Innholdsfortegnelse for March - April 2018 i Classic Racer

YEAR: 1954 (CR THINKS)//CORNER: QUARRY CORNER//HOT AND DUSTY IT MIGHT BE EARLY ON, BUT THOSE IN FRONT IN RHODESIA ARE GETTING ALL THE BENEFITS. THOSE BEHIND ARE STRUGGLING A BIT IN COMPARISON. IT’S not the most pristine of circuits, granted, but the old racing maxim ‘it’s the same for everybody’ has never been more true. The results of the race have been lost to the sands of time (unless you can help us out and you know who graced the podium) but what we do know from the CR archive is that Jannie Stander leads B Ferreira and G MacArthur. Our sage photographer from the event has left a nice note with this image. It says: “This is the first lap of the race. The control tower on the hilltop…

Mick Doohan and the Honda NSR500 formed the most formidable and successful partnership of the 500cc era of Grand Prix racing that ran from 1949 until 2001. The NSR scored a total of 133 GP wins between its introduction in 1984 and Valentino Rossi’s last win on the bike in Rio in 2001, after which the four-stroke MotoGP missiles replaced the 500 two-strokes. Doohan was responsible for more than half of those wins, proving that he was the key player in the development of the bike that became the most successful GP racer of all time. Doohan raced at a time when GP bikes were at their most ferocious and when the level of competition was astronomically high. While having to fight off the talents of Wayne Rainey, Eddie Lawson,…

“FRANK BEGAN A SUPERB RESTORATION OF A BIKE THAT’S NOW ONE OF THE MOST SIGNIFICANT DUCATI MOTORCYCLES IN EXISTENCE.” Back in 1960, the biggest motorcycle model that Ducati made was just 200cc, so most people would have considered anyone talking of turning that little bike into a 350 racer to be certifiably insane. But successful California racer, Frank Scurria, saw potential where others thought none existed and began a project that eventually saw him building what was effectively the prototype of the 350cc road machines that Ducati sold by their thousands in the late 1960s and early 1970s. Frank was a California road racing champion in the Sixties and even came to the UK mid-decade with his Manx Norton to perform with distinction on the British short circuits. After returning…

YEAR: 1973//TRACK: SILVERSTONE//CORNER: CLUB//WHEN RACING MEN COULD COME IN A MORE SOLID SIZE THAN THE MODERN RACING WHIPPETS, WOULD YOU REALLY WANT TO MESS WITH EITHER TONY JEFFERIES (32) OR DAVE CROCKFORD (22)? NO, US NEITHER. THIS was when men were men and racing wasn’t the preserve of the delicate or the fearful.Tony Jefferies picks his line on the 350ccYamaha with precision while Dave Crockford uses more of the track (naturally so) to hustle the 750 Norton around behindTJ. Look at the faces. Not a smile among them. Racing is a serious business when you’re on the throttle. Save the light stuff for a beer or two in the paddock later.…

GINGER MOLLOY AND THE LASZLO SZABO Memo on Ginger Molloy. Nice story on Ginger in the last issue, remembering his long and successful career with the ‘continental circus’! As it is with a lot of personal remembering dating far into history, the sight on facts has turned to the very optimistic side, as it is with his leading position at the German GP 1971. He led from Phil Read in the midst of the race just along the straight from the last corner to the first corner, before ignition-problems took him out. But I’m looking to his short ride for MZ. The photo showing him beside a 125 MZ is definitely not at the Sachsenring 1969. The year is 1965 and the location is probably Brünn. The shown MZ is…

FRAME Rob North bronze-welded duplex frame in Accles & Pollock T45 steel tubing. This is an original frame that was crashed at Oulton Park in the 1971 transatlantic meeting and went on to be the bike’s frame jig upon which tanks and bodywork was built. ENGINE Air-cooled pushrod ohv dry-sump transverse in-line three-cylinder four-stroke with 120° crankshaft. It has a compression ratio of 11.5:1 and makes a very healthy 83bhp @ 8500rpm at the crankshaft. DIMENSIONS The bike’s head angle is 28° and it has a trail of 121mm / 4.75 inches.The wheelbase is 1450mm / 57 inches long and it weighs 180kg/396lb with oil but no fuel. The Highboy-framed BSA-3 which Mike Hailwood raced in the 1970 Daytona 200 is in the Barber Museum in Alabama, but the fate…

Glory in France Debut season in the GP... making history at Le Mans... ones that got away. THE 1983 season promised to be a great year for me and that’s how it proved. I had everything going for me. I was in the 250cc grand prix series for the first time, the youngest kid on the grid, I had a great coach in Mal and one of the best GP mechanics in the world in Howard Gregory, while the cream of Yamaha had produced a gem of a bike for the 83 season. The 11-round 1983 world championship campaign began on March 19 in South Africa, where I felt great in practice and was doing even better in my first-ever GP race. There were five riders, including me, swapping places…

YEAR: 1976//TRACK: MALLORY//CORNER: PITLANE//EDDIE DOW GRABS SHEENE AND ROBERTS FOR A NATTER. You can ask a lot of modern motorcycle racers these days, but you don’t get the top guys in the world coming together for a chat with each other in between races at Mallory Park. Here, a different time, a different era where Barry Sheene and Kenny Roberts play up their respective roles to the delight of the huge crowd listening in Leicestershire. Eddie Dow, so long the voice of racing for thousands each weekend, listens intently as Sheene explains something that Kenny (we can only assume, judging by the facial expression) doesn’t entirely agree with.…

Roy: The reason they gave me the No.1 plate that year, 1997, was that Dave Molyneaux, who’d won it the year before, had gone on to GPs. I said: “Is there any chance I could be No.1?” as it was obvious it was never going to happen. I put on the biggest No.1 I could find, even if the scrutineers kept saying: “It’s illegal. It’s bigger than it’s supposed to be!” In the race Rob Fisher passed me going into Ballacraine but then I never saw another soul. I had quite a good ride and as I started the last lap I was third. I rode back into the pits, into the holding area and there was no Rob Fisher. He’d broken down coming out of the Gooseneck, so as…

In 1971 he scored three GP wins on the ex-Stuart Graham 125 Suzuki at Spa, Belgium; Anderstorp, Sweden and Imatra, Finland. He’d even won the 50cc GP in Brno, Czechoslovakia, as guest rider for the Van Veen Kreidler team, but his results during the following years on the continent were a faint shadow of that successful season. Looking for the right machine in the bigger classes in comparison to the tiddlers he’d found the top of the podium with, Barry signed for Yamaha in 1972 to race 250 and 350cc bikes but, again, the GP season ended up a disaster for Barry. He didn’t get on with a quarter-litre race bike with a tendency to seize and throw the youth off its back. Barry had lost confidence in the water-cooled…

Double TT winner and well-known TV presenter Steve Plater was the guest of honour at the sold-out CRMC annual awards and dinner/dance, held at the usual venue of the Mercure Daventry Court Hotel. Kevin Hunt and Alan Cracknell retained their Sidecar Racers of the Year Trophy, with George Hogton-Rusling taking the equally coveted Racer of the Year award. Hunt and Cracknell again proved to be the dominant sidecar crew on their distinctive all-white Patterson Imp, while ‘GHR’ won every round of the King of the Classics championship, the CRMC 1300 Classic Multis, the Classic Racer Syndicate 1300 National Series and last but by no means least, the ACU Post Classic UK 350 championship. The club’s other ACU UK championship, for 500 Classics, went to Mike Cooper who, despite having to…