The Imperial Wizard Mk III

A very close family bereavement, coupled with Brian's re-location to Holland to work for Top Fuel motorcycle legend Henk Vink in 1987 and 1988, combined to hinder progress.  The bike was not raced at all in 1988 or 1989 and in 1990 the engine was sold to Rod Pallant and Mark Pemble bought the rolling chassis. 

However, planning had began in 1989 for an all-new machine and it was constructed in late 1989 and 1990.  The chassis was built by Jim ‘Puppet’ Ditullio of Race Visions, the crankcase was a Pete Davis Puma Engineering item and the bike initially ran with a stock Yamaha FJ1200 top end.   A massive 144 cubic inch Weiand supercharger completed the set up.  Brian acknowledges the great help given by Pete Davis on the engine and the McGee brothers in the US on the fuel system.  (Incidentally, Brian tells me that the McGee brothers developed their own quad cam cylinder head)  (Click here to see the full technical specification of the bike when it was built)

1991 saw the emergence of Imperial Wizard Mark III.  Needless to say, this was pretty bad news for the opposition.  In 1992 The Imperial Wizard carded 6.67 seconds at 212 mph to claim a new World Record at Avon Park.  Legendary Top Fuel Dragster pilot (and now FIA International Liaison Officer) Carl Olson is a personal friend of Brian’s and he witnessed this pass.  Carl fondly remembers this run and describes it as one of the magic moments of drag racing that he has witnessed.  This is quite some accolade coming from someone with Olson’s pedigree.  It is a little known fact that the late Wally Parks, the founding father of the NHRA, also attended this meeting.

Brian recorded a phenomenal 223 mph terminal speed at the Bulldog Bash in 1993 using high gear only.  This was the first 220 mph terminal speed ever recorded in the world.  Perhaps unsurprisingly, Brian can recall this pass as if it happened yesterday.  The bike climbed up on the wheelie bars and just kept rising to the point that it felt as if he was flying.  The run, like all great runs, seemed completely effortless, the bike just hooked up in precisely the way it was designed to do.  Brian remembers getting off the bike in a state of elation and jumping around in front of Robin Read saying he had no idea how fast he had just been but that it was very fast.  He wasn’t wrong was he?
This would be a remarkable top end charge even today. 

1994 was a problematical year with repeated cracked cylinder heads.  These were stock FJ1200 items modified by Pete Davis of Puma Engineering and it was becoming obvious that they were simply not up to the power now being produced. 

In 1995 the bike was upgraded by the addition of a new Opcon supercharger and a new billet head.  Incredibly this was made by Brian in the shed at the bottom of his garden!  It really deserves an article of its own.  Brian gratefully acknowledges the enormous help and advice given by Pete Davis in the development of the new head. 

A few teething troubles surfaced at Gainesville in March 1995 with clearance problems between the pistons and the exhaust valves.  Brian did no more but take the head home with him on a plane and returned to his shed for a little fettling and fine tuning. 

Back in the US at Commerce, Atlanta in April the modifications were tested out.  A shut-off pass in high gear only, yielded a 7.01 second elapsed time.  The first full racing pass followed and Brian recorded a 6.42 / 228 lap.  At first Brian thought the time must be suspect because it all felt so easy but he was soon convinced by the incremental times and speeds.  Brian was runner up to Elmer Trett by a small margin in the final but he got his revenge the following year when he beat the great man.  Brian was based at Hand’s Performance in Jasper, Alabama in 1995 with Chris and Sharon Hands of Top Fuel motorcycle fame. 

In 1996 Brian moved his racing operation to Carolina Cycle in (you guessed it) Carolina.  He came third in the championship behind Elmer Trett and Tony Lang that year. 

1997 was a rather lean year for Brian, his best pass was 'only' 6.381 seconds at 214.86 mph run at the European Finals at Santa Pod, a meeting which he won.  To top off a disappointing season, Brian went out in the first round at Gainesville to Tony Lang when the fuel pump broke which resulted in damage to the engine.  Brian took time out of the sport in 1998 so there is nothing to report for that year.

1999 was another poor year by Brian’s standards, however he won the European Finals at the Pod and his best run was in the first round of eliminations when he stormed to a 6.121 seconds 234.11 mph clocking.  Brian also won the November meeting at Gainesville on another of his regular pilgrimages to the States.

2000 was a similar year to 1999 in many ways but Brian qualified number 1 at the European Finals held at Santa Pod on 9 and 10 September with a stout 6.149 second 216.40 mph effort.  The eighth mile speed on this pass was 191.79 mph.  David Abraham was dispatched in the first round of eliminations with an even quicker and faster run of 6.125 / 226.40 (191.03 mph at the eighth).  Unfortunately Brian had fuel pump problems and failed to show against Steve Woollatt in the semi-finals and Steve went on to win the event.  Brian rounded off the year with a strong showing at the Gainesville meeting held between 17 and 20 November 2000.  He qualified top of the pile with a mighty 6.101 / 225.22 lap which was low elapsed time of the meeting and a personal best to boot.  The UK was also represented by Ian King who was on the bump spot of the eight bike field with a 6.964 / 198.50 clocking.
Brian and Ian met in the first round.  Ian ran a personal best ET 6.676 / 189.67 and nailed Brian on the line with a fine hole shot, but a 6.222 second pass coupled with a huge 232.37 mph (top speed of the meeting) took Brian safely through to the semi-finals.  A broken drive belt in his race against Chris Hand put paid to the defending champion's challenge for 2000.

The first meeting of 2001 was the Easter Thunderball when results were a little mixed although Brian qualified The Imperial Wizard in number one spot in qualifying with a modest 6.682 / 199.37 clocking.  The eighth mile speed on this pass had been the regulation 190+ mph so clearly a problem was experienced in the second part of the run to bring the elapsed time down so much.  This was followed by a return to usual form with a 6.116 second 225.26 mph lap on a bye run in the first round of eliminations.  The final against Ian King was lost on a ‘blue line’ infringement when his crewman was still trying to turn on the computer as Brian hurried to get into stage.  Brian’s 6.48 / 177.89 clocking was considerably quicker than his opponent and, once again, the eighth mile speed was close to 190 mph indicating a lift in the second half of the run. 

Brian competed at the 2001 Main Event but had a very unsuccessful meeting.  He could manage only one 8 second run when his fuel pump gremlins returned with a vengeance.

Brian’s final meeting in Europe was at the European Finals at Santa Pod in 2001 and he unleashed a blistering series of runs which have scarcely been matched on this side of the Atlantic.  His slowest run of the weekend was 6.37 seconds.  In terms of terminal speed, he peaked at 231.96 mph with a best speed through the eighth mile of 191.36 mph.  In the final against Holland’s Roel Koedam (no slouch on a Top Fuel bike it has to be said), Brian blasted The Imperial Wizard to a winning time of 6.119 seconds at ‘only’ 218 mph.  The reason for this relatively modest terminal speed was that Brian found himself drifting towards the centre line in the latter part of the pass, and so at 5.4 seconds into the run he had to lift.   I don’t think you have to be a genius to work out that a five second run must have been on the cards if only he could have stayed at full throttle.  The table below shows all of Brian’s runs made at this meeting in descending order of elapsed times.

If you analyse the last run in the table above in the same way that I did in the article entitled 'Anatomy of a Top Fuel Run' some very interesting statistics come to light.  The acceleration of road cars and bikes is usually judged by their 0 to 60 mph times, around 3 seconds for a bike and 4-odd for a car are scorchingly quick.  How does 0 to 60 in 0.81 of a second grab you?  0 to 100 mph only took about one and a third seconds.  And if that hasn't really got you thinking, Brian was pulling something like 3.35G off the line.  This means that if, for example, he weighed 12 stone at the time, his body was subjected to such vicious acceleration at the start of the run that it became the equivalent of 40 stone.  This might be all very well if you were safely strapped into a car and surrounded by lots of reassuringly solid metal - but how would you fancy it stretched across an impossibly highly-stressed engine with a supercharger spinning at ludicrous rpm whilst trying to steer the thing and hang on for dear life at the same time?  Not an instantly attractive notion I think.

Brian’s 6.119 second elapsed time stood as the European record until it was beaten by only one thousandth of a second by Roel Koedam in September 2003.  The 229.20 mph terminal speed also stood as the European record until bettered in 2003 with a 229.99 mph clocking.  Roel’s records still stand today in 2007.

The very best speeds attained by Brian on this bike were 196.4 mph at the eighth and 234.11 mph at the stripe!

Brian went on to clock a fantastic 6.10 seconds at 225 mph in qualifying at Gainesville in November 2001.  He lost his semi-final against Chris Hand when the primary belt let go.

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