About six years ago I fell in love with auto racing. I’ve always liked cars and motorcycles, especially the fast ones, but it wasn’t until I got involved in Formula SAE, an intercollegiate racecar (engineering) competition, that I really got into racing. It’s easier with someone else’s money.
A little over a year ago when I joined the world of professional auto racing and realized I hadn’t fallen in love with racing in general so much as grassroots racing. There is no passion left in professional racing. It’s a business, and like any business it is guided by money and politics. It’s not about the cars anymore, and it hasn’t been for a long time. Somewhere along the line, Bill France and Bernie Ecclestone and others like them figured out how to make a trailer load of money selling driver personalities and race day drama.
Don’t get me wrong, I like my job; I just don’t love my job. So in my effort to find that passion, that borderline obsession that I had in college, I started searching for a hobby. Where could I find a racing series that would combine my love of grassroots racing with my technical knowledge of engines and aerodynamics?
Land speed racing! It’s almost too perfect.
LSR is the one exciting arena left in racing where an individual can hammer together a race car and go beat a record. There is no money and there are thousands of different categories people can compete in, anything from a 50cc motorcycle to $50 million worth of jet powered "car".
And so here I am, designing and building a 650cc fuel, turbocharged streamlined motorcycle. I’ve been to an El Mirage event, talked with some people, got a copy of the rulebook (3 copies, actually. It’s a long story…). My design is mostly done, but before I get too far into the manufacturing, I wanted to get a build diary up here.
I wanted to put up a build diary for two main reasons. One is for people to say “Matt, you know what might be a good idea…”
Two, and this is the main reason, for people to say “You know Matt, that’s a really bad idea/against the rules…” Even with three copies of the rulebook it’s hard to beat the experience of someone who has gone through technical inspection or, even better, someone who is a technical inspector.
And so I’ll be back with more detailed pictures/designs, but for now here are a couple teaser pictures. Feel free to ask questions like “Where does the parachute go?”, "What are you using for a front tire?" and "What are you, crazy?"
BTW the project name is “Superfast One”, though the bike doesn’t have a name yet.