William Welch
My name is William Welch I am 58 years old and been involved in drag racing since 1970 with my brother Richard. I got hooked after seeing the FED Yellow Fang race in 1965. In the 70’s and 80’s Richard and I raced cars until family commitments took over and I moved to Queensland. Richard started racing again in the 90’s with a Kawasaki drag bike. At the end of the 90’s the drag strip in Sydney closed so Richard ask me if I would be interested in racing his bike in Queensland, so in 2000 I got back into drag racing. I raced his bike until the new Sydney track was built (Western Sydney International Drag way) less than 5 minutes from Richard’s house. I moved back to New South Wales in 2004 and started building a Suzuki GSX1100 to race. Richard’s eldest son Ron purchased a drag bike and started racing, this is when we formed Welch Family Racing running 3 bikes. Richards’s youngest son Matthew decided to give it ago. Ron and Matthew started racing dirt bikes at the age of 6 and were very successful. Matthew started racing Richard’s bike until I modified Ron’s road bike a Yamaha R600 for the strip. At this stage we had 4 bikes racing. Ron sold his Kawasaki to Paul Soboleski a friend of ours who was part of our crew. Ron bought a Harley and started racing that in a category called Screaming Eagles dedicated to Harley owners. At this point we changed the team name to WS Drag racing. Matthew started racing my bike in 2007 with some good results, finishing in the top 5 of the track champion ship. Matthew purchased a big tire roller which I put my 1298 motor into it. It has taken a couple of years to get the best from this combination but we are starting to get good results with it. The last meeting of the 2010 season had us top qualifier and went on to win the meeting. We have run a best of 9.18 @ 145mph from the small combo. My plan for the the motor is bigger valves and cams and try and run a high 8. At the end of 2011 season I would like to go to a 1428 so we can run comp bike with the help of APE. We would display your decals on all of our race bikes and transport vehicles, APE would be displayed on our team uniform. We would display your banner on our marquee and Team APE would be broadcast to the spectators as our sponsor when the team fronts up to start line to race. If you need any further information or photos please do not hesitate to contact me. Look forward to hearing from you.
Merry Christmas.
Bill Welch,
WS Drag Racing 