Perry Paces Funnybike field with personal best ET 07.20.03

Tom Perry took his GS Suzuki Funny Bike to his quickest ET ever when he qualified number 1 at the Prostar/Norris Motorsports Cycle Fest in Norwalk, Ohio. Running a stout 6.769 @ 202.82 MPH. Perry paced a stout 10 bike field that saw him come away with runner-up honors at the event.

In round one Perry faced the injected H-D of Chris Streeter running a 6.779 @196.19 MPH to take the win. “We decided to leave the bike alone for the first round knowing we had a bye in the second round if we beat Chris, said Perry. We then tried to lean on it during the bye run to see if the track would take anymore power.” But the bye run netted only a 7.135 @ 192.36 MPH. “ The bike slowed down some so we knew we had to back it down for the semi-finals. We had lane choice against James Guyton so we decided to try the other lane to see what we could do there. We felt we had a 6.9x second pass dialed in so we weren’t surprised when the scoreboards came up with a 6.919 @ 200.92. In the finals we knew we knew we had to be quicker off the line to beat Travis and I attempted to go in deep, but my timing was off and the tree caught me unprepared.” Perry ran a 7.032 @ 198.06 MPH in the runner-up effort.

The runner-up finish leaves Perry solidly in the #3 position in point just 75 out of first and less than 20 points out of second. With 5 races left to run Perry feels he is in a good position. “ I think this points chase will go right down to the World Finals and I plan on being right there.”

Perry would like to thank the following sponsors for their continued support throughout the year: PMFR, Bates Leathers, BHP, MRE and C&W Cycle Works.

Perry’s next race will be the Prostar/Pingle Thunder Motorcycle Nationals at Indianapolis Raceway Park, Indianapolis, Indiana on August 9 & 10.

Perry Pulls Together Funnybike 02.10.03

In November, Prostar announced that an agreement had been made with the Funnybike riders that would prevent the original 2004 plans of combining Top Fuel and Funnybike. Funnybike will remain as a separate class and will return to a 16-bike field format with an increased purse.

A group of Funnybike teams, lead by World Finals Funnybike Winner Tom Perry, have pulled together a Funnybike sponsorship of $20,000 per season in addition to the Orient Express year-end bonus money for the top five plate holders. The money will be utilized as supplemental funds for the $56,700 annual Funnybike purse. Funnybike will now be increase to pay $2,500 to Win, $1,000 Runner-up, $500 Semi's, $200 quarters and $125 eighths. Any additional funds raised will go towards increasing the first two rounds of the purse.

Many of the sponsors committed to supporting the additional funding of Funnybike include Steve Dawson of Dawson's Pro 1, Gardner Racing, Precision Metal Fab Racing, Robinson's and Schnitz Racing. Other sponsorships will be finalize at this weekend's Dealer Show and will be updated on www.amaprostar.com as they develop.

The original idea behind the combining of the classes was to reduce overhead caused by increasing track cost. By reducing the number of Professional categories the purse would be significantly reduced. Mr. Perry's innovation and help from fellow Funnybike racer Marc Oliver to save the class has paid off for all current and future Funnybike racers.

Other terms of the agreement is to simplify the rules and encourage new Funnybike teams to construct baby Top Fuel bikes. Basically a McBride set up only with injected alcohol. When the time and budgets allow, a team can add the blower and nitro and step up to Top Fuel. As Tom Perry explains, "We cannot afford to lose the only class that is a stepping stone to Top Fuel."
New rules would limit the class to a 13-inch maximum and 10-inch minimum tire size and 650 lbs minimum weight with no forced induced nitro. This will open the rules back up to Harley's competing in the class by simply utilizing a tire size of 13-inches. All other class safety rules will apply but there will no longer be separate class designations or body restrictions.

"A big hats off to Tom Perry and the entire Funnybike family for binding together to save a motorcycle drag racing legacy", said Keith Kizer, President and CEO of AMA/Prostar. Prostar Strategic Planner, Tom Ward and Chief Technical Inspector, Brian Chamber will manage any future growth concerns or rule revisions for Funnybike.