About This Series
This article is part of an ongoing monthly series on Dragbike.com featuring select chapters from Elmer Trett and the Gods of Thunder, the 2012 biography by Senior Editor Tom McCarthy. Released throughout 2026 to honor the 30th anniversary of Elmer Trett’s passing, this series chronicles the life, legacy, and impact of one of the most influential figures in motorcycle drag racing history. Each chapter explores Trett’s journey from humble beginnings to global Top Fuel dominance, while also preserving the deeper history of the sport and the pioneers who shaped it. New chapters are published monthly exclusively on Dragbike.com.

Before reading this article, read the previous article posts:

• Series Intro
• Book Intro
• Chapter 1 – Humble Beginnings
• Chapter 2 – The Origins of Mountain Magic
• Chapter 3 – The Teen Years
• Chapter 4 – North to Ohio
• Chapter 5 – Fuelish Intentions
• Chapter 6 – Class Dismissed
• Chapter 7 – Fateful Liasons
• Chapter 8 – A Terminal Lesson
• Chapter 9 – Single Solution
• Chapter 10 – Very Unpopular Decisions
• Chapter 11 – It’s Not What You Have in Life that Matters
• Chapter 12 – Historical Developments

Chapter 15 – The Big One that Got Away

Exactly one decade into Elmer’s career in Top Fuel motorcycle drag racing, in 1986, Trett was on the cusp of, once again, breaking a monumental barrier for his class: the six-second elapsed time zone.  Before the ’86 racing season, no Top Fuel motorcycle racer had ever laid down a pass in quarter-mile sanctioned drag racing competition that was sub-seven seconds.  Elmer was the first to break the 200 mph barrier, and it was no secret he wanted to be the first into the sixes.

Elmer’s quest to be the first into the sixes was not in and of itself a self-serving venture.  The very class he raced in mattered a lot to him, and he was always out to improve the Top Fuel motorcycle class.  To that end and beyond, Elmer knew that once the T/F bikes started running in the sixes, this would attract more fans and increase media coverage of the sport.  In return, more racers would be inclined to step up to his class of Top Fuel.

That his fellow T/F bikes had been flirting with the six-second barrier for years was a matter of record.  Bo O’Brachta became “Seven-Oh Bo” in 1980.  In 1984, Sam Wills ran a 7.05 elapsed time at Indy.  The bikes were getting closer every year.  There was no question that the six-second barrier would be broken once and for all for the class; it was just a matter of filling in the blanks as to whom and when the deed would be done.

Elmer had a dream for his class of Top Fuel, a dream he seldom talked about, a dream that echoed back to his earliest years of racing in his class; he wanted to see his class big and strong again like it was when he entered it.  Back in 1976 when Elmer entered T/F bike, there was a great diversity of machines competing to win.  A spectator or racer could expect to see a single-engine bike or a double-engine monster.  Some were powered by Harley-Davidson motors, others by British or Japanese engines; there was diversity within the class.  Along with the plethora of power plants, there were more entries in the class at every event, each with a chance to win.  In ’76, T/F bikes were a fast-growing class of competition.  In 1986, the class was exactly the opposite, a class of racing in steady decline.  Coincidentally, so was the sport.

At the conclusion of the 1984 racing season, the National Motorcycle Racing Association (NMRA) ended racing operations, leaving only the International Drag Bike Association (IDBA) and DRAGBIKE! to host national event motorcycle drag racing.  Motorcycle drag racing as a sport was dwindling in numbers.  Spectator attendance at motorcycle-only drag races was down, and drag bike entries at various national events were also dwindling.

The Top Fuel bike class was suffering largely because of the cost of building and competing.  In 1986 dollars, it cost approximately $50,000 to build a competitive machine and at least twice that number in expenses to compete for one season.  The money just was not there at the time for motorcycle competition.

Because of the dwindling numbers, the racing sanctions began to take action.  Tony Lee, who ran the IDBA sanction, decided to drop the Top Fuel class during the 1986 season.  Starting with their 1987 rulebook, the class was no longer listed in their pages for the first time since the sanction began hosting races in 1976.

Tom Loughlin Jr., who ran the DRAGBIKE! sanction, took a different approach to the problem in 1985; he took the issue to the racers. Loughlin saw the declining number of Top Fuel bike entrants at his hosted events, and he called a meeting of the class at the end of qualifying on November 16, 1985, at the Gainesville race.

Loughlin rallied all the Top Fuel entrants together with a handful of Funny Bike class racers for an open discussion on how to improve the T/F class.  Loughlin proposed this question to all the racers present, “Gentlemen, how do you feel about letting selected Funny Bike racers step up to racing in Top Fuel?  Some of our bikes in F/B are starting to run numbers that would be competitive in the class, so what do you think? This would give you more entrants, and at times, a full field of bikes.”

The rulebook guidelines for the two classes were quite different, hence the separation of the classes since the inception of racing, but due to technological advances, some Funny Bike racers were starting to run as quickly as the Top Fuel bikes.  Loughlin’s head and his heart were in the right place with his intentions on attempting to bolster the T/F class.

One of the veteran Top Fuel racers spoke first.  “Let’s face it, the Funny Bikes are turbocharged, injected alcohol bikes.  They’re not nitromethane powered; they’re not Top Fuel bikes. I, for one, am opposed.”

One of the Funny Bike racers responded quickly, “That’s not the problem, is it?  The real problem is you’re afraid you’re going to get beat by a hair dryer, isn’t that right?  And you’re right, you are gonna get beaten by turbo bike!  Are you afraid of competition?”

Some racers often look down on turbocharged motorcycles because the turbocharger looks and sounds like a hair dryer on steroids during operation.  The derogatory slur by the Funny Bike racer at his own class cut right to the heart of the matter: Top Fuel is the premier class in drag racing.  ” Go big or go home” is the law of the land.  A turbocharger is not a belt-driven supercharging device like the ones used on true Top Fuel cars, and “no self-respecting Top Fuel bike pilot would put one on a Top Fuel bike” was the mentality of the Top Fuel bike class core of racers.  But, something had to give.  The class was dying.

The elder statesman of the class spoke up now for the first time after he let the other racers have their say.  “Wait a minute, let’s talk about this,” commented Elmer.  “Some of the turbo boys are starting to run some pretty good numbers.  They’re creeping up in the miles per hour, and some of them can run as quick as we do.  I say let them run with us.  Don’t worry about the turbo boys; they’ll never get those bikes to leave as quick as we do.”

And with those words, Elmer gave the green light for Funny Bikes to start competing in T/F in the DRAGBIKE sanction.  Little did he know he’d just become his own assassin, and in doing so, Elmer would be responsible for the direction of Top Fuel bike history.

Present at this meeting, with arms folded and determination on their faces, were the team for the BML Funny Bike: Brunson, Miller, and Lundquist.  Collectively, the team members wore broad grins at the conclusion of this meeting; they wanted to clash swords with the Top Fuel bikes.  They knew they could beat them.  They wanted this fight.  Now it was game on.  The 1986 season would be one for the record books, and indeed it was.

Beginning in ’86, several Funny Bikes started entering Top Fuel events.  From the start, the BML bike was the one to watch.  Brunson of Florida was the architect of the machine, Miller was the brash, unafraid pilot, and Ludquist served as a crew member, doing whatever needed to be done.

Miller rose through the ranks of motorcycle drag racing, starting in 1980 as a sportsman racer, but turned professional just a few years later. Brunson loved fast motorcycles, and he saw turbochargers as the way to go.  When Brunson and Miller teamed up, they had every intention of going all the way to the top.

Once the DRAGBIKE! sanction gave the green light for the F/B racers to start competing in Top Fuel, Brunson started adding nitromethane to the fuel mixture that powered their turbocharged Kawasaki Funny Bike.  Traditionally, turbo Funny Bikes run 100% straight methanol racing fuel out of the drum.  The alcohol actually helps cool the motor, and under extreme compression, an alcohol fed motor makes a lot of power.  However, adding nitromethane to the mix caused problems, as Brunson expected.  “We really started to tear up parts.”

Throughout the ’86 season, Brunson continued experimenting with adding either 5% or 10% nitromethane to their tune-up.  There were numerous failures, thousands of dollars in broken parts, but Brunson could see the potential, so he stuck with it.  Brunson wanted very badly, as did Miller, to make Elmer eat his words.  “Don’t worry about the turbo boys, they’ll never get those bikes to leave as quick as we do.”

There was never any animosity between Brunson and Elmer; in fact, they had a great amount of respect for one another.  They were adversaries on the racetrack, but off track they had a lot in common: a love of ultra-fast motorcycles, clean, beautiful machines, and the thrill of competition.  Over the years that followed the 1986 season, the Tretts and Brunson became very close family friends.  However, in 1986, it was total war at the races.  It all came to a head in September at an IHRA fall Funny Car race held in Bristol, Tennessee.

The International Hot Rod Association, or IHRA as it is known, is one of two premier car drag-racing sanctioning bodies that occasionally invites motorcycles to some of its big events to spice things up for fans.  For their season-ending 1986 race, held in Bristol, Tennessee, on September 19-21, billed as the WCYB-TV Fall Nationals, the IHRA invited Tom Loughlin’s DRAGBIKE! sanctioned to contest the Top Fuel motorcycle class during their big event.  Loughlin put the word out, and 16 Top Fuel bikes entered the class that weekend.

Elmer and the BML bike were within a few points of each other in the championship points race going into the event, and the Brunson, Miller, Lundquist bike was running faster in every race.  They wanted Elmer to know that a Funny Bike, well-tuned, could keep pace with him.  Before the Bristol event, Brunson made additional changes to the bike that he believed would make the performance difference he needed to catch Elmer.  He was right.

In the weeks preceding the mid-September race, Brunson called for the bike’s rear swingarm to be lengthened by three inches.  More importantly, he also had a new set of wheelie bars made for the bike, almost the same length as the motorcycle’s wheelbase.  When the bike was fully assembled, it was close to fourteen feet long.  Brunson quipped to a race reporter once in an interview, “The other racers, at the time, had never observed wheelie bars so long before this race.  Some of them were laughing and making jokes about our new setup.  The laughter stopped when we started qualifying.”

It was during qualifying that the Brunson, Miller, Lundquist team made history.  Elmer had a ringside seat as he was in the next pair of bikes to fire up after Mark Miller made his final qualifying run of the event.  Elmer was right behind the BML bike when Miller made his historic pass of 6.989 seconds at 186.33 mph: Miller broke the six-second barrier!

Cheers erupted from everywhere as nearly 10,000 fans in the stands screamed at the amazing numbers posted on the Bristol Dragway scoreboard.  Gina Trett, swept up in her emotions, ran over to Brunson and gave him a congratulatory hug for his team’s historic achievement.  She then hustled back to her Daddy’s Top Fuel bike as they were next down the race track.

Fred Brunson remembers, “Our bike had been giving us sixty-foot times of around 1.04 seconds, and I knew we needed to better that to go quicker if we were to beat the Top Fuel bikes.  So when I had the chassis lengthened and the wheelie bars as well, I intended to make the machine plant the rear tire harder so we could leave quicker.  I was right; we had a .899 sixty-foot time on that pass, the quickest the bike ever produced.”

Miller’s 6.989 was the low qualifying number for the race, with Elmer qualifying in the number two slot with a 7.34 elapsed time and an identical 186.33 mph pass.

In the first round of eliminations, Miller backed up his previous run with a 7.01 to defeat John Sands, and his numbers were good enough to set the 6.98 as a new World Record for Top Fuel bike with the DRAGBIKE! sanction.

As racing continued, Miller would eventually meet Elmer in the final round to decide who would be king that day.  Miller had a malfunction while staging the bike, and Elmer could have quickly staged and defeated Miller easily, but Elmer, being a true gentleman, gave the BML bike extra time to get their bike properly staged to run.  Then, Elmer stomped him.

Elmer took a hole-shot launch against Miller, then outran the BML bike by posting a 7.17 elapsed time for the win to Miller’s 7.27 pass.  Elmer had the motor set on kill, and it exploded at the finish line, sending parts well into the stands as he won the race.  Elmer later quipped, “I wanted some of the fans to have souvenirs to remember the race by.”

In the racing pits, between rounds, Elmer went over to the BML pit area to congratulate Brunson and his team.  He even bought a BML T-shirt for a family member.  Elmer was openly magnanimous about the great achievement Brunson’s team accomplished that day.  It was a day that never would have happened had Elmer not welcomed the Funny Bike racers into the class of Top Fuel.

Elmer, at times, cared more for the class of Top Fuel bike than he did for his own aspirations to be the greatest Top Fuel bike racer.  In so doing, he achieved both.  Elmer deeply wanted the Top Fuel bike class to flourish, and to that end, he embraced the additional competition from Brunson’s team.

The elation of the BML team could not be denied in the pits.  Every one of the sixteen Top Fuel bikes that entered the race came over to Miller and his teammates to congratulate them on their historic achievement.  They did lose the race to Elmer in the last round, but they would be forever remembered as the first Top Fuel bike officially into the sixes.

Feisty as was the nature of Mark Miller, he couldn’t resist tweaking Elmer on the nose one more time before the race weekend was over.  He remembered:

“After the race was over, at the end of the event, we were all waiting in the parking lot to drive our rigs out.  I was driving and got slightly ahead of Elmer’s rig as we were exiting the racer pit gates. Trett had to wait as we pulled out ahead of him.  During the pause, I rolled down the window and shouted out to him, “Hey Elmer, I’d rather be blown than injected.”  Trett gave me a one-fingered salute in response, and we all laughed.

But it was Elmer who got the real last laugh at the end of the season: Elmer defeated the BML bike by five points for the national championship in T/F, adding another #1 plate to his trophy case for the 1986 season.

Elmer was not able to lay claim to being the barrier breaker when Top Fuel bikes entered the six-second elapsed time zone in September of 1986.  While he was genuinely magnanimous to the BML team for their achievement, he never forgot how the big one got away from him, how he failed to be the first into the sixes.  Ten years later, when Top Fuel bike was on the verge of breaking into the five-second barrier, Elmer would remember this.  Elmer now set his sights on the fives; it would become his destiny.

The Next Installment of Elmer Trett and the Gods of Thunder will be released on August 15, 2026 on Dragbike.com

For those interested in owning a printed copy of the original book, please contact Tom McCarthy. Limited copies are available. E-mail Tom on Facebook

Copyright & Republishing Notice
Republishing of this content, in whole or in part, requires prior written authorization from Dragbike.com or Tom McCarthy, confirmed through a valid news service or via email with Dragbike.com copied on the correspondence. Unauthorized reproduction, redistribution, or use of this material will be considered infringement and may be pursued to the fullest extent permitted by law.