Innholdsfortegnelse for September - October 2024 i Classic Racer

ARCHIVE The 1960s heralded an era at the Isle of Man TT races in which the various Japanese factories would finally come together to race against each other on the famous road-racing circuit. From Honda’s debut in 1959 through to their first win in 1961, Suzuki’s 1960 debut and first win in 1962, and Yamaha’s first TT of 1961, the Japanese firms began to dominate the smaller classes and the long-awaited battle between Honda, Suzuki and Yamaha in these classes finally looked to be scheduled for the 1964 Lightweight (250cc) TT race. However, only eight of the 64 riders would be able to complete the full six-lap race distance. Phil Read was fastest in practice on his Yamaha, but come the race proper, Jim Redman’s Honda led Read at the…

Two riders achieved double successes in the Blackford Financial Services Pre-TT Classic meeting at Billown in the south of the Isle of Man. Will Loder of the Leicestershire market town of Hinckley won both the Singles and Junior races on a 350cc Greeves Oulton that his grandfather and uncle developed in the late 1980s. He led the opening Singles event from start to finish, crossing the line more than three-quarters-of-a-minute ahead of the Ducati ridden by Shelley Pike of Colerne, Wiltshire. Andy Hunt of Ely in Cambridgeshire was 3rd on his Ducati Monza, winning the 250 class from Northern Ireland’s Barry Davidson. This race was unique insofar that Appleby’s Angela Cragg was 3rd on a sleeved-down Manx Norton to make it the first event in the Pre-TT Classic’s 36-year history…

Quite apart from its dominance of MotoGP, the past two years have seen Ducati rule the World Superbike series once again, with the Panigale V4 R ridden to successive title wins by Alvaro Bautista. But this came after the Italian company saw an entire decade pass without championship success in either the Riders’ or the Manufacturers’ title chases, between Carlos Checa’s privateer win in 2011 on the Team Althea 1098R – the final WSBK title victory for a V-twin – and the first of Bautista’s championships. Checa’s against-the-odds title success was in every way the end of an era. Fear of a similar landmark page-turning moment had come for fans of the desmo V-twins in the year that WSBK clocked up its 10th birthday back in 1997, when Ducati's run…

Yes, Suzuki’s square-four 500cc production racer based on the factory machines was the bike to have if you were a privateer rider, but on the big stage an American by the name of Kenny Roberts thwarted Suzuki’s (and Barry Sheene’s) chance of a treble by sealing the 500GP championship on his Yamaha in 1978. Suzuki continued updating the RG for the 1979 world championship campaign. But though the new XR27B, making 124bhp, and weighing 136 kilos was a lot more advanced than the 1974 original, with far better reliability, and was more ‘rideable’ thanks to its superior engine and chassis with its anti-dive forks, it still retained its trademark appearance. The unmistakable RG silhouette was more stylish than ever before… One exception to this was the rather ugly XR27BFR, an…

ARCHIVE Pierfrancesco Chili had a long, wide-ranging career: winning the European 125cc series in 1985, before racing in 250cc and 500cc Grand Prixs and moving to World Superbike in 1995, and he’s won in all those classes too… Okay, so you can mention his 1989 500cc victory was at a treacherously wet Misano circuit that was boycotted by all the works riders apart from Chili. But – he was an Italian rider, in an Italian team – and on Pirellis. He won and became something of a hate figure in GPs. He’d gotten into 500s in 1986 on the (by then) uncompetitive square-four Suzuki, before moving on to the Honda RS500 triple in 1987 where he’d finish 2nd in France. A move to the V4 Honda NSR for 1988 would…

IN DETAIL: Four World Road Race Championships won by Harley-Davidson! No, it’s not April Fool’s Day, it really did happen, well, kind of… The Motor Company bought 50%of the Italian Aermacchi Company in 1960 and the remainder in 1972. Harley was interested in having small capacity street bikes to sell in the expanding US market, road-racing was not that important to them. Aermacchi though had road-racing in their DNA and expanded their race budget with H-D dollars. The RR250 origins go back to a 125cc air-cooled two-stroke roadster that was slowly developed over the next three years, giving Australian John Dodds a win at the 1970 West German 125cc GP. Using lessons learnt from the 125cc single, work started on a 250cc twin in 1969, with the engine designed by…

It is 6am on a clear Monday morning in Adelaide, South Australia, as 33-year-old local Sean McKay starts up his trusty Toyota HiAce van and begins the 12-hour drive to Philip Island in Victoria. It’s April 17, 2000 and in the back of his van is his recently repaired Kawasaki ZX-7RR Superbike, and together they are taking part in the Australian round of the World Superbike Championship. Sean is totally unaware of how iconic this round will be, this is the story of his weekend racing with the legends… The holder of a B-Grade licence, Sean made an application to Motorcycling Australia to be selected as a Wild-card in the Australian Round of the World Superbike Championship in February 2020, a letter arrives dated April 7 confirming that along with…

PEOPLEPART THREE The phone rang and it was Don Carcas: “If you don’t want to hear the bad news over the phone, you’d best come over and have a look.” Never a good sort of phone call, so I jumped in the car and crossed from North over to West Yorkshire – passing Jamie Whitham’s home/airfield on the way, no time to pop in for a brew though. Once we arrived and went through to Don’s workshop, where he’d pulled Barry’s motor apart, Don showed me the major problem: the big-end shells were goosed and consequently had marked up the crankshaft. This was devastating news… If you’re new to ‘Barry’s’ story, then here’s a recap. Barry Owen was a marshal who picked me up out of the gravel more than…

ARCHIVE If there was a crazier, cooler concept for a one-make race series ever held on two-wheels, we’ve yet to see it… We’re talking of course about the Yamaha Pro-Am Challenge, where Yamaha supplied 24 identical RD350LCs to invited riders – a mix of professional and club racers – who would then pick an ignition key out of a hat to be allocated one of the bikes for the weekend. With a level playing field being the order of the day, often it came down to skill, guile and even a bit of cheating to get the edge to win! Riders would hang on to the grab rail of the bike in front to (literally) get a tow, they’d have a sneaky dab on a brake lever as they slipstreamed…

‘‘WE WERE THREE PENNILESS GYPSIES THAT MANAGED TO MAKE HISTORY”FRANS VANDENBROECK When Pat Hennen became the first American rider to win a Grand Prix with his 500cc victory in Finland in 1976, it was an incredible result for a team that wouldn’t have looked out of place at a club race. “Pat had no money that first year,” said his mechanic Frans VandenBroek: “Just an old Transit van, a toolbox the size of a loaf of bread, a borrowed bike, a helmet, and a set of leathers.” Yet it was enough, in the hands of someone as talented as Hennen, to challenge the best riders and teams in the world. Hennen finished off the season with 3rd place at the Nurburgring (having learned the circuit on VandenBroek’s Honda CB250 road…

If one man created the World Superbike Championship it was former racer and businessman Steve McLaughlin. In the mid-1980s he and French journalist Phillippe Debarle argued that there should be a world championship for four-stroke machines, and after lobbying both the FIM and the various international circuits – as well as tying up a TV deal – the seeds were sown. However, the fledgling World Superbike Championship needed manufacturer support if it was ever going to rival or replace the TT F1 World Championship. Honda and Yamaha were on-side, Honda fielding their new VFR750R (RC30) and Yamaha the FZR750R. The Yamaha came in both aluminium and steel framed versions as the OW01 was still a year off. Both were run in private teams, as was Kawasaki with the GPX750R. Bimota…

PEOPLE PART TWO Yes, it’s Tony here again with Team Allspeed. As I tap this out we are now three meetings into the 2024 CRMC season and we have been kept busy maintaining and developing the bikes. Probably the best thing for me to do is logically and chronologically go through what’s happened to each bike, similar to last issue. One thing I’d like to say right ‘up here’ at the start though is that no team can run on fresh air! And if you like what we’re doing, why not support us with some form of sponsorship, which will get coverage in Classic Racer and on our Facebook page. If you’re interested, head to our page or contact Bertie at CR. Anyways… on with the bikes! Kawasaki ZXR400…

Rubber soul… Searching for something in the wardrobe at home recently, I came across a ‘JPS’ black and gold striped neck tie. I recall the then head of John Player sponsorship, the ever cheerful Peter Dyke, ‘butting in’ on one of my start line interviews during the 1989 F1 British Championship meeting at Mallory Park, to give me the tie. I was on the grid at the time, doing a rider interview. Peter buts in and takes the microphone from me, and proceeds to say over the PA: “Fred, you’ve said many nice things about Rotary Norton, so on behalf of the JPS Team of Steve Spray and Trevor Nation, I would like to present you with a Team tie.” To which I replied: “That’s very kind of you Peter,…