Brock wasn't like the other children...

get going, and I took it around the block and I was absolutely hooked from there! I immediately ran out and bought a set of wheelie bars for my XR75 dirtbike. I was convinced that it was the funnest thing I'd ever done! (laughter) That would be the beginning. You know I did the starving student kind of thing commuting back and forth to work and realized that being around traffic . . .I mean I liked riding my street bike . . . but being around traffic and people and officers of the law had its downfalls. So a little bit after my sixteenth birthday, my girlfriend and I went to the local drag strip and I started racing. I had a Kawasaki H2, a 3 cylinder 2-stroke that was just a rattly, noisy, mess but went great on the track and I started honing my skills from there. Once I got in a position financially to buy a later model bike, I bought an '82 GS1000 Katana. Either the prettiest or ugliest motorcycle I've ever owned. I haven't quite decided! I think a lot of other people haven't either. I ended up building it when I was around 19 years old. I ended up building it into a 1200cc street killer that ran in the 9's back then and just progressed from there.

	Brock's idea of a stretch limo

work on tire development. We knew we had plenty of power but the bikes were spinning the tires over the entire length of the track and we just couldn't get it hooked up. We worked with them and once we got enough traction the race was on! I mean there were quite a few very competent racers that had the potential to run it. I think the first race out with the Mickey Thompson tires, I qualified number 1 with I believe an 8.07, which was very close. Definitely the quickest pass anyone had ever gone, and by the weekend I think I had a couple of guys run quicker than that! As the racing progressed we found out what to do with our new traction. Randy Waters in Montgomery, Alabama ran an 8 flat and almost got into the 7's and ironically it was against me. My bike broke on that pass. I looked up at the scoreboard and saw an 8.00 and thought, "Oh, boy! I just dodged a bullet there!". But the next race we made a couple of changes to the clutch and got the horsepower down and managed to run a 7.97 on a full blown DOT approved, street legal motorcycle. Even backed it up with a 7.99 and a 7.98 so that was officially broken and we got an awful lot of publicity for it. We had help from American Suzuki in getting there so it was sort of a feather in their cap also. It's one of those milestones. Who knows when or if a 6 second street bike pass is ever gonna occur. But already just in this short a time some of the guys have managed to run in the 7.6 range. So they've taken quite a chunk off that 7.97.

	Houston, we have liftoff

you do on a drag strip as a racer vs. what you see as an observer are two entirely different things. It's a lot more precise type of skill. If we make a mistake, we don't get any additional time to catch up. Really, the way drag racing goes, if you have to think about what you're doing . . . you lost! It's all about instinct, practice, and shaving a hundredth of a second off here, and a hundredth of a second off there. It's a very difficult task. One of the things that I enjoy about our high-powered street bikes is that in all honesty in some of the professional classes where you have wheelie bars, it almost does boil down to a "close your eyes, drop the clutch, and hold on for dear life" kind of thing. When you're riding a 400 hp street bike that can wheelie at 160 mph, it's a different story. It's really a matter of situational awareness. You have to know where you are and what you're doing at all times, or else you can get yourself in big trouble in a hurry. That's really one of the reasons that I've enjoyed the "no wheelie bar" style of competition, to seperate myself from the pro stock and those kind of guys. Realy at that level whoever has the biggest wallet has the potential to win. In sport bike drag racing you could have all the money in the world, but if you can't ride, you ain't gonna win.

	"Sniff, sniff . . . Hey do you guys smell something burning? Oh, never mind, it's just me." The two different blow-things-up videos: Brock blows his hand off (not really) 284k MPEG4 Brock's NOSbike blows up 2.8M MPEG4

talent when it comes to drag racing a motorcycle. And I'll be the first to admit that I'm not one of them! I mean I have always had to practice very hard, really work at it, and luckily for me my physical practice on the race track combined with my mental ability to adjust and set up and build a motorcycle has got me where I am. I would consider myself not even in the top ten percent of the best riders out there. But combining the other talents and the package gets the job done I'd guess you'd say.

	Brock going into Jedi mode in his quest for that lost 100th of a second

will be very lucky if he can get into the 9's. It's a difficult bike to get into the 9's with. It's got all kinds of power, but it's very difficult to apply. The first thing that we suggest is making chassis modifications to lower the center of gravity of the bike. With that, in combination with a product that we call our clutch mod which takes out the back torque limiting tripper assembly that comes with those bikes, then the clutch actuates smoothly. By lowering the center of gravity, you have the opportunity to actually use the power that is provided. Once you get a bike set up properly like that, a good rider can run 9.70, 9.60 somewhere around 140-142 mph. To take that one step further, one of the biggest improvements is in the exhaust system and fuel injection (FI) mapping, and various other things that work together as a package. With that entire package done, a good rider can get one of these bikes into the 9.30's and come close to 150 mph in the quarter mile and that's without ever touching the engine, with the exception of the modification to the clutch.

	Dooood! My Gixxer doesn't look like that?!

engine, or greed in the acceleration department, asking for too much and not having the rider skill to be able to control it and flipping the bike over backwards. Drag racing is one of these sports that it requires a lot of self-control. You can get the job done without self-control, but it's quite a bit more dangerous, and it's also a lot harder on your wallet! I mean if you go out with NOS or a turbo boost or anything else that can melt some pistons, you've got a headache in a hurry.

	It's all about the Benjamins!

to 9.40 trim. That's mechanically. From a rider's point there are some classes being taught out there. Ricky Gadson has a school, Jason Miller runs a school. Most guys, I think if they go to the track and they watch instead of trying to do it first, they get a better idea. Nine times out of ten, most guys that don't perform like they want to, it's because they either try too hard, that's a big problem. A lot of people see a pro or a semi-professional racer take off and see how hard they launch and think, "Well heck, I can do that". And next thing you know, they're wheelie-ing, and spinning the tire, and doing all the things wrong that they don't want to do. If you go out and watch some of the good guys and try and practice at the track, and get smooth with it, once you're smooth, the quickness will come. Of course proper bike set up is important. A lot of guys will go out, and they'll go to the local track, and they'll practice, but they don't have their bike set up properly. They'll effectively practice doing things wrong because the bike isn't properly set up. Set your bike up first and it makes learning easier and more productive. Honestly, I don't really think you need to go to a school. If you go to a National event and look at some of the guys, and then find a local track . . . the thing is, you can't do it on the street. Some guys are convinced that they're so much faster on the street than on the track, when in reality, the track is a lie detector, and it shows them how slow they really are. They're not faster on the street, they just don't have anything to gauge it by except someone else who's going slow! So go to the track. Realize what the timing system is doing. In fact AMA Prostar has a basic introduction on their website, http://www.amaprostar.com/club/races.html that tells you how the timing system works and what the objective is. From there, it's just a matter of fun! We go out on a Thursday night at my local track here in Ohio, there'll be 30 to 50 sportbikes out there, and we go out, practice, have fun, and then take off riding. It's great. You can go out and relieve some frustration without worrying about getting a ticket, and it's not real expensive. Just basic safety rules, you know. DOT approved or Snell approved helmet, boots above your ankles, gloves, and a leather jacket and you're good to go. There's no special licenses, there's no special problems until you get to a certain level.

	The Bandit that stole the eight-second mark

Because in the past, if two guys wanted to go off and race for money, they'd literally race on the street out in front of the track. Which is no good, doesn't do anybody any good. Prstar has what they call the "no scoreboard class" now. So when you get to a National event, you have some guys that have fast motorcycles. They'll put them on the track. They will basically rent them lanes on the track, turn the scoreboards off and let 'em race. And these guys race for a lot of money sometimes. The biggest thing about the street racing is the people involved. Part of the entertainment is that a guy that's setting up the race, if he really knows what he's doing, he will get the other guy so irritated, and so angry, that before he comes to blows, he'll make a decision to take a race that he really shouldn't race. Some of the guys in the sport, Keith Dennis, John St. Pierre, these guys are absolute characters. They'll have you rolling laughing, going through . . . I call it the negotiation process of setting up a race. Then when it gets down to it, these are PROFESSIONAL drag racers on street bikes. And it's really exciting to watch. I'll be the first to admit, I can go to a National event and watch an awful lot of motorcycles go down the track, and you know drag racing's one of the sports that unless you're doing it, it's really not all that exciting to watch. If you're doing it, it's a ball! But watching it sort of gets old in a hurry. But watching two of the best street racers in the country racing for $10-15,000 on REALLY fast motorcycles that are hard to control, is really enjoyable. And it's legal, at least street-wise. I don't know if it's legal from an IRS standpoint! (laughter) But the racing itself sure is exciting.