SIDEBURN MAGAZINE AND GRANT MARTIN TO FIELD HARLEY-DAVIDSON® STREET ROD® IN EUROPEAN DIRT TRACK ASSOCIATION HOOLIGAN CHAMPIONSHIP ASSAULT

Sideburn magazine, the flat track specialist publication, has today announced it is joining forces with Grant Martin and UK dealership Maidstone Harley-Davidson to contest the 2018 DTRA European Hooligan Championship.

Grant will be racing a modified Harley-Davidson^® Street Rod^® 750 in the five-round series. The 30-year-old professional tattoo artist from Maidstone, Kent, joined the DTRA in 2017 and caught the flat track bug. He won his hooligan debut race meeting, beating an international field.

Having got my feet wet last year, racing only the final round of the DTRA Hooligan championship, I’m super-excited to get cracking with this year’s series,’ says Grant. ‘It’s going to be great fun racing with some fast dudes and I want to win. I think the Harley-Davidson Street Rod 750 has a really great shot at the title.’

Grant’s Harley-Davidson Street Rod 750 has been modified by Maidstone Harley-Davidson to suit the short dirt track it will compete on. The main modifications are a side-mounted fuel tank; 19in rims laced to stock hubs and fitted with dirt track tyres; chain drive conversion; longer, adjustable Öhlins shocks; Öhlins cartridge kit in Street Rod forks; S&S air cleaner; flat track bars; custom-made alloy seat unit and stainless exhaust system, both made by T&S Engineering. The Harley-Davidson Street Rod’s liquid-cooled 750 engine, frame, swingarm and rear brake have been left standard.

‘We decided to partner with Grant for his 2018 Hooligan championship after he helped create a fanzine project last year and we became friends,’ explains Sideburn’s editor, Gary Inman. ‘I’d admired his riding and the way he went about things. He looks like he was born on two wheels. This is only the second year of Hooligan racing in the UK and already the level of competition has gone through the roof. Grant offers the perfect mix of laid-back attitude, pure skill and his own unique style on and off the bike.’

2018 DTRA HOOLIGAN SCHEDULE

The 2018 DTRA Hooligan championship will be fought over five rounds at four tracks: three in the UK and one in the Netherlands. The Hooligans will be a major draw at May’s MCN Festival at the East of England Showground, Peterborough, and the season finale will take place at DirtQuake in August.

Round 1, 7th April
Adrian Flux Arena, King’s Lynn

Round 2, 6th May
Speedway Lelystad, The Netherlands

Rounds 3 & 4, 19/20th May
Peterborough Showground

Round 5, 18th August
DirtQuake, Arena Essex

More About Hooligan Racing

Hooligan flat track is the sport returning to its roots. The bikes that compete are built and raced with the same spirit the pioneers had in 1930s America. This is a class for modified road bikes, just like the Class C bikes that established flat track as the original extreme sport in the 1920s and ’30s.

To be eligible as a Hooligan, the bike must have a standard road frame and an engine of at least 750cc from the same bike. Front brakes are removed and 19in specialist dirt track tyres are fitted. Hooligan racing is helping fuel a resurgence in amateur flat track in the USA where Harley-Davidson Sportsters and XG750 Streets and Street Rods form the bedrock of the sport.

More about the DTRA Championship

Formed in 2013, the Dirt Track Riders Association is an amateur race organisation that runs the UK’s national race series. The club has grown every year and is run on a not-for-profit basis, all sponsorship and entry fees going towards the running of the club. Find out more at www.dirttrackriders.co.uk