SPRINTING

THE recently formed Elvington Hundred Club, whose objects are to encourage short-distance record-breaking, held a practice day at Greenham Common Air Base and provided timed runs over a standing-start mile, with a speed-trap on the final quarter-mile. Hobbs on a supercharged Triumph 500-c.c. sprint motorcycle clocked 144 m.p.h. through the flying quarter, a Vincent-1000 unblown did 135 m.p.h., a Triumph 650 road-equipped Bonneville 113 m.p.h., and a production Honda four-cylinder 108 m.p.h. An Aston Martin DB4GT did 127 m.p.h. and our Road Test Ford Escort with 16-valve BDA engine did 97.1 m.p.h. All these runs were into quite a strong head-wind, with three-quarters of a mile for acceleration before the timed-section.