Pip Harris

PETER ‘PIP’ HARRIS WAS A NATIVE OF THE WEST Midlands, brought up in a motorcycle family and encouraged by his dad, who raced an AJS to second in the 1923

350cc Junior TT, to try his hand at grasstrack racing.

Having ridden the old chap’s sidecar outfit quite a bit, it was natural that he’d stick to what he knew and in the late 1940s he picked up a Grindley combo, a little known make by Billy Grindley of Prees Heath in Shropshire.

With good mate Charlie Billingham keeping the sidecar wheel down, they had enough success in local events to look for something a bit quicker for the 1949 season, and found it in a 596cc Norton outfit that London dealer Jack Surtees – father of multi world champion John – was selling on. It had been one of the quickest outfits around the old Crystal Palace circuit in south London and at Donington Park, one of the rare long stroke 596cc overhead camshaft motors built just for sidecar racing. They had a reputation for vibrating like a road drill