NHRA - National Hot Rod Association

Larry McBride has been the face of Top Fuel Motorcycle racing for more than a quarter century, so it seemed very fitting that he would win the inaugural championship of the Pingel NHRA Top Fuel Motorcycle Series. 

The 66-year-old Virginia native, who has been riding nitro-fueled bikes since the 1980s and earned his unforgettable nickname “Spiderman” for the way he deftly maneuvers his body around a 268-mph screaming two-wheeler to keep it pointed straight, dominated the four-race season with three victories and was the low qualifier and low e.t. and top speed setter at all four races aboard his custom-made Pingel/Trim-Tex entry, which is tuned by his brother, Steve. 

Fans with long memories can remember supercharged Top Fuel Motorcycles (not to be confused with the more recent unblown Top Fuel Harley class) competing for NHRA national event wins on a limited basis in the early 1980s, and McBride was the winner of one of those eight events, in Atlanta in 1983. 

After NHRA shelved the class, riders like McBride and the late, great Elmer Trett continued to wow crowds at NMRA, AMA ProStar, DragBike, IHRA, and Man Cup events, as well as at match races and the occasional NHRA national event exhibition. It was at one of those exhibitions, at the NHRA event in Houston in 1999, where McBride made the class’ first five-second run, a feat so memorable that the editors of NHRA National Dragster named it Run of the Year, an award usually only bestowed upon cars in the traditional classes. 

Today’s Top Fuel Motorcycles are intriguing and scary-looking machines. Measuring 18 feet, 2 inches from front tire to wheelie bar, the power for a 260-mph run comes from a 1,500cc inline four-cylinder powerplant modeled after the Suzuki GS 1150. A screw-type supercharger helps mix the 93% dose of nitro, and power is funneled through a Top Fuel-like (but smaller) three-disc clutch to a B&J two-speed transmission. The bikes launch hard and usually carry the front tire almost to the finish line, so steering is done through weight shifting by the rider. 

“If you push on the right foot peg, it’ll go left, and the same thing the other way,” McBride explained. “You’ve got to be thinking and reacting on instinct and seat-of-the-pants before it actually happens because if you wait until it makes the move, you’re done. Lately, we’re trying to copy what the Top Fuel car guys do in using our wheelie bars as a bump stop and get the front end back down because if you’re going up, you’re not going forward. 

“Even after all these years of riding them, I still have that nervous stomach. I compare it to skydiving, because you get out on that wing to jump, and you’re saying, ‘I’m getting ready to jump out of a perfectly good airplane,’ and you feel like you’re gonna get sick. I have that same feeling every time I ride. I think if you ever get rid of that feeling, you need to quit. It’s all about respect for the motorcycle, and I think that when you lose that respect, you need to quit.” 

McBride, who has ridden through burns, broken bones, and knee surgeries that come with the business, has won a combined 21 championships, so it’s little surprise that he dominated this season when the series finally was blessed after three years of work.  

“Ned Walliser and I had literally been working on this since 2020,” he recalled. “Then the pandemic got us all, and we talked again in 2021, and I made exhibition runs at the Virginia event in 2022 [where he made the fastest pass in class history at 268 mph] and ’23, and then that’s when we finally got finalized to start a class for 2024 with the help of Pingel. It’s full circle because I remember it was Ned who first congratulated me after the 5.99 run in Houston.” 

Once the 2024 season got started, it didn’t take long for McBride to flex his muscles. His No. 1 qualifying effort of 4.81 at the season-opening Gerber Collision & Glass Route 66 NHRA Nationals presented by Peak Performance was low e.t. of the year, but he didn’t win the event, falling to Elmeri Salakari in round one. 

“We tried something different with the gearing in Chicago because it was 1,000-foot racing, and we’re used to quarter-mile, and we wanted to try to keep the rpm the same, but we couldn’t get it off the starting line,” he said. “There was a lot of tire smoking going on in all the classes at that race, and we created our own problem because it was just making so much more power. 

“I’d be lying if I said there weren’t some sad faces on the ride back home because the whole season is only four races, and we wasted one. Fortunately for us, the next race was in Richmond, which is our home track, and we’ve made a lot of runs there. It was super hot, but we ran consistent 4.90s and got the job done.” 

The team won again in Brainerd with a barrage of 4.80s and handily defeated second-place Mitch Brown in both of those finals. McBride and team had a clear-cut performance edge on everyone else in the class throughout the season, so the job was not to shoot themselves in the foot. 

“We were just trying to leave with everybody,” he explained. “We weren’t trying to push the Tree, just trying to maintain our runs. That’s what we wanted to do, and in Brainerd, all of our runs were 4.80s, basically the same thing we were trying to do in Richmond, which was all 4.90s.” 

McBride came into the season finale in Charlotte just needing to reach the final round, but with a lot of caution. 

“When we went to Charlotte for the last race, the weather was a lot better weather, and we just tried to run back into the 4.80s again and just try to maintain it and stay consistent, and if we didn’t make any mistakes, we should be OK,” he said. “You’re just thinking, ‘Oh God, I hope nothing goes wrong. I hope nothing breaks on the bike.’ ” 

With a short field, all he needed to do was beat Michael Fenwick in round one, then take a bye to the final to lock up the title. 

“So, you’re thinking of all the things that can go wrong, and I’m about to throw up because I’ve done screwed up once, in Chicago, and I didn’t want to screw up again and do something dumb,” he said. 

Nothing went wrong as McBride handily defeated Fenwick and managed to keep it between the lines on his bye run to seal the championship. The final was a little anticlimactic as Brown was unable to start his bike, and McBride zoomed to his third win in four races. 

“Charlotte’s not that far from Virginia, so we had a lot of family and friends there, which was great,” he said. “I’m looking forward to next year. Mitch was such a great competitor, and I think you’re going to see him do better next year because he’s building some new parts, and we’re all looking to continue building the series, attracting new riders in the United States and from Europe.” 

McBride offered his thanks to his crew – brother Steve, Roland and Chuck Stuart, and Braylon Rooker – and his family – wife Kathie, daughters Christine and Natalie, and grandkids Emma Ward and Jax Martin – and, of course, his many sponsors, including Pingel Enterprises, Trim-Tex, Drag Specialties, Final Swipe, APE, PR Factory Store, Mickey Thompson Tires, Beringer Brakes, and Bill Miller Engineering.