Above: My view of the truck – the first outing at

Bruntingthorpe on the bike.

daylights out of Eddie Stobart’s boys on the

motorway, because this truck is seriously fast.

It looks like a truck in the way that a rally car

looks like the sort of five-door hatchback your

granny takes to Sainsbury’s to do her shopping.

In the cab, just like on the inside of a rally car

or saloon racer, all of the creature comforts

a driver enjoys have been stripped out. A

normal truck has a driver’s seat the size of an

armchair with its own suspension and infinite

adjustments for height and rake. Dave’s seat

is a simple bucket racing seat with a five-

point racing harness. The entire dashboard

is missing, replaced by gauges to show speed,

revs, turbo boost and temperatures – the things

Dave needs to keep an eye on when he’s racing.

40    Britain’s Fastest Bike

There’s not a hint of carpet or ergonomic

fittings – it’s all bare metal, rivets, wiring loom

and bolt heads. There aren’t normally even any

side windows in the thing when it is racing,

just plastic mesh to stop bits of debris that have

fallen off other trucks flying in to hitch a lift in

the cab.

Again, like a rally car, the fairings, spoilers

and aerodynamic aids on the truck are custom

made, although race rules are imposed to make

sure that the trucks do look as much as possible

like the sort of units you will see on the road.

Dave’s MAN TGA truck has a six-cylinder,

12-litre turbocharged engine mated to a

16-speed gearbox. That sounds pretty much

like a normal truck, too, but the engine in

a regular MAN truck produces about 440

horsepower. Race tuned and with an enlarged

turbo, Dave’s produces 1,050 horsepower. To

give you an idea what that means, this racing