Soggy Weather Leaves McBride Lookng to Atlanta

Larry McBride's quest for AMA/Prostar championship number five began February 28th 2003 at the season-opening MRE Nationals in Gainesville, FL. Unfortunately, inclement weather led to the postponement of the race, leaving Team McBride with only one pass for the weekend. McBride was plagued with transmission problems and struggled to get down the track with a 7.94 at 123 mph. "We underestimated the track and took too much power out of the bike," said McBride. "We ended up having too much grip and couldn't get enough tire spin. We broke the transmission about two seconds into the run."

Despite encountering mechanical problems on their first run , Team McBride's talented crewmembers, Steve McBride, Roland Stuart, and Chuck Stuart, worked diligently to have the bike back intact within a few hours. McBride stated, "We had her tuned-up and ready to go for the next round. My crew does an awesome job, I have lot of trust in all of them."

The bright spot of the weekend occurred on Thursday night as Steve McBride received the Crew Chief of the Year award, at the 13th Annual AMA/Prostar Awards Banquet. "It was such a great feeling to win this award, I have been waiting a long time for this," said Steve. In addition, Steve was not the only McBride brother to win an award at the banquet. Along with receiving his forth number-one plate, Larry was honored with the Sponsors Racer of the Year Award.

The Team did not let the weekend's soggy weather dampen their spirits and hosted a huge cookout for friends and fellow racers on Saturday night. "We wanted to throw a big party out here," said McBride. "We racers are like a big family out here, and the only time I don't like somebody is when I pull up against them on the starting line. If you ever lose that part of it, then you need to park the motorcycle."

McBride knew looks to the next race on the schedule set for April 5th and 6th at Atlanta Dragway, in Commerce, GA. McBride has won the Atlanta race for the last two years in-a-row and surpassed his mentor Elmer Trett's speed record last year with a rapid pass of 243 mph.

Atlanta will be a true test of the off-season bike modifications and new cylinder head set-up the team plans to run this season. "We have made quite a few changes this year," stated McBride. "Our biggest change, that we have not made yet, is that we are going to be switching to the Vance & Hines cylinder head for Atlanta. We ran the Vortex this weekend and it has been very good to us, but we are always looking to improve. All of our other minor changes on the bike seem to be working out just fine, so we ar4e going to put 110% into finding the right tune-up for the Vance & Hines head. If we run into problems, we can always go back to the Vortex."

Larry McBride is very optimistic about the upcoming season and is determined to lower the elapsed-time record yet again. Along with brother Steve and the Stuarts, Larry's wife, Kathie McBride and Dane Harris make-up the 2003 team. McBride deeply appreciates all of his sponsors that are making this season possible and looks forward to seeing them at the track. Larry extended a special thanks to Pingel Enterprise, Trim-Tex Drywall Products, Drag Specialties-Parts Unlimited, RedLine Synthetic Oil Corporation as well as his other sponsors:

Muzzys Performance, Web-Cam, Kibblewhite Precision Machine, Vanson Leathers, Performance Machine, Kawasaki USA, Belt Drives Ltd, Triton Corp (Kool-Bak), Street & Competition, Trac Dynamics, Simpson Race Products, Nitrous Express, APE, EK Chain, Arias, R&D Spring, Autolite, MSD, Protect ALL, Whipple Industries, Cometic Gaskets, B&J Transmission, Carolina Cycle, L.A. Sleeve, PJ1 Nology Engineering, Mickey Thompson Tires, Corbin Seats, Stark Masonry, and Vance & Hines Motorsports.

Don't miss out on witnessing the quickest and fastest bike on the planet April 5th and 6th at Atlanta Dragway.