to attend. What he saw, which he described as “highly entertaining” and the “intoxicating aroma of spent nitro”, would be the start of his addiction to a sport that has lasted over fifty years.
When the construction work dried up the following year, Andy and brother John took off to the west coast of America for a three-month holiday. Their bucket list of races included the Supernationals at Ontario Motor Speedway and the fabled 64-car Manufacturers Funny Car Championship Race at Orange County Raceway. California had everything they were looking for: cool cars, pretty girls and warm weather. With that in mind it’s little surprise that the trip was eventually extended to fifteen months, culminating in a cross-country road trip to New York in brother John’s ‘67 Camaro, before they and the car travelled back to the UK on the Queen Elizabeth 2 ocean liner.
“Andy’s enthusiasm for US racing led to his inclusion among Car Craft Magazine’s
‘Hi Risers’ in June 1983″
Not surprisingly, that first US trip had a massive and lasting impact on Andy which led to regular trips across the Atlantic, usually taking in five or six NHRA National events per year. None of this would have been possible without press accreditation, which started with the Phelps family who were happy to give him a press pass, despite his obvious inexperience. This led to Andy becoming a regular photographer at Santa Pod, thus helping …
Syd McDonald
Syd McDonald – a name most within Drag Racing will know but less well known among the wider public. Syd is one of many people who work tirelessly behind the scenes and are vital for the successful running of events.
Syd started his working life at British European Airways (BEA) in 1960, continuing after BEA and BOAC were merged in 1974 to create British Airways. Given his later drag racing involvement, it was good fortune to find himself working with Brian Taylor who had begun there two years earlier.
Syd’s first interest was motorcycle sidecar racing. A neighbour, Wilf Barry, drag raced at Santa Pod and, in 1968, Syd and a mate went along for a look and ended up attending every meeting that year.
The following year Syd entered his Cortina GT, equipped with an Allard big-valve head, in the Production class and in 1971 won the Nationals racing in the class ‘Saloons up to 1500cc’. So many cars were entered that Dave Watts, the Race Director, split the class in two with the winner of each class advancing to the final in which Syd scored his one and only race win.
He also spectated at his first Blackbushe Drag Race in 1971, where Brian Taylor was doing the commentary. Syd didn’t even know that Brian commentated at Drag Races until then.
“…he was the perfect man for the job”
During his racing career Syd met Erica Bartlett who told him the British Drag Racing & Hot Rod Association was looking for a new Race Director. Dave Watts was going to work for Santa Pod Raceway, and one couldn’t work for the promoter and also be Race Director for the organising club. Syd spoke to Dave who said if Syd was interested, he should follow him around for six months and …