The following is an excerpt from John Britten by Tim Hanna. 

The book chronicles how independent builder John Britten and his revolutionary racing machine beat the factory-built twin-cylinder motorcycles of the 1990s. The story of the man and his machines is one of the most incredible engineering and design feats of the twentieth century.

In this excerpt, the Britten motorcycle comes to race in the Daytona Sound of Thunder series, which had been dominated by the machines from major manufacturers—notably Ducati. 

With Andrew Stroud in the saddle and the whole Team in attendance, the debut of the new machine, with new metal wishbones, at Ruapuna in the 1992 Sound of Thunder caused a sensation. Jim Sykes, who was then the president of the BEARS (and was to remain so for many years), said that John’s previous bikes had had a powerful impact on the BEARS crowd but nothing had prepared them for the sight of the new V-1000.

When we first saw the Denco thundering down the track in 1987 it was a tremendous morale booster, and we all took pride in John’s achievements with it. This was in spite of the fact that in many ways he was completely atypical of BEARS people, most of whom don’t have a lot of money. For example, you’d often see some guy wandering around in his shorts and you’d know he hadn’t scratched up the money to rebuild his bike after the last blow-up. But there was never a feeling that John was different, or considered himself any better than the rest of us. He was so quiet, you wouldn’t know anything special was going on; he’d just be cruising around in his old black leathers. Although we loved the Denco we were totally overwhelmed by the first of the Brittens. The ground would shake and then the sound would drown out all the noise from every other bike on the track. Then as quick as you could turn your head it was gone. We were all even prouder of him for making it. But it was just a warm-up for the main event. When the first blue and pink bike appeared people were hysterically excited about it. They just could not believe their eyes and there was a huge crowd around it whenever it was in the pits. We have a kind of rule that if you always win you are too fast for your class and you ought to move on. Well those first Brittens had no class to move up to, but even though it soon became apparent that there was nothing in BEARS that could get anywhere near them nobody tried to get them handicapped out of contention. We were all so thrilled at what he had done nobody cared. We knew he used the Sound of Thunder to test his bikes, just like he was going to do this time, and that was fine by us.

Because of the rush to have the bike ready to race, Andrew only managed to squeeze in about half a dozen practice laps before the events commenced. He was entered in the last race of the day, the A-grade Flying Farewell, so the Team had little to do but talk to the crowd that was gathered about them. As always, Andrew was so relaxed that he actually spent quite a lot of the time dozing, a habit that amused the rest of the Team, who soon learned that it was wise to delegate someone with the job of waking him up before his race. John happily chatted to all his old mates, who marveled along with everybody else at the radical new machine. Then finally, it was time to show them all what the new Britten V-1000 could do.

It would not be a cakewalk. A powerful field had gathered to do battle, among them Robert Holden astride his all-conquering Ducati 888, the same type of machine that had taken the World Superbike Championship for the last three years. To make his job that much harder, Andrew was also riding with John’s urgent shouted instructions to take it easy ringing in his ears.

He didn’t.

I had so much power that I was able to go straight out in front, even though I found the bike awkward through the corners. It was hard to hang off the thing because of the slippery seat. The rubber bit in the middle was really narrow, and when I slid to the side I was on this really smooth carbon fiber. This became very uncomfortable very quickly, and I later had the boys put foam rubber strips on the side. My job was made harder because I wasn’t getting the feedback from the front end I was used to. I couldn’t really get it to do what I wanted it to do. 

The bike was incredibly light and maneuverable, but I couldn’t go into the corners as fast as I wanted to because the front tire would load up and start skipping. At that time all the teams were trying to make their bikes stiffer and stiffer but they were reaching the point where the riders lost the feeling of the bikes. The Britten was exceptionally stable, but you couldn’t get it to turn in because it was so rigid. The stiffness of the thing was later graphically illustrated when the Team put the front end in a jig and twisted it. It didn’t flex, it just locked up the bearings...

There was another aspect to the bike’s handling, however, that was quite peculiar, although it was it was not all that obvious at Ruapuna. I was most aware of it when I came onto the main straight through the left-turning sweeper. It would not stand up and run to the outside edge of the track, which was where I wanted to be for the left-hander at the end of the straight. Instead, it stayed tipped over and wandered toward the infield.137 On the plus side it had huge amounts of torque and a very smooth power delivery. I liked riding it but I could see that anyone who did not have fairly advanced skills in both road racing and motocross could struggle to ride it fast. From the start, however, I could tell that the potential was there to win and we proved it straight away.

English racer Mark Forsyth was at the meeting, and he later recorded his impressions of the new Britten in an article for Performance Bikes magazine.

For the first couple of laps me and my Ducati 888 were right up its chuff, holding second place. Then we came out of a long left sweeper onto the start-finish line. The Britten played its ace card. The back end slewed sideways and it punted out of the third-gear corner leaving a long, black line, pelting me with shards of frazzled rubber and bits of track surface. The noise (like a nuclear holocaust) shook my chest cavity. Halfway down the straight the Britten was a dot.