# 004 BULLDOZER by Officine Sbrannetti

DRAG PORTRAITS

Salt Flat Harley – Chris Bridgewater Racing

There’s some things that most of us would take for granted if we were intending to break a land speed record. Obviously an endeavour like that would take a lot of money – so you’re probably going to need a sponsor or twelve. And you’d also be wanting a whole bunch of top shelf engineers and support crew, too. Not to mention a brand new bike and some seriously hardcore safety gear. You getting this all down? Great. Now tear the list up and come salt flat racing the Chris Bridgewater way – on a wing, a prayer and a blown and rusty, 171 HP, S&S-equiped Harley.

Here’s Mike Quinones from ourcaste.com. He’s a friend of ‘Bridge’ and was fortunate enough to see the bike in action. “I can’t imagine sitting inches off the ground, completely exposed to the elements, straddling a 171 HP, and ripping at 200 mph across a barren dry lake bed… but I have a friend that can. Chris Bridgewater pilots this Harley Davidson, Pro Charger equipped land speed bike that pushes him to those absurd speeds; and all while we looked on in amazement.”

“We showed up to El Mirage last weekend to put some shake down miles on this behemoth of home-built engineering. The bike was freshly off the dyno at Bennet’s Performance, with the hand of none other than land speed legend Wink Eller tuning it.”

“From the moment this bike turns over you know it has one purpose; to absolutely obliterated speed records. The bike moves across the miles of open desert at such an incredible speed that it’s difficult to track it at times. As Bridge clicks each gear, the parched lake bed floor is shot out from under the tire as it struggles to make traction. The pound of the exhaust and the whine of that Pro Charger becomes hypnotic.”

Chris practices his 1000 yard stare

The bike is running fully worked Sportster forks at the front with a hard rear. The motor is a 100 cubic inch S&S Evo lump, pumped full of horsey goodness via a Pro Charger system with a bespoke intercooler from Chris himself. It’s running at 14 pounds of boost at 7000 RPM and the bike has been dyno’d at a rather impressive 171 equestrians. Carbs by the house of Mikuni. Elsewhere you’ll find a Rev Tech 5 speed box, Tarrozi rear sets, a modified Sportster tank and some freshly shaved Metzeler ME880s.

The Harley, alongside the Brawny Built ‘Mako’

“Bridge is an independent, meaning he doesn’t have some corporate machine fueling his land speed dream. He’s built this bike with his hands and hard-earned cash, and the occasional support of his friends and anything that they can contribute.”

“All in all, he’s what the true heart of bike racing is. And he’s what will continue to keep the sport pure. Remember, support the Independents!” Burt Munro, eat your heart out.

[Photography - Mike Quinones]

via PIPEBURN

What’s not to be missed at Art Basel 2014

Art extravaganza, development laboratory, high society meeting place – Art Basel has so many faces that it can be hard to keep track of the sheer number of attractions; hence our exhibition guide…

From 19 to 22 June, private jets will be arriving at the sleepy airport that serves Basel, located near the border where Switzerland meets France and Germany. Art Basel is one of the art world’s greatest spectacles – this year attracting 285 galleries from 34 countries, with works of classical modernism through to contemporary art making it the Swiss heart of the international collectors’ scene. 

Art Basel

The main exhibition ‘Galleries’ gather works from the well-known galleries in London, New York, Berlin, Rio and Tokyo, but smaller traders also come to sell their paintings, drawings, sculptures, installations, prints, photographs, videos, and digital art: more than 4,000 artists are represented here. The mega-deals are, however, made at the opening on Tuesday, especially when it comes to the famous names.

Artistic all-sorts

The event is based around eight ‘sectors’, illustrating the “many dimensions of Modern and contemporary art”. For example, the ‘Features’ sector shows carefully collated projects from 24 galleries, often the work of a single artist, such as KOW Berlin’s early works by Santiago Sierra. Young and emerging artists are explored in the ‘Statements’ sector, while oversized artworks can be found in the sector titled ‘Unlimited’ – 70 large-scale installations, no less, comprising paintings, video projections and performances. The ‘Parcours’ sector, meanwhile, uses the urban area of ​​Basel as an exhibition space and offers a good place to visit at the end of a long day at Art Basel.

14 rooms

MoMA curator Hans-Ulrich Obrist and MoMA PS1 Director Klaus Biesenbach are both considered heavyweights in the world of contemporary art. For Art Basel, the two have teamed up to curate a highly promising live art event across 14 rooms, featuring artists of the calibre of Marina Abramovic, Damien Hirst, Bruce Nauman, Yoko Ono and John Baldessari.

Design Miami / Basel

Classical and contemporary design: there is plenty to admire in the Basel version of Design Miami – and also to buy. With 50 galleries showcasing their furniture and sculptures, the Parisian gallery Patrick Seguin is this year displaying an entire prefabricated house by Pierre Jeanneret and Jean Prouvé. Otherwise, the focus is on mid-Century design from America, Italy and Scandinavia, plus ceramics and jewellery.

The museums

Anyone with a little more time can enjoy the special displays at individual museums: the Fondation Beyeler is presenting a retrospective of Gerhard Richter, Schaulager shows selected works by Paul Chan, the Kunstmuseum Basel is celebrating the American artist Charles Ray and the Vitra Design Museum offers the work of designer Konstantin Grcic.

For more information about Art Basel 2014, see artbasel.com.

24 Hours of power: We join Porsche at Le Mans

For the first time in 16 years, Porsche was back at La Sarthe. It should have been a spectacular occasion – but sadly neither of the two Porsche 919 Hybrids made it to the end of the 24-hour race. Yet Le Mans was still a success for Stuttgart, as J. Philip Rathgen reports…

The sun is shining on the Le Mans circuit. Only the ladies and gentlemen in their fireproof suits resent the growing warmth as, almost one and a half hours before the end of the toughest endurance race in the world, the second Porsche retires with gearbox problems. It joins the #20 Porsche in the pits, a car which had been vying for the lead against Audi just a few hours before on Sunday morning. At this moment, with both Porsche 919 Hybrids out of the race, the ‘Return to Le Mans 2014’ mission seems to have failed. But has it really? Far from it! Even if Porsche has been unable to finish its first Le Mans race after fifteen years of absence, the two four-cylinder Hybrid racers are definitely the crowd favourites – far surpassing the popularity of their VW Group colleagues from the Audi Motorsport team. But back to the start.

Moderate tension

It's Saturday, 14:22 hours. Only with difficulty do the team mechanics push the futuristic race cars of the LMP1 class through the pit-lane crowds to get to the grid. The tension is overwhelming. Nerves are stretched to breaking point. With shrill whistles, the pit marshals help to assemble the race cars and herd the two Porsche 919 Hybrids to their starting places on the grid. There is an even greater pressure on the two LMP1 Porsche team cars, #14 and #20, than on the Le Mans Audi team and its fierce competitor from the Far East, Toyota, because there are such strong expectations of Porsche. The marque desperately wants to claim its 17th overall victory at the greatest endurance race in the world and, since 2011, team manager Fritz Enzinger and his colleagues have been working hard on their ‘Return to Le Mans’ project. Now, just before the start, the tension is not just written on their faces, but also in their body language, Enzinger clenching and unclenching his water bottle. As we approach the start of the race, we ask what he’s feeling. Enzinger smiles: "Moderate tension".

High Noon at 15:00 hours 

'Moderate tension' is clearly felt throughout the 107-strong Porsche team. In qualifying, the two Porsches did extremely well to position themselves at two and four on the grid, behind the two racing cars from Toyota and closely followed by the Audis. As the French commentator announces the two Porsches over the loudspeakers, spontaneous jubilation breaks out among the 250,000-plus spectators. One of the Porsche mechanics looks anxiously at his watch: there are still 10 minutes to go. Nervously, he chews gum, as did Steve McQueen in the legendary film ‘Le Mans’. The highly complex four-cylinder engine of the Porsches – the smallest in the LMP1 class – and their transmissions have not yet run for 24 hours. But there is no time to worry. The last notes of the title music from Kubrick's ‘2001 - A Space Odyssey’ fall to silence and, at exactly at 15:00 hours, the race begins. The countdown is on and the Porsche team manages a good start, but the top dogs from Audi immediately bare their teeth and attack.

Twilight of the gods

Slowly, the veil of night falls over the 13.6km Le Mans track. This blue hour seems to cast a spell over the spectators. Tirelessly, for more than seven hours, the race cars have been lapping the high-speed circuit. In the Porsche pit garage the atmosphere is intense: the mood of the team has recovered after an earlier fright, when Romain Dumas’s car suffered a defect in the fuel supply. But that was quickly rectified, the Frenchman on the Porsche team, in car #14, making it back out of the pits successfully after a quick stop. The team is currently satisfied with the state of affairs, because Timo Bernhard has briefly taken the lead with the other Porsche, #20.

The night is long

It’s 3am and an icy wind blows through the paddock. In the Porsche pit garage calm has returned, interrupted only every 13th lap for a fuel stop, fresh tyres or a driver change. When the signal is given, the masked men and women work as one, and those who have just recently been asleep on one of the folding chairs in the garage are now giving 100 per cent. There is not much talk as the telemetry data is analysed and, on the team radio, the driver informed of the situation. Both Porsches are proving themselves in the race and, bar some minor problems, the 919s are showing themselves to be very reliable runners. Every minute, every mile, every lap increases the chances that Porsche will be successful in this 24-hour race. But now, with 12 hours gone, the digital countdown of time remaining seems to run much slower than it did in the first half.

Shock in the morning

The Porsche teams continue their run of good luck through the night and into the morning, but Audi is now in the lead. This reflects the experience of the 12-times Le Mans winner. But then comes the shock: less than two hours before crossing the finish line, while running in third place, the #20 Porsche with Webber at the wheel returns to the pits with engine problems. It soon became clear that the car would not be returning to the race. The mood is at once extremely tense in the Porsche camp: some mechanics are not willing to give up, and try everything to get the car back on track – but without success. Now all hopes are on the #14 car, in which Marc Lieb is currently running in seventh place. In the Porsche pits no one is sitting down: all are following the action on-screen. But then something desperately unfortunate happens: with just one and a half hours of the race still to go, car #14 comes in for an unscheduled pit stop. Feverishly, the mechanics work to find the fault but with every minute in the pits, the Porsche is falling further behind. After 25 minutes, the truth is clear: for #14, too, the race is over.

Huge disappointment, two hours before the end

The disappointment is huge and hard to bear. But Porsche has proved that the 919 can run reliably, at high speeds, for very long distances. And is it not exactly this mix of drama and joy that fuels the legend of Le Mans? This year’s race was a ‘cliffhanger’ – and we can’t wait for an even more exciting race next year. 

You an find hundreds of modern and classic Porsches for sale in the Classic Driver Market.