International ACU MADMAX Team Rider Zef Eisenberg returns to Pendine Sands, Carmarthenshire, this weekend (22-23 September 2018) to contest his World Sand Record title.
On 13 May 2018 Eisenberg raced into the record books, when he secured the outright sand record at Pendine Sands, hitting 201.572mph (324.3 km/h) at the Straightliners Top Speed event. At the time no one in history, car or bike had ever exceeded 200mph at Pendine.
This weekend Eisenberg will be racing his famous 350bhp super-charged Suzuki Hayabusa dubbed ‘The Green Monster’ and will be supported by the MADMAX engineering team, who have precision designed and engineered the bike to command high speeds on sand.
Eisenberg said “Its notoriously difficult to race on sand, and the bike behaves so differently than on tarmac. At higher speeds you risk bike losing grip or the front wheel digging into the sand which throws riders. You also can’t prepare for what the surface is like until the tide goes out. . . you often dodge giant washed-up jellyfish or being an MOD beach - bullet shells! There’s also a short time frame to do the runs before the tide rolls back in, or the thick sea mist - it certainly is real challenge, but makes record breaking all the more glorious”.
With several top riders vying to beat Zef's record, competition is fierce. In preparation for this weekend his Hayabusa now boasts a more powerful engine and he feels more prepared than ever to defend his Sand Racing title. Last weekend he successfully set 4 news records at Elvington including the flying start quarter mile, flying start kilometer and flying start mile, plus he broke a UKTA British record and set a new personal best top speed of 229.8mph.
Eisenberg continued “Pendine Sands has such an illustrious history of land speed racing, it’s always a privilege to race in the footsteps of land speed legends in the hope of securing records”.
Pendine is considered the holy grail of land speed, where the best racers in the world have tried to set records. The beach has hosted record-breaking attempts since 1900s. The firm, flat surface of the beach created a race track that was straighter and smoother than many major roads of the time. Motor Cycle magazine described the sands as "the finest natural speedway imaginable".
The first person to use Pendine Sands for a world land speed record attempt was Malcolm Campbell. On 25 September 1924 he set a world land speed record of 146.16 mph (235.22 km/h) on Pendine Sands in his Sunbeam 350HP car ‘Blue Bird’.
Each year throngs of racers and spectators continue to swarm to the beach in the hope of record breaking, and the speeds have been creeping up each year.
