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 get one of the initial production items. He was actually the first to appear on track using what would become a firm favourite among Top Fuel Bike runners. Phil raced across Europe in 1988 and ‘89, and ran in the mid sevens. Running into problems with cylinder heads cracking – cylinder blocks too – Phil set about designing his own parts to try and solve those problems. This would work out well, for both Phil and also Steve Woollatt. In 1990, Steve would buy the bike, which he still runs to this day. Phil had started on a new bike, with the same power combination.
In 1993, he ran his first 6-second pass, and hit a best of 6.67s/203mph during that year, when he won the ACU Top Fuel Bike championship. This he would repeat twice more, before Phil stepped away from riding. To ease his load running the bike, he came to an agreement with Chris Hampson to ride from 1998, while Phil could take care of the bike tuning and build work. The pairing worked well, and Chris won the European Finals in his first year. Tragically, the likeable rider was killed in a top end crash in 2000, and following that terrible experience, Phil disbanded his racing operation and stayed away from the sport for a couple of years. Steve Woollatt coaxed him back, to help in tuning his bike over the following seasons.
After years working as a technical consultant in the power industry, Phil took voluntary redundancy, which led him to make a comeback to active participation with a new machine. He designed a fuel bike that stands out from the accepted norm in the class, as it features his favoured three-cylinder engine, based on the Triumph Rocket. His meticulous attention to detail, helped by his small, dedicated team, has resulted in an excellent addition to the class – and the only three-cylinder TFB. Designing his own engine to run competitively in the top class is a major achievement. It ran for the first time in 2017, following a 30-month build, and in 2022 it produced a well-deserved 5.93-second run, at 230mph, in the hands of pilot Al Smith, who built the chassis. This run makes the Rocket only the second British-built machine to run in the fives. Phil has shared the trials and tribulations of development in a very interesting series of updates on Facebook, to engage with followers of the bike.
After Al Smith departed to progress his own bike, new rider Jiri Lukes has adapted well to pilot a fuel bike, which is still being developed. Virtually everything is special, as Phil goes his own way, with developments of an air clutch and atomised fuel delivery system.
It is for his achievement in designing, developing and proving his unique engine unit to compete successfully in the world’s quickest bike class, and for his support of Top Fuel Bike for 40 years, that Phil Baimbridge is hereby inducted into Membership of the British Drag Racing Hall of Fame.
Profile by Keith Lee