Keep on Trucking

The Build Basics

You don’t need a mind like Sir Isaac Newton’s

to work out that the two things I was going

to need in order to break the British and

Commonwealth record were a bike that

could go pretty fast and something even

faster to ride it behind.

HEN the record had been set on the

M42, the motor pace vehicle was a

Rover SD1 car, although it was no

ordinary Rover. The executive saloon built at

British Leyland’s Solihull factory was a big,

four-door car with a hatchback, more used to

being driven by managing directors and doctors

than racing drivers, but Tom Walkinshaw

Racing had enjoyed huge success with it in the

British Touring Car Championship. In racing

guise the car was capable of 160 mph, and it

was one of these beasts that was used as the

motor pace vehicle.

W

I fancied something altogether bigger;

something that would give me the biggest

slipstream ‘pocket’ possible; something that

I was a good deal more familiar with than a

saloon racer. A truck. Normally, the kind of

trucks that I work on day-in, day-out in the

workshop don’t do more than 60 mph – that’s

the limit they have to stick to on a British

motorway – but I needed something that could

do twice that speed. That’s where an amazing

truck driver called Dave Jenkins came in.

Jenkins Motorsport is a family business, and

their business is racing trucks. We arranged to

meet up with Dave at Bruntingthorpe Proving

Ground near Lutterworth in Leicestershire.

Bruntingthorpe, formerly RAF Bruntingthorpe,

was and RAF base during the Second

38    Britain’s Fastest Bike

Previous page:

Chatting with Dave

Jenkins under the nose

of a retired Jumbo Jet

at Bruntingthorpe.

Above: Dave shows

that it’s not only Formula

One cars that can burn

doughnuts on the track!

World War and a United States Air Force

bomber base during the early years of the

Cold War. Although no longer a military

base, Bruntingthorpe is home to a museum

collection of Cold War aircraft, including