 Sarah
Jane Head
Personal Profile
Historic Background
‘Scary’ Jane Head now 37, started racing several
years ago with the highly competitive
Streetfighters Straightliners Drag Racing Team
making a name for herself by racing a Suzuki GSX
1100E road bike. In only her second year Jane
came 2nd in the Streetfighters Straightliners
Championship. Jane then moved to the ‘Top Bike’
class on a Suzuki GSX 1325, which was an awesome
machine running regular sub 10 second runs at
over 150mph.
Next came a full race
specification Suzuki GSX 1260 Ray Jay Turbo
competition machine. This took Jane to a run of
8.3sec at 157mph and still with a nitrous oxide
kit to fit. This allowed Jane to compete in last
years FIM/UEM Top Fuel class, which was
televised on Sky TV. She also appeared on
satellite TV as part of Dangerous Driving on UK
Horizon as well as appearing in the Speedfreaks
video series successfully beating the highly
ranked Top Fuel class UK male Ian King .
Current Activities
This is all in the past now as Jane and her
fiancé, Dave Varey a top technician of many
years who skillfully and lovingly prepares all
her machines, have now invested heavily in a
world-class machine from the USA. The bike is a
Suzuki 1500cc Pro Mod class machine named The
Budster originally built by the well known and
successful Murdock Racing Enterprise company in
Florida, USA. They have been in the process of
testing the machine at various UK drag racing
events to great success and are pleased with the
early results.
“The fastest run to date being
7.085 secs at 184.03mph meaning she’s now the
world’s second quickest woman behind NHRA Pro
Stock bike champion Angelle Savoie and her
7.049”. (Streetfighters, Feb 2003)
As there is no Pro Mod series in
the UK National Series they currently compete in
the highest class available, the ‘Funny Bike’
class, in order to obtain valuable track
development time. Jane is the first British
woman to compete in this class. The machine is
digitally set up by lap-top computer and
presently has only been running at 30% power to
avoid any expensive mechanical failures but is
still allowing Jane to challenge her male
rivals. A good test for the machine happened in
September when the European Championship Series
came to the UK. It took place at Santa Pod Drag
Racing Strip in Northamptonshire, UK and allowed
Jane to test her talent and the bike against
Europe’s finest machines. The opportunity
allowed valuable experience and performance data
to be obtained as well as being able to place
the machine and rider under race conditions. By
the following National meeting at Santa Pod the
team felt they had enough data to really start
to push the machine to explore it’s
capabilities. Jane did not disappoint and ran
the fastest time to date of any woman on two
wheels in Europe. 7.085 secs at 184.03mph as can
be seen in the official timing ticket on page 7.
This gave great encouragement to the team that
Jane and the team could realistically achieve
their next goal.
Future Ambitions
Their next goal is to compete in the European
championship in 2004 with ambitions to breaking
the woman’s drag racing world record. The
machine is very capable of achieving this as it
has already run the time required in the USA
albeit with a male on board. The rider believes
she is capable of it having become within 0.036
secs of it with plenty of power in reserve still
to be obtained from the machine. This
demonstrates how realistic these ambitions
really are. If enough backing and support can be
raised from sponsors then competing in the
championship series in the USA is another
ambition and would undoubtedly be a lucrative
option as there are large financial gains in
prize money if one is successful.
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