The Courier & Advertiser (Fife Edition)
Heavyweight tractor champion shows he’ s got the pulling power
With two RollsRoyce tank engines and the power of around 25 family cars, it’s hard to comprehend any such machine being considered a relative tiddler in terms of grunt.
But Mearns businessman Jim Whitecross has given the underdog its day by landing the British Tractor Pulling Championship just four years after going full throttle into the thrilling sport.
Success in the weekend’s Aberdeenshire round of the Covid-curtailed 2021 championship means the 52-year-old has seen off the challenge of rivals with bags more power.
And he is determined to hang on to the hard-won Modified class crown by spending the winter building a new challenger – powered by four Lynx helicopter jet engines!
Yet four years ago, Jim was a total newcomer to the spectacle considered one of the most powerful in motorsport.
Jim, of the family-run Powerwasher Services business, near Laurencekirk, said: “We got into it in 2017 with no knowledge of the sport at all.
“We literally spectated at two events, thought they were great and within a month were on our way to Denmark to pick this machine up.”
His tractor, Gator, is a 2.5-tonne alcohol fuel injected monster with sideby-side V12 engines on a custom-built chassis.
From the compact, steelcaged cockpit sandwiched between two massive rear tractor tyres, Jim can unleash around 2,500 horsepower from engines built for British tanks up to the 1960s.
He said: “It might seem strange when you consider the figures, but we are the smallest tractor in terms of power.
“The modified class is dominated by tractors using two America V8 engines producing a massive amount of horsepower, probably around 4,000.
“We’ve always had a lack of horsepower compared to the others in the class, but the work we have done has helped push us up the leaderboard.
“The championship this year was cut short but we picked up a first and a third at the first two events.”
It put Jim, who lives just outside Montrose, in the box seat for the 2021 title and he made sure of the title with a strong showing in the final round.
Tractor pullers haul a drag sled along a 100-metre track, aiming for a “full pull” to thrill the crowds.
More weight is added to the sled as the competition hots up, and getting control over the gargantuan power output is the key to success.
“You want to have the front wheels just a little off the ground for the best run, but it’s a tricky thing to stop the tractor from bouncing with so much power,” Jim said.
Having originated in the US, the sport continues to grow in the UK.
Jim added: “The Scottish Tractor Pullers’ Club has been on the go since the 80s and I’m part of that.”
It has an even bigger following in other parts of Europe, where some of the top machines will deliver mind-boggling horsepower heading towards five figures.
Jim and son, Kevin, 27, who also competes, now plan to spend the winter months building Gator II.
It will feature four Rolls-Royce Gem turbines designed for the Lynx helicopter in the 1970s.
“The other competitors like their American V8s, but I like to keep to British so that’s why we’ve stuck with the Rolls-Royce engines,” said Jim.
For lots of people, tractors are those great, slow lumbering things you get stuck behind when you are in a hurry and those pesky farmers are insisting on doing the work that feeds the world.
To Jim Whitecross, they are motorsport marvels that have put the Mearns on the map.
Jim has brought the British Tractor Pulling Championship title back to Laurencekirk, thanks to his RollsRoyce engine-powered monster, and he is already imagining what he could do next year with four Lynx helicopter jet engines. It’s about time the rest of us saluted the strength of this much-maligned machine.