PENDINE sands, famed as a mecca for land speed record attempts, once again saw blistering speeds set at the weekend, including one run of 190mph.

Last weekend, September 22-23, MADMAX team rider Zef Eisenberg set the fastest half-mile sand record at the sands, racing his 350bhp super-charged Suzuki Hayabusa dubbed ‘The Green Monster’.

Despite the biblical rain, strong cross winds, soft sand and poor visibility on the Saturday, the daredevil rider also achieved best speed of the day, 142.423mph, at the Straightliners event.

Zef said: “There were big aspirations from the media, public and organisers for myself and fellow top speed racer Terry Smith to put in some big 200mph-plus speeds.

“However, the dreadful weather conditions meant that the organisers were only able to set up a half mile course on the Saturday. The weather had improved on Sunday enabling them to set up a mile course. Unfortunately for me though, my super charger had consumed some sand and was not creating boost and was only running at about 175hp and was only good for 166mph on the mile course.

“Terry’s excellent big bored 1600cc aspirated Suzuki Hayabusa 1587cc clenched the top spot of the day at 190.551mph over a mile”.

Zef added: “Pendine Sands has such an illustrious history of land speed racing, it’s a real test of man and machine against the elements. Racing on sand is notoriously difficult at the best of times, let alone when you have the weather to contend with. The motorbike behaves very differently than on tarmac and at higher speeds you risk bike losing grip or the wheels digging into the sand which can throws riders off. What’s more you also have the conditions of the course to contend with - when that tide rolls out it leaves behind debris of seaweed, giant jellyfish to even bullet shells. But if record breaking was that easy, everyone would be doing it.”

While no 200mph speeds records were possible from anyone this time, a win for Zef on day one and a win for Terry on day two, resulted in a draw. The sand record wars will continue at Pendine in May 2019.

Earlier this year Zef secured the outright sand record at Pendine hitting 201.572mph (324.3 km/h) at the Straightliners Top Speed event. At the time no-one in history, car or bike had ever exceeded 200mph at Pendine Sands.

Since then Zef has set numerous records, including 4 new records at Elvington earlier this month including the flying start quarter mile, flying start kilometre and flying start mile, plus he broke a UKTA British record and set a new personal best top speed of 229.8mph.

In September 2016 Zef survived Britain's fastest ever motorbike crash at 230mph on a 560hp Rolls Royce Jet turbine motorbike. He broke 11 bones and was hospitalised for three months, spent three months in a wheel chair and had to learn to walk again.

The first person to use Pendine Sands for a world land speed record attempt was Malcolm Campbell. On 25 September 1924 he set a world land speed record of 146.16 mph (235.22 km/h) on Pendine Sands in his Sunbeam 350HP car ‘Blue Bird’.