Innholdsfortegnelse for May - June 2021 i Classic Racer

Future 500GP World Champion Marco Lucchinelli began racing internationally for the Laverda team at just 20 years of age in 1975 – an arrangement that happened almost by accident, as Piero Laverda explains: “In preparation for the 1975 season we went to Mugello to conduct a 24-hour simulation test, completely in private, with no press present. We started in the morning, and then our factory test rider Fernando Cappelotto crashed and one of the bikes caught fire, but not big damage. So I asked Roberto Gallina who had been racing for us for several years if he knew any rider who could come and join us, and maybe could be a reserve rider for the 24-hour race in Barcelona later that year. “Roberto told me, ‘I have a young boy…

WHIT’S WISDOM ON… The Good Life! My dad David had a self-sufficiency thing going on for a while and boy was he was tight! We had a boiler for heating but logs were too expensive for him, so he did some deals. We had an MoT station for a while and some other guy had a place getting chipboard wastage, so they had free MoTs and we had chipboard to fuel the boiler. Then he realised he could use horse manure as fuel… He came up with a device that if you squashed it that much and dried it out – you could burn horse shit as fuel… The device had a ram off of a JCB attached to a cylinder, with drilled holes in it. The ram/piston would squeeze…

“MAGEE WENT FROM A RAW KIT ON A DIRT BIKE, TO HANDING THE STARS THEIR OWN BACKSIDES WHILE RACING MACHINES WHICH WERE FAR FROM FACTORY. KEVIN WAS GOING PLACES!” “There was a poster on the wall in the smoko (lunch) room at the bike shop I worked at during my apprenticeship,” says Kevin Magee. “It was a picture of Kenny Roberts on the black and yellowYamaha. I don’t reckon I ever walked past that poster without stopping to look at it. I was always checking out the tacho to try and work out how fast he was going. I was dreaming. But I knew that’s where I wanted to be…” Kevin Magee was just an ordinary teenager who loved motorbikes, a dreamer from a small town, but one with plenty…

Carlo Pernat was a first believer in Jean-Michel Bayle’s qualities. His phone call to the Frenchman after his road racing debut at the French Grand Prix in 1992 was not the first time the two spoke. “I knew Jean-Michel from when he was a motocross rider”, recalls Pernat. “I had been working at Cagiva with Jan Witteveen and back in the 1980s we wanted him on a Cagiva. We saw he was a champ in the making. We were close to a contract, but he wanted a Cagiva contract for his (older) brother, not for himself. We didn’t want that.” A couple of years later Pernat’s and Witteveen’s eyes turned to Bayle again when he traded sand forTarmac.Two-stroke top man Witteveen was now working for Aprilia; Pernat was the team’s…

After the defection of Ernst Degner, with all the secrets of MZ’s two-stroke development, to Suzuki in 1961, it did not take long for the Japanese bikes to turn from also-rans to world champions. Walter Kaaden, the head of the MZ Race Department in Zschopau decided that if they were going to beat the Japanese two-strokes, in the 125 class, he would have to change from the single-cylinder engine, which had been so successful to a multi-cylinder one. A three-cylinder, across the frame 125 engine was designed with the carburettors behind the water-cooled cylinder block feeding directly via disc-valves to the crankcases; because of the narrow powerband the gearbox was to be given eight speeds. Early in 1966 the villagers in a couple of nearby villages started to hear sounds…

As a rider, the diminutive Fausto Gresini was well-suited to the smaller classes and he would win two 125cc championships during the 1980s. The Italian from Imola began his race career in 1978 in the 50cc class aboard a Minarelli, but soon made it to the Grand Prix paddock, starting his first season in 1983.That year on a Garelli he would take a best result of second place at the Swedish Grand Prix. For 1984 the move to an MBA machine saw him take his first win (Sweden once more) and finish 3rd in the title race overall. Better was to come in 1985 when – returning to Garelli – he took the 125ccWorld Championship with a consistent run of form, including three wins. In 1986 he’d finish second overall…

We think it would be unfair to come up with the age-old statement ‘the best rider never to have won a World Superbike title’, for Aaron Slight – it’s the sort of thing that gets trotted out for Randy Mamola when it comes to 500cc GP racing. There was so much more to Aaron. He took seven pole positions on his way to 13 World Superbike race wins (along with 42 seconds and 32 thirds) and this gave him the two runner-up spots in the WSB championships. There are other remarkable achievements to note: how about three back-to-back Suzuka 8-Hour race wins in 1993, 1994 and 1995? Then there’s the 1991 Aussie Superbike Championship, a Member of the New Zealand Order of Merit award and various sports personality of the…

It was a nail-biting finish to a year that had turned into a two-man battle. It was Dutchman Dave Strijbos against Frenchman Jean-Michel Bayle in the 1988 125 motocross World Championship – and the younger gun won, becoming Honda’s first 125 world champion. As a rookie, Bayle then dominated the 250 class a year later and decided it was time for a change – and it would not be the last one. The expected switch to the 500cc class hardly appealed to Bayle. Never one to shy away from a plunge into the unknown, Bayle moved to the United States, since he’d achieved all that he’d wanted in Europe. As a young kid he was mesmerised by the American superstars dictating the annual Paris Bercy Supercross, beating his childhood heroes…

With Irish Classic racing still reeling from the loss of almost all of 2020’s fixtures, it came as yet another body blow when it was announced that all southern Irish road racing has been cancelled for 2021. This decision comes on top of the cancellation of this year’s TT and Classic TT by the Isle of Man Government as well as the cancellation of this year’s North West 200, Ulster Grand Prix and Tandragee road races. While huge insurance premiums, as well as the effort and personnel required are always factors when organising any road race event, this year the primary consideration was the prevalence of Covid-19 and the decisions taken were out of responsibility in that regard as it was deemed that it would be dangerous, if not reckless,…

ChrisVincent not only won an Isle of ManTT sidecar race, and British championships on two and three wheels, but he was also a former factory bike tester, innovative sidecar designer, as well as father to two talented racing sons. Hailing from Birmingham, Chris joined Norton on leaving school and his passion for sidecars came initially with a speedway outfit and he became National Sidecar Champion in 1958. This was backed up by his talents on two wheels, taking 7th the following year at theThruxton 500-mile race, he would also work for BSA as a test rider. Road-racing in the chair would come in 1960 at the Isle of Man, but bad luck would see him fail to finish a race in both that year and the following year’s races on…

“ENDURANCE RACING THEN WAS ABOUT GETTING COMFORTABLE FOR A LONG SPELL AND CONSERVING YOUR ENERGY. SO, THE PLUSHLY-PADDED SEAT ON THE LAVERDA WAS YOUR THRONE FOR THE LONG-HAUL!” It’s a pity in a way that Massimo Laverda and Soichiro Honda never met each other before they both sadly passed away, because even through interpreters they’d have discovered a common passion for high-quality four-stroke engineering, and for going racing with the result. Moreover, although their respective companies were vastly different in size and scale, they also possessed a shared commitment to forging their own path technically, and to producing stylistically appealing models, replete with technical innovation. This was especially true 50 years ago, when the evolution of what we think of today as a modern motorcycle, had only just begun gathering…

“THIS IS THE FACTORY YAMAHA YZR500 0WE0 RIDDEN BY KEVIN MAGEE TO 2ND PLACE IN THE 1992 500CC ALL JAPAN CHAMPIONSHIP, BEHIND FELLOW AUSSIE DARYL BEATTIE ON AN NSR500 HONDA. PETER GODDARD HAD WON THE CHAMPIONSHIP FOR YAMAHA ON THE 0WD3 THE PREVIOUS YEAR, SO IT WAS A GOOD TIME FOR AUSSIE RIDERS!”…

The Isle of Man TT course has seen it all: from the very first running, back in 1907, it has crowned heroes and has mourned plenty of them too. It took a breath during wartime, again for foot and mouth in 2001 and with the 2020 and 2021 TT races cancelled, along with the Manx GP/Classic TT, it looks like we won’t see any racing on Mona’s Isle until 2022 at the earliest… So let’s recount some tales from the great, the good and those that simply do it for the challenge and not necessarily the start money. The Tourist Trophy remains synonymous with names cemented into folklore, like Phil Read, Mike Hailwood, Giacomo Agostini, Steve Hislop, Dave Molyneux and of course the Dunlop dynasty. The technology has moved on…