Member Inducted 2012
Tony Murray
History
The name Tony Murray crops up regularly in the history of drag
racing in the North of England. Starting with the development of
the Crosland Moor drag strip in the mid-1970s he remained a leading
PDRC organiser until his untimely death in 1992. Whether it was
digging holes for Armco barriers or acting as Clerk of the Course,
Tony Murray was a true club man. Without his passion the
establishment of a viable drag strip in the North might not have
been achieved and it is for this that he has been inducted into the
British Drag Racing Hall of Fame.
It was early in 1974 that the newly formed Pennine Drag Racing
Club (PDRC) led by Steve Murty, embarked on work to re-configure a
moor-top airfield near Huddersfield, Yorkshire, into the North's
first drag strip. As well as adding suitable barriers along the
spectator areas of the quarter mile tarmac runway, there were large
areas of grass and rubble to be cleared and levelled to provide pit
and parking areas. A daunting amount of hard work was required to
prepare for the eighth mile racing scheduled for early July that
year.
Tony Murray had been involved in various forms of traditional
British motor sport, both organising and officiating at club level.
Being from the area, he was enthused by the club's aspirations to
help bring the new exciting sport of drag racing to Crosland Moor.
He had become disenchanted with the established local motor clubs,
whose outlook he viewed as too traditional. From the initial
organised work party dates, he became the first worker on site in
the morning and the last to leave at night; this from a man
maintaining an engineering job by day. He took on the role of
unofficial foreman for the work parties, and turned his hand to
pick and shovel, as well as mechanised machinery and demonstrated
the hard 'graft' needed for PDRC to succeed in bringing drag racing
to the North.
And it was only a short time before he took on the chairmanship
of the club, taking on the important duty of writing official club
rules to enable PDRC to gain permits from the RAC MSA to hold
events at the track. He became the first Clerk of the Course at
Crosland Moor. Sadly, history reveals how the Crosland Moor
adventure was short lived. However Tony applied his dedication to
help make events at Aintree, Liverpool, take place at this
temporary venue, ensuring the momentum was not lost for the club.
Again he became Clerk of the Course.
In 1977 Melbourne in East Yorkshire was the new venue sought out
and acquired by Steve Murty to promote quarter mile drag racing in
the North, and one of the first people on site with shovel in hand
was Tony. Work and home life took a back seat for a month while the
'grafter' organised work parties, and supervised tasks to turn
another, this time much larger, airfield into a workable permanent
drag racing venue. Tony and the other volunteers became adept with
mechanical hole borers to erect barriers, and working weekends and
evenings saw the venue useable for the inaugural meeting in June
that year.
Undeniably a cornerstone of Northern drag racing, Tony led from
the front by example. He maintained his indomitable Clerk of the
Course work at Melbourne, and became one of the most skilled drag
race officials in the sport. Racers knew they were unlikely to get
away with bending the rules and there weren't many came out on top
in discussing their indiscretions with Tony.
Another passion held by Tony was trucks and truck racing. It was
through Tony's journalistic contributions to national and American
trucking magazines that the link was established between the
British Truck Racing Association and PDRC, enabling Melbourne to
feature the cream of the International and British truck racers
competing on the track during the height of the Truck Grand Prix
series' popularity on television. The spectacle of thirty racing
trucks parading down the track at Melbourne, orchestrated by Tony
was a sight unique to British Drag Racing and proved immensely
popular with fans and organisers alike.
Graham Beckwith