Introduction
The air was filled with excitement as the moment arrived for the Gulf Oil liveried racer to line up at the start of the quarter mile strip at the South Georgia Motor Sports Park in Alabama. He began his pre-launch ritual by doing a burnout to coat his motorcycle’s rear tyre in some special glue that had been poured out by his team for the purpose. As the smoke cleared, Ian King lightly slipped the clutch and rolled forward to the start-line where he stood head-to-head with his competitor.
His every heartbeat matched up with the pistons firing in heart of the monstrous 1.6-litre nitro methane-powered supercharged four-cylinder engine, (phew!) nestled and burbling between his thighs. The Christmas tree began its sequence and as soon as green appeared it became a symphony of human precision. Dump the clutch, wring the throttle, lift the front wheel while lightly smoking the rear and shoot off! 0, 50, 100, 160, 200, 220, 250, 289kmph all just became meaningless speeds as the bike crossed the 1/4-mile mark at 380.95kmph in just 5.8-seconds breaking a new personal record for King!
Now imagine experiencing something close to this at least once a week. That is the life for Ian King, eight times drag racing world champion and one of the most well-known faces in the sport. A legend in the world of quarter-miles and smoking starts, we just had to get into his head and find out what it took to make the perfect ‘start’ in the world of drag racing.
First encounter and motivation to keep going
Ian tells us that his first encounter with drag racing took place when he was eight years old. Basically he had gone to a drag racing arena with his family and it was pretty much the first encounter that blew him away.
Having been in the sport for such a long time, he says that his motivation comes from the passion to race as well as the support from fans and in the case of the former, it does not matter if he does not win.
The perfect start
If he is driven by passion to race then scoring top marks in what you do seems to be the next logical step leading us to ask him about the perfect start to every quarter mile howler. This is something I had described in the introduction and most visible in the video that we have attached at the bottom of the feature.
The bike and the men who build them
In the world of motorsports, the driver/rider makes up for 50 per cent of the success story while the other 50 comes from the machine that these men and women pilot. In this case Ian’s two-wheeled success story is a 1500bhp nitro-methane power top-fuel dragster bike. It gets a programmable multi-stage clutch and variable ignition timing. All this power put together gives it a 0kmph to 380kmph time of about 5.8 seconds which is basically the amount of time it would have taken you to complete reading this sentence!
His UK-based company Puma Racing builds the top-fuel dragster bikes and has patrons in the USA and Australia. Even more famous than the bikes are their hand-built engines which have found homes in drag bikes all around the world.
Keeping calm under pressure
To be a champion you have to know your role so well that your actions will become muscle memory letting you stand above the competition. But to be an eight-time world champion, your actions have to be as smooth every single time. This basically means keeping a calm mind and reacting properly to whatever is the situation.
He was once a on a quarter-mile run when his bike caught fire. Given the explosive nature of the motorcycle, it engulfed him very quickly. Human nature would have directed him to jump off the bike to escape the situation and he would have probably done this, but then he looked down and realised that he was still doing 170mph and had to keep going till he was able to ground to a halt. Needless to say he required extensive plastic surgery but did not have broken body parts after the incident.
How does it feel to win eight world championships?
Winning eight championships is no joke and certainly not an easy task which is why Ian says that every championship feels just as special as the previous one, though the first one will always hold a special place in his heart. In this regard, his favourite race track is the Santa Pod raceway which is basically his home track and one where he has achieved a lot of his success in his career.
After discovering so much about Ian, we had just had to find out what his personal rides were. Not surprisingly he revealed to us that his two personal bikes are a 1975 Triumph Trident and a 1981 Laverda Jota which to our estimates seem like the choices of the champions.
What is the future for the sport in India?
With drag racing becoming more and more popular in India thanks to events like the Valley Run and the Howling Dog Drag event, it only seems a matter of time before this sport catches on strongly in the sub-continent feels Ian.
He believes that drag racing is the perfect motor sport for families and amateurs and will go a long way in creating modern India’s motorsports heritage.
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