Tracked Land Speed Record:
In 2010, the Russian Army introduced the ‘Tank Biathlon’ series of Military Games in which, similar to the winter sport of biathlon, tank crews compete to demonstrate their rough terrain driving skills combined with the ability to provide accurate and rapid fire while performing manoeuvres. These games proved to be a great success and increasingly took on an international flavour as more countries sent their crews and MBTs to participate.
Of course ownership of armoured vehicles is not the sole domain of the world’s militaries and it didn’t take long for the private sector to show an interest in what the Russians were doing. Having said that, for very good reasons there are laws in most civilised counties preventing civilians from owning large calibre artillery pieces and/or the ammunition for said artillery pieces and, consequently, any civilian take on the tank biathlons would have to have a somewhat different flavour.
So it was that the sport of tank racing was born. The early days, saw a series of meets where gentlemen with more money than was probably good for them came together with their ex-military service vehicle to compete in a variety of cross-country time trials where they could show off their prowess in command of their respective armoured toys.
It didn’t take long for the media to take an interest and for sponsors to realise that there was money to be made from this new and novel sport. As the public interest and financial rewards of the new sport spiralled, the imperative to quickly tie down an effective set of rules and regulations quickly resulted in two very distinct avenues of development: Tank Rallying and Tank Drag Racing. In order to maintain an element of competition, a number of sub categories were introduced to both racing styles specifying, amongst a myriad of technical minutia, all up weight and engine type.
With the desire to increase the performance of their armoured steeds, it wasn’t long before teams starting making alterations to their vehicles in order to improve performance/handling/speed whilst staying inside the constraints of the sport’s regulations. Generally, the first thing to go was the redundant main gun which, if not welded or clamped in place, only served to put unwanted sheer-pressures onto the turret. Not entirely surprisingly, the entire turret was next to go as teams endeavoured to reduce the weight category of their vehicle whilst keeping the original power train.
These and a number of more subtle developments led to some very sleek and surprisingly fast armoured vehicles. However, it was the appearance of Team Claymore’s cut down Challenger 1 in 2017 that entirely revolutionised the sport. What they had done was to take a standard Challenger 1, remove its turret and then remove the portion of the hull that the turret sat on. This process also reduced its number of road wheels per side from 6 to 4. The end result was a reduction in the vehicle’s original 62 tonne to 30 tonnes. At the same time, the vehicle’s 26 litre, 1,200hp, Perkins CV-12 Condor engine was upgraded and race tuned to output 1,500hp. In other words, the vehicle’s power to weight ratio was boosted from 19.4 hp/tonne to 50 hp/tonne.
When entered into the 30-tonne class of both the Rally and Drag Races, Team Claymore’s vehicles (01 and 02) were the run-away winners and set a new tank land-speed record of 80.2 mph (128.3 Km/h).
The model depicts Team Claymore’s vehicle ‘02’ which won the European Tank Rally Championship in record time and then which went on to set a new World Tracked Speed Record in its class. It is made from parts from two different Tamiya Challenger 1 models, some pieces from a Takom Chieftain Mk 11, plastic card and a selection of home grown decals.