Cycle News is a weekly magazine that covers all aspects of motorcycling including Supercross, Motocross and MotoGP as well as new motorcycles
Issue link: https://magazine.cyclenews.com/i/126937
"To me, MOTORCYCLIST has always been a very" performance minded magazine." -Russ Collins Views on drag racing: "Being on a top-fuel bike on the starting line at Indianapolis in front of 100,000 people, the cameras, the press, and all of the world's greatest racers is quite an experience. If you can force that monster down the drag strip without killing yourself and still win the race, it's a fantastic sense of achievement. When I set the 199.55-mph record it was 20 mph faster than anybody else, so it was staggering. They're just now starting to nip at it and I think it's great. I know exactly how they feel because I was just a hair's breath away from the magic 200 for 12 years and just never made it. I want the people who do make it to feel as happy as I would have if I'd done it." Name: Russ Collins Occupation: President, R.C. Engineering Current projects: "I'm now driving a 3000-hp, 500-cu.-in. top fuel car instead of a top-fuel motorcycle. R.C.'s also been doing a lot of work with Hondas in sports car racing. We built all the engines for Quantum Engineering and they've just won the SCCA National Escort Endurance Championship two years in a row." Riding history: "I bought a Triumph in a basket when I was 17, put "it together and made it work. I got into drag racing two years later. I actually started out racing cars but didn't have the money to make them as fast as I could make a motorcycle. In 1969 I was working for a dealer and started R.C. Engineering in my garage, building flattrack and drag race engines. When the Honda 750 came out it was so inclined to become a successful drag race vehicle that I just went crazy with it. I built a supercharged fuel-burning 750 Honda, the first successful supercharged motorcycle in the U.S., and then the first triple-engine" top-fuel drag bike. I crashed that at 175 mph in 1975 and almost lost my life. I put a glass top on the bike and made it into a coffee table as a constant reminder of how dangerous those things can be. I built the supercharged V-8 Hon- Magazine: "Like me, the people who write MOTORCYCLIST are really interested in performance. I like it when they just get involved in special projectslike the story Jeff Karr did with my protege Terry Vance and his pro-stocker. I like to hear what they have to say and how they respond to things. To me, MOTORCYCLIST has always been a very performance-minded magazine." da, the "Sorcerer," and the first 7-sec. motorcycle, the first one to go 190 mph, and I always had the heaviest and most powerful bikes. I was the first motorcyclist to receive the NHRA's best-engineered car award, which I got three times for motorcycles." _/ 21