Indholdsfortegnelse for January - February 2018 i Classic Racer

YEAR:1982//TRACK: DONINGTON// CORNER: REDGATE//KEITH HUEWEN DOESN'T REALLY CARE WHAT, OR WHO, IS BEHIND HIM AND HIS FACTORY SUZUKI 500 AND THE CAMERA CAN'T KEEP UP WITH THE RED AND YELLOW, EITHER. For one racer it’s a moment of reflection as to where the line could have been better, braking could have been a bit later, commitment to the corner could have been a bit more. Or perhaps for Gary Lingham on number 30 it’s more a case of collecting thoughts before attacking Donington on another lap. No such thoughts are coursing through the mind of Keith Huewen however. It is 1982 and the man who these days is the king of the commentators is away with, as our continental cousins like to say, full gas. The effort was seasoned with…

In reply to Mr Chatterton and others Dear CR I feel I must comment on the letter from Gordon Chatterton (no relation) issue 187, regarding ‘his gripe’ as he calls it, on the TT races. While I agree that any death in racing is one too many, Gordon will find if he checks the figure, which is easily done in these Google days, that the current fatal accident figures are substantially lower than in the 1950s for instance, which I would guess is Gordon’s favourite TT decade and one of mine too. For example, in the years 1950 to 1959 there were 44 races with 19 deaths. In the years 2008 to 2017 there were almost twice as many races, 85, with 17 losses of life, four of which were…

It was ahead of its time. In many respects, it still is. Yamaha’s RD56 factory racer which took Phil Read to the 1964 250cc World title really did use a disc-valve motor which profited from MZ technology - purloined by Suzuki from the DDR’s MZ, by enabling its rider-engineer colleague Ernst Degner to defect to the West in 1961 – that tech was widely shared and with Suzuki and Yamaha both based in Hamamatsu, Japan it’s not hard to imagine how that came about… But when Yamaha finally entered the 500cc category in 1973, the OW19 in-line four which Jarno Saarinen took to victory in its very first race in the French GP at Paul Ricard, was a piston-port design. In 1975 Giacomo Agostini gained GP racing’s ultimate prize for…

There’s an understandable beam of pride that comes from Tim Davies and Nathan Colombi when either of the two men talk about the Suzuki GB/Team Classic Suzuki Katana race bike – and it could be because that, despite what you might think when you look at this ‘factory’ race bike, this has been something of a labour of love. And Suzuki Vintage Parts Programme. There’s quite a bit of that in the big bike, too. But before we get into the actual budget for the racing and the reality of how such things play out in the season of Endurance eventing, let’s begin with how the project came about in the first place. Tim (his day job is Suzuki GB aftersales marketing coordinator – his hobby, currently, is building his…

Team manager Randy Hall devised a fast and efficient fuelling system along with an equally important and well-regimented procedure for operating it. The system, the procedure and the individual Kawasaki team members were all so good when it came to fast refuelling stops that they could refuel the bike and have the rider away in six or seven seconds! Remembering how the fast stops came about, Randy Hall tells all in his book on racing with Kawasaki in the F750 era: Lean, Mean and Lime Green: “A fast refuelling system in the longer races was a necessity for all the teams,” he says: “but a big handicap for us was that the Kawasaki H1-R in the 200-milers at Daytona andTalladega would require two fuel stops compared to the one stop…

YEAR: 1994//CIRCUIT: ALBACETE, SPAIN//CORNER: CURVA JORDI GENE// IT'S FAST, REALLY FAST. THE KAWASAKI HAS THE INSIDE LINE, READY FOR THE NEXT CORNER BUT HASN'T QUITE COUNTED ON THE TENACITY OF THE FACTORY RVF HONDA HOWLING AROUND THE OUTSIDE OF TURN SIX. Two riders who epitomised the world Superbike championship’s bare-knuckle fight feel in the early part of the 1990s, were Scott Russell and Doug Polen. Whilst Russell became legendary for his attitude to life and the racing scene, Polen preferred to do his talking on track. Winning the world Superbike title in 1991 and 1992 is testimony to the man who, in 1994, joined the Castrol Honda squad based in Louth, Lincolnshire and shifted the bikes on to Dunlops because it was his preferred tyre of choice. That year did…

BODYWORK The bike has a custom fuel tank with original Katana panel modified and remoulded.The whole of the seat area came in for quite a bit of work being shortened by 50mm and raised higher than on the stock bike. SWINGARM This has been made by Sweet Fabrications to TCS’s spec. It’s been built to look very similar to the original’s extruded style used by Suzuki in the 1980s.TCS has future-proofed this retro-lookalike and ensured that the design can take a 200 profile tyre if they want to fit one in the future. Clever stuff. CHASSIS The bike’s chassis is custom-made by plotting the original frame and then working out the ideal head angle, overall width, swingarm position and wheelbase length. Once those measurements were worked out it was a…

The heat on track would have to be quite something to live up to the metrological goings on with temperatures at Imola soaring to over 100°. Fitness, tyres and a host of other factors could play a major part in finding a podium step. Hideo Kanaya, who was leading the World Championship after three rounds, was called away from Europe once again after this round of racing so that he could bag some valuable testing time on a new Yamaha race bike. In the round, Tepi Länsivuori’s efforts got off to a sticky start when he crashed the works Suzuki-4 in the very last practice lap and ended up with a broken left collarbone. The season so far had not been successful at all for Suzuki with Barry Sheene crashing…

RIDER: DON EMDE//YEAR: 1971//CIRCUIT: DONINGTON//CORNER: START/FINISH STRAIGHT//WHEN RACES WERE WON AND LOST BY THE SMALLEST OF MARGINS, THERE'S NO ROOM TO MISS OUT ON ANYTHING THAT COULD GIVE YOU THE UPPER HAND. you cross the line to take the chequered flag. Winning as you do. To carry more fuel than you need is folly. It’s weight you don’t need. It robs you of time. Extra fuel is not your friend. But then... imagine if you run out... Better to be safe than sorry. And then ride it that much harder to make up for the weight penalty brought on for a bit of fuel security. Ride it like the wind, Don. Give ’em’ hell. A racer does everything he can to make sure that he will cross the finish line…

Whenever Ginger Molloy and his mechanic Gary Williams travelled on the Continent they either slept under the stars, between the bikes inside the van, or even on top of the bikes using a thin foam squab laid over them. Sleeping arrangements improved ten-fold however when Ginger’s wife Claire joined the overseas adventures, as they also took along a canvas sheet to tie between two vans! By the time Molloy finished his professional career at the end of 1971, he had amassed an astounding 66 international race victories spanning seven years in Europe and a season in the USA. He also won races in Singapore, Indonesia, Australia and his homeland New Zealand. Ginger Molloy’s success story is one of raw talent on fast bikes, along with rugged determination, a few hair-raising…

Overnight sensation If our Kenny couldn’t pull it off in LA due to being robbed, bad luck, his own poor judgement or whatever else you want to call it, I was about to shock the world of road racing. The 1982 season had been getting increasingly better and it was about to get a whole lot better still when (dad) Mal bought me one of Kawasaki’s factory vans. It had everything and was so good, you wanted to live in it. The awning alone was massive, half the size of any race paddock. To my shock, dad also got me a second-hand, but looking good as new, bike to race – the British-made Armstrong-CCM 250cc fitted with an Austrian Rotax engine. It was the sweetest thing I ever rode. And…

Fifty-five-year-old Fran was one of the most popular faces around the CRMC paddock and was also very well known and respected in her local North Lincolnshire community of Winterton, where she was a councillor and recent mayor. Fran had a long term passion for motorcycles and in middle age was finally able to fulfil her ambition to take up road racing. She did not conform to the traditional image of a road racer, but you underestimated her at your peril! Starting at CRMC Pembrey in 2014 she raced her Yamaha FZ600 in the super competitive Junior Production class and in 2016 added the Honda K4, earning a reputation as a tough competitor and the affectionate nickname of ‘Franimal’. At the CRMC’s 2017 Cadwell Park event she earned the Rider of…