When it comes to drag racing, Jay Turner doesn’t play. Never has. In fact, he had nitromethane in his motorcycle’s fuel tank in his first race back in 1989.

He stepped up to a full dose of the explosive fuel about 25 years ago and has won, by his count, six championships. The last of those came in 2017 when he took the NHRA crown. He’s also the owner of the championship-winning Harley ridden by Tii Tharpe the past two seasons.

And at age 53, Turner is far from finished. He has developed his own chassis, and if all goes well, the plan is for “Maddy Too” to make its debut in late November in a Man Cup race at Valdosta, Georgia, with Tharpe in the saddle.

“I still enjoy riding. The challenge for me is not in the riding, it’s making the bike go faster,” said Turner, who finished fifth in this year’s NHRA Mickey Thompson Tires Top Fuel Harley-Davidson points standings. “I hope I’ll know when the time comes to quit riding. I think I’m still riding as good as I have in the past. I’m sure that somebody around me will let me know if I’m not doing my job.”

Turner’s decision to pursue motorcycle racing was a budgetary one, he said. He wanted to race in a heads-up class, and the price tag to field a Pro Stock or Funny Car entry was “way over my head.” In addition, he had always harbored a special admiration for Top Fuel Harley riders such as Jim McClure and Elmer Trett, and that made his decision to race on two wheels instead of four easier.

He’s established himself as one of the go-to people for folks who want to race in the Top Fuel Harley ranks. In addition to Tharpe and himself, Turner fields bikes for Randal Andras and others. At most, Turner’s had six bikes in an eliminator field, and he won the NHRA Houston event early in 2019.

Jay Turner Racing is housed in Liberty, North Carolina, 15 miles from Turner’s home in Julian. The facility was built to house the Roush Racing NASCAR Cup team, where cars were rolled out for drivers such as Mark Martin, Jeff Burton, Ted Musgrave, Wally Dallenbach Jr., and others. Roush’s team, now Roush Fenway Racing, long ago moved to a sprawling facility adjacent to Concord (N.C.) Regional Airport and Turner moved into a portion of the vacant Liberty shop.

One of the bikes there belongs to Andras, an Amelia, Louisiana, racer who once loaned the two-wheeler to Turner at the Texas Motorplex.

“I brought it home, and it hasn’t been back to Louisiana except to race,” Turner said. “It’s worked for both of us because we’re still together. Mike Scott won an IHRA championship (2014) with it. Tii’s won with it. Randal’s won a couple of AMRA championships, so we all shared in its success.”

JTR’s biggest success with a rider other than its proprietor has come in the past three seasons with Tharpe. The rider from Pfafftown, North Carolina, and president of SPEVCO finished third in the NHRA chase in his first season, then rallied to win the 2018 title by seven points over Doug Vancil after he and Turner missed the season opener due to trailer issues. Tharpe repeated as champion with a second-round victory at the Harleys’ season finale at the U.S. Nationals.

It’s a pairing neither Turner nor Tharpe could have envisioned over a decade ago. They don’t mince words when talking about their past.

Turner: “Originally I didn’t like him and he didn’t like me. I thought he was a smart-ass punk and he thought I was just a regular ol’ (expletive).”

Tharpe: “We butted heads early on. He thought I was a privileged little (expletive), I thought he was kind of a (expletive).”

When told of Turner’s description, Tharpe let go a hearty laugh and said, “They’re probably both still accurate, just watered down a little bit.”

Over time, the racers aged and grew more tolerant of each other. When Tharpe wanted to return to Top Fuel Harley racing full-time after a couple of career interruptions and part-time efforts, he decided there was only one great option. SPEVCO sponsorship made racing more affordable for Turner, too.

“People change,” Turner said. “Now we’re more like family than teammates or customers. He’s been a pleasure to work with.”

The 2019 season began with Tharpe falling to Vancil in the final round at Pomona, Calif., and Vancil padded his lead with a runner-up showing in the next event near Phoenix. The latter race was the first of three straight in which Tharpe was ousted in the first round. But Vancil couldn’t capitalize, losing in the opening set in consecutive races at Gainesville, Houston, Topeka and Bristol.

It was at Topeka that Tharpe got his first win of the season, and he followed that victory with others in the next two events, Bristol and Epping. Vancil rebounded to win Seattle as Tharpe lost in the first round, and he beat Tharpe in the finals at Brainerd.

At Indianapolis’ season finale, Tharpe’s second-round conquest of Rickey House clinched the championship. He reached the final round, but fell to Andras in the duel for the Wally trophy.

 

 

 

 

Tharpe says Turner deserves the bulk of the credit for his back-to-back titles.

“That’s all Jay, I’ve just been along for the ride,” he said.

“I knew that coming back, getting a little older and a little smarter, that Jay still had the program. We’ve probably got the same values. If I wanted to go fast and spend money wisely, I had to be with Jay Turner. He’s committed his life to this and has always been a great representative for us.”

Turner, in turn, shares the credit with “a great core group” that includes Rex Harris, Jeremy Hoy and a handful of others.

“We’ve been racing together so long,” Turner said, “We don’t have the same group of people every weekend, but everybody knows everybody. We’ve got three bikes that are pretty much identical so we can share information if something doesn’t work. If one bike does something weird that the others don’t, we can look at it. It’s not just one thing. It’s well-prepared bikes that are well-prepared and well-ridden. Continuity is a big deal.”

The bottom line, Turner said, “is you’ve got to turn the throttle wide open and you’ve got to hold it open for 6.5 seconds. You’ve got to figure out how to do that.”

In truth, Turner hopes to lower that number drastically with his in-house creation. And, no, there won’t be a version of “Maddy Too” available to racers not affiliated with the Turner team. That is, he’s not getting into the chassis-building business full-time.

“I don’t have the time to keep everything going and stock up to build chassis, too,” Turner said. “I don’t see us going into production like that.”

Next race up on Turner’s schedule is AMRA’s Harley Nitro World Finals is Oct. 12-13 at Rockingham, North Carolina, followed by Man Cup events at Rockingham on Oct. 25-27 and at Valdosta in late November.

Tharpe, for one, can hardly contain his excitement for the Georgia event and the prospect of showing the world the potential of “Maddy Too.”

“Jay’s learned a whole lot of things over the last couple of years -- blowers, chassis, just where things go and what to do with them -- and I’m anticipating it being a really nice ride that will allow you to focus on going real fast,” Tharpe said. “I think it’s going to be tuned up so well that we’re expecting really good things out of it.

“The chassis is different. Jay’s taken the best from other chassis builders -- Dixie, Weekend, American Cycle -- taking what he believes are the best pieces and putting them all into this bike. Nothing’s going to be way too new, but just a better, more refined product.”

Kind of like Turner himself when you think about it.

 

 

 

 

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