Perry Pulls Together Funnybike

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.