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►The staff of MODERN CYCLE
saw a Yamaha 250 turn 101 mph. If you had been at the recent motorcycle drags
held in Long Beach, California at the Lions Drag Strip, you would have seen it
also. You would have seen V-8s in motorcycle frames, sidehack machines on one
wheel, and just one super neat thing after another.
This meet was a National, so machinery was represented from
just about every state in the union. Top speed of the day went ( of course) to a
California lad named Clem Johnson owner of "Barn Job" the super hot Vincent. He
came close, but didn't score in the E.T. department. A Triumph fuel bike owned
by Bob Loux ran off with this honor, turning 10.40. Top Gas was one of the most
exciting battles of the day. Nira Johnson, winner of B gas on a Triumph 650 shut
down everything in his class, and then jumped into A Gas and ate up the
Harley-Davidson belonging to Bruce Miller. Nira turned at least 115 mph all day.
The fuel
classes had a lot of action going for them also. The well known team of Perry
and Scotty beat all seventeen bikes in A Gas with their beautiful double engined
screamer. Another big name in bike circles, Bob Sirkegian cleaned out everyone
in B Gas. He clocked a sizzling 133 mph with an E.T. of 10.70 which was close to
what the "big boys" were turning. A 500 Triumph, owned by Don Harris took
everything is C Gas, but final eliminations wiped him out. Sirkegian and his
absolutely fierce BSA finished him off, and then went hunting for bigger game.
He ended up picking on something just a little bit too big though. This was
Perry and Scotty's double engined beast which for a while refused to run. When
they finally got it up to the line, the troops really saw something fantastic.
Sirkegian actually got the jump on the bigger bike, and for over half the length
of the strip, held the lead. About that time, the big bike caught its breath,
and by Sirkegian like he had his brakes on. Cubic inches forever!
The hacks
put on a chow also. One big Harley-Davidson kept leaping up on one wheel,
leaving the other two spinning in mid air. We don't have to tell you how
impressive this was. The problem was that wheelies don't win drags these days.
Mike Burns and his oddly sprung Norton took everyone to the cleaners in the
"trainer wheels". We've heard, that at the next meet, they're making Burns run
with one sparkplug out. We don't really believe them.
The big V-8
engined bikes are sure impressive, but they still don't go as well as some of
the smaller iron. Chances are that there's just too much horsepower to get the
needed traction. "Madman" Potter's machine is absolutely frightening as it goes
off the line. Smoke, noise, fire, rubber screaming and smoking… This you should
see. Did you know that this bike gets rubber all the way down the quarter? There
was one thing that impressed us about Lions Drag Strip. They ( believe it or
not) actually go out of their way to encourage the running of motorcycles on
their track. This is a far cry from the harassment that we have seen dropped on
the troops at some of the local tracks. There is a track in the San Fernando
Valley near Los Angeles, that banned motorcycles because of ( get this ) the
noise that they made. The automobiles were OK, because they don't make as much
noise. Did you good readers ever hear a supercharged V-8 slingshot come out of
the chute? Quiet huh? May there be bigger and better motorcycle drags at Lions.
The gate loot goes to needy children, so anything we can do to help these people
helps the kids along with motorcycling. ■ |
Competition 
