Innholdsfortegnelse for November - December 2025 i Classic Racer

I always hated the Daytona Speed Week, due to the way we Europeans were treated. The Americans often made you wait outside of the circuit for hours, whatever the weather, to sign-on in the first place: then they tried to palm us off with a mere press pass which would not actually allow you to go anywhere, so you could only work two infield corners. We photographers were also worse off as our job was very physical; yet we were not even allowed into the press room which was the only place open for the week prior to the race, so we had no access to our colleagues, the journalists, or access to timing sheets, water, information etc. Then the track itself was surrounded by very high (10/12ft) wire fences…

“Nothing stirs the emotions like racing: exhilarating to watch as a neutral; traumatic for family and friends in pit-lane; an adrenaline-rush like no other for the competitor; impossible to understand for the uninitiated – but a tradition in Ireland and beyond that has drawn huge crowds for generations”. So wrote Roy Harris in his excellent 2014 book Just for the Thrill, a history of competitive motorcycling in Northern Ireland in the 1970s, and yet it is hard to overestimate the difficulties in promoting and running such races in that decade given the backdrop of civil unrest and violence generally referred to as ‘The Troubles’. It is also to the great credit of riders such as Tony Rutter, Steve Parrish, Mick Grant, Alex George, Percy Tait, Geoff Barry and so many…

Oddly, my office overlooks the Mallory Park hairpin and at the 1959 Post TT the Swiss rider Gyula Marsovszky crashed in flames right in front of me, right below where I’m sitting now. It was the first meeting I’d ever been to, I cycled with my mate, and I turned to him and said: “Flippin ‘eck, this is good, I’m gonna have a go at this one day!” And so I did. I had a 650 Triumph by the time I was 16, but my track debut was on a Thruxton Venom, and back in the 1960s racing was a real leveller, anyone could be besides you on the grid. The first time I went to Croft I noticed this right scruffy urchin on a similar Velocette to mine and…

After winning the 125cc British Championship at his first attempt in 1992, Neil Hodgson was fast-tracked to the 125cc Grand Prix World Championship and then earned a ride in the premier 500cc class. Despite showing immense promise as a privateer and getting a couple of races on a factory Yamaha, back then the chances for a British rider to be anything other than a ‘best of the rest’ non-factory rider were next to nothing… So, with no decent GP offers for the 1996 season, he moved over to the World Superbike Championship to join the factory Ducati team; and his team-mate would be the unfathomable American, John Kocinski. Hodgson soon discovered he may have bitten off more than he could chew. “The first year I was team-mates with John Kocinski,…

It is not unusual for a child to be given one of their parent’s names as a Christian name, or forename. It is, however, very rare for the child to be given the stage-name of a parent, but that is what happened for the subject of this feature, Noel Pope, whose middle name ‘Baddow’ was his father’s name as a professional music-hall ventriloquist! The name Noel came about as he was born on Christmas Eve, and that happy event took place in Toxteth, Liverpool, in 1909, his father performing locally at that time. Sadly, his father died of tuberculosis only two years later, and the young Noel Pope with his widowed mother went to live initially in Blackheath, London, then to Surbiton in Surrey, barely 10 miles from a place…

It’s 40 years since that legend of British racing Mick Grant won his final championship – the MCN Superstock title – in 1985. Granty is a straight-talking legend of 1970s and 80s British bike racing. With his no-nonsense Yorkshire upbringing he spoke as he found and earned his own core of fans in a time of the great Barry Sheene. During his 20-year career, Mick did it all: Grand Prix wins on 250cc two-strokes, to seven Isle of Man TT wins, riding the ill-fated Honda NR500, a Macau GP win, TT-F1 racing and winning titles on production bikes. He was (and still is) a dab-hand at trials, too! After quitting racing, he managed a string of talented racers and ran some top teams. He also described himself as a ‘poacher…

We start with a warning: you MAY be offended by some of the views and opinions expressed in the next few pages of this feature. However, we also think that – being of a certain age – you probably won’t be and that we are actually speaking to the converted. The title of this feature is pretty evocative: I’m saying that I’d rather watch old races than the modern stuff – even if I know what the result is going to be. I’d rather read about the old racers than the new ones and rather watch, see, ride and even smell the old bikes compared to the new ones. Oh, and ride and watch at the old tracks too. If you feel the same way, then I guess that’s why…

The Classic Festival at Donington Park is the biggest meeting of the year for CRMC, and we wanted to do well. Having given the YZF750 a rest this season it seemed the perfect event to get it back out. #42 Adam Carson was going to be very busy, having entered the PC750 Clubman on our TZR250, the SuperSport 600 on the FZR600R and the Superbike 750 plus the big race of the weekend the Wheatcroft Trophy on the YZF750. In total, 13 races over two days. Did I mention we also had taken along our Yamaha OW01 for the GP Parade? If Adam has some spare time, he would take this out as well. We got into our garage for the weekend Friday evening and got everything set-up for an…

A mission accomplished. After winning four GP races and finishing second overall in the final 500GP World Championship of the last millennium, with a bike which had been the surprise package of the 1999 season, Kenny Roberts Jnr and the RGV500 Suzuki XR89 went one better in 2000. KR Jnr clinched the World title two races early after again winning four races in the 16-race season – one more than anyone else – and scoring more points in more races than anyone, too, with a single DNF at Assen after the engine seized when he was seemingly set for a fifth victory. A total of four pole positions, nine rostrum finishes and three fastest laps stamped King Kenny II and the XR89 as the dominant force in Y2K 500GP racing,…

Barry Sheene got the fright of his life when he first rode Suzuki’s new RG500/XR14 in 1974... “I was the first rider ever to be allowed to try it – I felt privileged,” he said, many years later. “But after doing one lap of the test track I had to stop and think about it, because it was so violently fast. It was just an incredible projectile. Over 150mph it would zig-zag six feet either way up the main straight of the test track.” The speed was there, but there was clearly a lot of work to be done to make the square-four RG500 rideable (the bike is actually an XR14 – RG500s were production models, while Suzuki’s factory racers always had an ‘XR’ designation, but most people refer to…

The late Derek Minter dominated short circuit races from the mid-1950s to the mid-1960s. His home ‘patch’ was Brands Hatch, and the man from Kent won more races there than any other rider. Such was his prowess, that having just beaten multi-world champion John Surtees and his all-conquering MV Agusta, commentator Murray Walker dubbed Derek ‘The King of Brands’. It was a tag he carried proudly thereafter throughout his career. He even has part of the current Brands circuit named after him, namely ‘The Minter Straight’ which is somewhat contradictory as ‘The Mint’ never won his races on the straights, but always on the corners! Five-times a British Champion, Derek Minter is remembered by many TT fans for being the first rider to lap the Isle of Man Mountain Course…