Classic Racer takes you so close you can actually smell the Castrol R. With the world's finest archive, and an editorial team who live and breathe the sport, the only way you'll get closer will be to put on your leathers.
Let’s go back 60 years, it is 1961 and a young Mike Hailwood is in his 21st year… This would be an amazing year for Mike and the Honda factory. Honda had only been competing in Grand Prix since 1959, when they took part in the Ultra-Lightweight TT on the Isle of Man.The following year they would contest their first full season, taking podiums on the way. For the following year, Mike Hailwood would ride a Honda RC144 125cc machine, which his rich father Stan ‘The Wallet’ Hailwood would secure… it was to be a good year. At theTT alone, Mike would become the first rider to win three races in a week (125, 250 and 500), narrowly missing out on a fourth when his AJS let him down in…
Throughout most of the 1960s the parallel universes of American and European road racing existed in essentially blissful ignorance of one another. So, in 1968 when I turned up at Daytona as the first UK journalist to cover the 200 Mile race, I was immediately impressed by the speed of a lot of riders I had never heard of, and most of all by a tough little French Canadian by the name ofYvon Duhamel. It was not a name I had heard of back then but one that I became very familiar with over the next 10 years. At Daytona in 1968, the favourite for the 100-mile 250cc race was (to my mind at least) the reigning world champion Phil Read on a factory Yamaha that was a prototype of…
In a time of Jonathan Rea’s domination and looking back to the likes of Carl Fogarty in the 1990s, it’s easy to forget about the legendary Doug Polen… While some may argue that Doug only dominated in an earlier time of the World Superbike championship, before the series really took off and when the factory involvement was at a much lower level than before: dominate he did. Look at the stats: 27 race wins overall may fade alongside Fogarty’s 59 and Rea’s 107 (and counting, at time of writing) but these were in a rich, two-year spell which were his championship years of 1991 and 1992. An amazing 17 of these wins came in a 26-race run, which also included seven consecutive wins, 10 out of 13 lap records and…
If you want to get in touch… ... please do. We read every letter, email and comment sent to us and we enjoy hearing from you whether you’ve an event coming up, a motorcycle you own or just want to let us know about something you find interesting in Classic Racer’s world. Nice spread! Dear CR, Just want to say that, while I’m loving the slight shift towards some of the more modern stuff (most recently shown by some stuff about Valentino Rossi) don’t forget us/we older chaps, we are still here and we can still recall a world seen in black and white. I did want to congratulate some of your authors: Bruce Cox and his recent tales on his time with some American (and Canadian) legends: rest in…
CompiledbyThe Classic Racer team // Send your classic racing news to: editor@classicracer.co.uk MOTORCYCLE LIVE IS GO! Motorcycle Live, in association with Bikesure Insurance, is returning to the NEC, Birmingham this year. The 2021 show takes place from Saturday, December 4 to Sunday, December 12. This is the UK’s largest motorcycle show and it will welcome back the very best of the industry, to delight, entertain and inform bike enthusiasts of all ages, and it will, of course, incorporate classic road and race-going machines. Motorcycle Live promises to return with a bang. There will be numerous opportunities to get on two wheels, interact with new features, technologies and displays, as well as seeing the return of the much-loved Custom and Classic Zones. Whether it’s catching up with friends and family, browsing…
Time is a funny old thing and it’s all relative, I guess. I’m saying this because I take a very close look at feedback on the features and articles we produce for Classic Racer. Clearly the term ‘classic’ means different things to different people. For some, it’s a sepia-tinted picture of days long since gone, for others a black-and-white action shot of their favourite rider at the Isle of ManTT, however, for a small, but growing band, it’s a blurred colour picture, taken on a pocket camera. History then, is always moving and we want to cover all the various angles to keep you all happy – that's why we still want you to give us feedback on what you want to see in Classic Racer, which is YOUR magazine.…
