AN engineer who spent 21 years building a high-powered trike has spoken of his delight after becoming the fastest Briton on three wheels.

Graham Sykes, of Londonderry, near Bedale, North Yorkshire, broke the threewheel motorcycle British land speed record, reaching a top speed of 180.39mph and achieving a two-way average of 168.73mph.

Friends and family watched nervously as Mr Sykes had only half a mile of track to slow down after hitting the top speed at Elvington Airfield, near York, where Top Gear presenter Richard Hammond was critically injured in 2006 while attempting to break the British land speed record.

Auto Cycle Union officials later verified Mr Sykes had beaten the three-wheeler record of 163.19mph set 12 years ago by his friend, Hartlepool daredevil Stan Whitton, who died in 2008, aged 69, after a short illness.

Mr Sykes, 49, who started drag racing in 1979, said: “It was quite emotional when I found I had beaten Stan’s record on a trike I started building in 1991.

“I’m absolutely delighted as it didn’t come easy, and I’d like to say a huge well done to everybody who helped me get this record, especially Diane, my very patient team-mate and wife who has all my nerves for me.”

He said there had been several major issues with the trike, which he named The Syko V8, in the weeks leading up to the record attempt, including the clutch being destroyed and in one test run it skidded wildly as the rear wheels lost traction.

Mr Sykes said: “As I was approaching top speed on the record runs I was trying to keep myself as small as possible, but there was an awful lot of vibration and my head was hitting the bodywork, so I started getting double vision.”

With the airfield having a noise limit of 105 decibels, he also had to fit eight silencers, which reduced the noise from the bike to 104.1 decibels.

Mr Sykes runs precision engineering firm GSPE and designed, machined and fabricated virtually everything on the trike during weekends.

He spent about £50,000 building it.

He plans to try to break 200mph on the trike next year before helping to build a motorcycle with a gas turbine engine from a Lynx helicopter for Alex Macfadzean’s attempt to raise the world motorcycle land speed record beyond 400mph.