Damian Cownden is like a high school basketball player who skips college and goes right to the NBA.
But the playground for his top fuel motorcycle is no gymnasium. It's a drag racing strip, and he started running with the fast crowd only a year after he got his racing licence.
Short track or long, Cownden has made it a habit of sticking around to the bitter end. Two weeks ago at the NHRA Thunder Valley Nationals in Bristol, Tenn., he placed second in the Nitro Harley-Davidson exhibition class, one of 12 exhibition events he'll go to this year in the U.S.
As the defending champion in the Canadian Motorcycle Racing Association top fuel class, Cownden is the guy everyone else is chasing and he set a blistering pace Saturday as the top qualifier at Prince George Motorsports Park (PGMP) with a pass of 4.47 seconds at a top speed of 161.7 mph.
"It's a fine line between trying to go quick and being consistent and I think our biggest reason for success is we haven't changed any key components on the bike in the four years we've had it," said Cownden.
"A lot of people along the way have told us we need bigger this and better that. It's enough of a challenge with these little changes were making to keep up the tuneups and keep your data going."
In the eliminations Sunday, Cownden jumped the gun at the start and was disqualified, paving the way to victory for fellow Vancouver Islander Nate Gagnon of Errington, who also won the season-opener two weeks ago in Edmonton.
Now in his fifth season as a top fuel racer, Cownden says he's tried dirt drags, skydiving, bungie-jumping, surfing, motocross and BMX racing and nothing provides the thrill he gets hanging on to bike at 230 miles per hour. He started racing with crew chief Rob Janssen of Victoria and they graduated to the big leagues when Victoria Harley-Davidson dealer Steve Drane bought Cownden his top fuel bike.
"In the summer of 2005 I saw a nitro bike blow up in the pits and it was the worst explosion I've ever seen," Cownden said. "The guy was taken off in an ambulance with blood coming out of his ears and his body torn up and I swore at that point I'd never run nitro. Those guys are nuts, nobody needs to go that fast.
"Six months later I owned a top fuel bike. There's nothing like it."
Prince George was the second on a six-stop CMDRA calendar, and the quarter-mile track at PGMP posed a bit of problem for the five top fuel bikes. Capable of mid six-second passes in a quarter-mile and speeds of 230 miles per hour over that distance, those 900-horsepower nitro-burning bikes are a little too fast for the downhill shutdown lane at the end of the track. At those speeds, the bikes tend to want to leave the ground when they hit the dip in the road. So to take some of the worry out of racing that fast, the CMDRA decided to shorted the top fuel and pro modified class races to an eighth-mile.
Cownden and the four other top-fuellies had to take some of the weight off their clutches to lessen the torque on the rear wheel when their bikes change gears about two seconds after they leave the start line. They also leaned out their nitromethane mixture from 100 per cent to 98 per cent, adding a bit of methanol to the mix to try to keep those fat tires from spinning as they shot down the track. The bikes are so powerful, the front ends tend to want to lift up when the throttle is cranked, making it difficult to keep a straight line at the best of times.
On his second qualifying pass Saturday, Mike Pelrine of Bruderheim, Alta., started fishtailing not long after he gunned his engine. His impromptu slalom ride as he fought to regain control would be enough to scare the Kevlar vest off of most racers. Pelrine handled it like a pro but his high-speed dance left him with a seized engine.
"It's a little slippery out there," said Pelrine, 32. "It's a little different feeling when it does that but I'm starting to get pretty used to it. It used to be scary. I crashed a month ago [at an NHRA event in Rockingham, N.C.] and that was scary. I went right over the handlebars and went flying down the track, flipping and flopping. I didn't get hurt. The bike did, though."
Despite the inherent danger, racers rarely get seriously hurt. If they come off their bikes the walls on either side usually keep them on the track. There's a good reason top-fuel racers wear those vests and keep heavy-duty seat belts strapped to the top of their engines: They keep engine parts from imbedding themselves in the rider's chest.
Mike's 28-year-old brother Devin also races in top fuel and few years ago he had a piston come through the cylinder head right below where he was leaning. The impact broke the frame of the bike but he escaped injury.
"If the motor grenades, the shrapnel goes everywhere," Mike said. "I've had lots flames come up around my head, but no big booms."
