Innholdsfortegnelse for July - August 2023 i Classic Racer

ARCHIVE With two-wheeled Grand Prix racing celebrating its 1000th event at Le Mans, here’s the first winner of the 500cc world crown. He was the first of a string of British champions, a remarkable man called Robert Leslie Graham, known as Les… Les Graham’s two-wheeled career started as many do – on the dirt. Born in 1911, in The Wirral, he first raced on Liverpool’s Stanley Speedway and later, 1929, at the Oswestry Park Hall circuit as he moved onto circuit racing. By the mid-1930s he was racing at major events such as the North West 200 and the Ulster Grand Prix, and by 1938 he had taken part in the Isle of Man TT races and was signed up by Jock West to ride a Velocette in 1940, but…

PEOPLE In the early 1950s the world famous Isle of Man TT was regarded as the pinnacle of road-racing and as a colonial boy Hugh Robertson Anderson dreamed of racing there and doing well. All Anderson had to do was grow up, secure a job to buy a bike, learn to ride, then race it, become successful, quit his job, take a six week sailing to the other side of the world, learn the tortuous 60.718km course, and finish the race – hopefully in front of everyone else. An inspiration to many, Anderson won it twice, a dream fulfilled, but he went on to much greater heights in track racing and motocross than even he could have imagined. Born on January 18, 1936, and raised on a New Zealand dairy…

CLASSIC TRACKS Silverstone began life as RAF Silverstone in 1943, where Wellington Bomber pilots of No 17 Operational Training Unit trained in night-bombing techniques. After the war the airfield lay derelict for a few years, until, in 1948, the Royal Automobile Club took out a lease on the venue and staged the first British Grand Prix for cars, using both the main runways and part of the perimeter track. At that time, the circuit was marked out by nothing more than road cones and straw bales, and the only thing protecting the 100,000 spectators were primitive rope fences. The three original runways still lie within the perimeter of the current Silverstone circuit. The first motorcycle race held at Silverstone was the Hutchinson 100, which was staged by the Bemsee Club…

“The weirdest experience I had in 1977 was in the south of France,” Steve Parrish recalls. “We were driving from our hotel to Paul Ricard in Barry Sheene’s Rolls-Royce, sitting with Barry and Stephanie and George Harrison, listening to a pre-release copy of the Eagles’ ‘Hotel California’ on the record player that was fitted in the Rolls. It was my first year in Grand Prix and I remember thinking: ‘It doesn’t get any better than this.’ I had spent the year before that lying under tractors and cars, fixing them.” Steve Parrish’s first year in the 500cc Grand Prix world championship was impressive. As Barry Sheene’s team-mate in the Texaco Heron Suzuki squad, he finished the season in 5th place, behind Johnny Cecotto and ahead of Giacomo Agostini, who was…

GUEST COLUMNIST STEVE PARRISH Bertie the editor has asked me my opinion of racing today. Bloody hell, where do I start without pissing someone off? Firstly, my racing CV: 1972 club racer, 1977 factory rider, 1986 retire. From then (1987) I was race team owner for Loctite Yamaha then retired in 1991. Then I raced trucks from 1991-2001 for Mercedes-Benz and took up commentating for the BBC on World Superbike in 2001, then MotoGP for the Beeb from 2003. I’ve done countless other commentary jobs since and consider myself a big race fan and that CV shows some experience… So, drum roll… I truthfully think the racing of today is better, closer, faster, and very exciting but having said that, the experience you get going to live events is shite.…

ARCHIVE Renzo Pasolini was always going to gravitate towards two wheels as his father was already a motorcyclist and Renzo himself was born and raised in Rimini, a part of Italy steeped in motorcycling and motorcycle racing… The young Pasolini showed a sporting bent, being interested in many sports, including football and boxing. However, with backing from his father, he soon was riding motorcycles off-road and entered into competitive racing in motocross before moving on to Tarmac road-racing. By the time Paso was in his 20s, he had committed to road-racing and – in 1962 – had taken two wins ahead of Giacomo Agostini, while riding his Aermacchi 175 in the national championship. Renzo’s career would be entwined with other great names, such as Tarquinio Provini, whom he finished 2nd…

I’m sure I’m not telling you anything that you didn’t already know here – but time really does fly, especially as you get older. So, can it really be 18 years since I got the motorcycle journalists’ golden ticket of the day – a chance to ride a full MotoGP bike round a full MotoGP track (something that doesn’t really happen nowadays)? It surely can readers… Now 18 years is a funny period of time – it can be incredibly long (if, say, you had to serve it at Her Majesty’s Pleasure). But it can also be incredibly short. What were you up to in 2005? Doesn’t seem that far back at all does it? There are a few things that give you a fright though. Back then, it was…

CLASSIC RACER “KENNY ROBERTS WAS SWITCHED TO THE V4 0W61 FROM THE SECOND ROUND OF THE 1982 SEASON BUT ONLY WON A SINGLE RACE ON IT, IN SPAIN. HOWEVER, BARRY SHEENE CONTINUED WITH THE 0W60, AS DID GRAEME CROSBY AND MARC FONTAN (SONAUTO YAMAHA). THE SEASON ENDED WITH FRANCO UNCINI TAKING THE TITLE ON A SUZUKI RG500 WITH CROSBY 2ND AND FREDDIE SPENCER 3RD ON THE NS500 HONDA. ROBERTS WAS 4TH, TIED ON POINTS WITH SHEENE, 5TH.”…

There are lots of different reasons why road riders take up racing, but Gary Lingham’s route into the sport must count as one of the most unusual. “I was riding my Triumph Bonneville in Elephant and Castle, going round the roundabout then down the Old Kent Road on my way back to Peckham,” he explains. “As per usual, I was weaving in and out of the traffic just for fun, then I pulled up at traffic lights and a copper on a motorbike pulls up next to me. He says: ‘For f*ck’s sake, I’ve been chasing you. I was going down the middle, outside of the traffic, and I still couldn’t catch you. You’re nicked!’” As irate as the policeman was at the time, he actually helped Lingham when the…

ARCHIVE Scott Russell was the perfect foil for our own Carl Fogarty back in the early 1990s… Brash, loud, funny, and straight-talking, it’s almost as if both were cut from the same cloth… Of course Foggy was from Blackburn and Scott from East Point, Georgia in the USA – but both were talented on two wheels and neither liked being in second place. While Carl would eventually become the most successful World Superbike rider until recently eclipsed by Jonathan Rea, Russell also holds a number of significant firsts, at least one of which will probably never be beaten. If you’re an American, you’ll know Russell as ‘Mr Daytona’ as he won the once prestigious Daytona 200 event no less than five times, being matched only by Canadian Miguel Duhamel. He…

PEOPLE The Clubman’s TT was a praiseworthy effort by the ACU and the Manx Government to add a new dimension to the International TT race programme on its reintroduction in 1947. Based as it was on catalogue road and sports machines, there was more than a ‘nod’ to the origins of the TT, the Tourist Trophy, with the underlying hope that the new format would entice more manufacturers to showcase their models in what was the ‘Blue Riband’ event of the motorcycle racing world. Prewar plans for a ‘Manufacturers Team Trial’ were shelved and new regulations drawn up for the Clubman’s TT, essentially an event within the June International TT fortnight, but with separate practice and race periods. Riders were to be nominated by their entrant clubs, machines were to…

IN DETAIL: The premier Grand Prix class had been 500cc since the series started in 1949. Initially four-strokes of various engine configurations dominated the series. In the early 1970s two-strokes started to give the ‘diesels’ a run for their money. By the late 1970s the class was basically all two-stroke. With emission regulations pretty much putting an end to two-strokes sold for street use, the relevance of developing two-stroke technology was tough to justify. However, compared to developing prototype four-stroke engines, GP two-strokes were relatively cheap and gave the manufacturers great marketing exposure in a lot of countries. By the turn of the century the manufacturers wanted to race machines closer to those they sold. A new premier class, MotoGP would be for prototype four-strokes of 990cc. This class would…

PEOPLE On September 29, 2002, riding what was a glorified road bike, Steve Hislop lapped Donington Park faster than Valentino Rossi managed on a priceless Honda RC211V MotoGP bike just a few months earlier. It shouldn’t have been possible, but that didn’t matter to Hislop. “It had always been my ambition to lap Donington faster than a Grand Prix bike because Troy Corser had once done it on a factory World Superbike Ducati in 1996, so I knew it was possible,” Hizzy explained. “Problem was, I wasn’t even on a WSB-spec machine, just a national level kitted bike. No matter, I thought I’d still give it a try.” When Steve Hislop was happy, relaxed, and focused, he was so accurate on a motorcycle that he was like a computer –…