Innehållsförteckning för September - October 2021 från Classic Racer

With MotoGP being a somewhat sterile environment at the moment, we here at CR love to look back at some of the more colourful characters from Grand Prix racing. And they didn’t come more colourful than Marco Lucchinelli… Marco would take his only 500cc Grand Prix title in 1981 – 40 years ago this year – but he was a multiple world champion of fun: it has often been said that while he could ‘sometimes’ out-ride his rivals he could ‘always’ out-party them. But don’t let the party animal image fool you – ‘Lucky’ as he was called, was also a shrewd racer. Starting out aged 20 – an age most of the current crop of riders would have been going for at least a decade – Lucchinelli was on…

Yvon Duhamel’s first – and long overdue – win in the 1973 AMA National Championship season came at Charlotte in North Carolina where he rode a smart and consistent race to lead from flag to flag and won at a 103mph average: classy. Then, in the final race of a season where the Kawasaki 750cc triples had finally really emphasised their superiority, he led Gary Nixon and Art Baumann home in a 1-2-3 success at Ontario Motor Speedway in California. It was a great and dominant victory for Kawasaki at the team’s home race but as they celebrated the win, little did the riders and crew realise that it was the last one that they would celebrate for almost two years. The four cylinder Yamaha TZ750 racers appeared for the…

Despite every weather agency in the country predicting heavy rain showers, Cadwell Park bathed in sunshine for much of this mouthwatering race weekend. This meant that – for both competitors and the strong turnout of spectators – both could enjoy two days of close racing under near ideal conditions. Cadwell’s great history, challenging undulations and wonderful scenery coupled with the dearth of racing over the last 18 months meant that the grids were packed with competitors from far and wide and it was particularly gratifying to see such a big turnout in the sidecar class. The 38-race programme catered for 125cc to 1300cc classic and post classic bikes including production, specials and Grand Prix machinery with four races for every CRMC class and the third rounds of this season’s 350/500…

Phil Hacker is a name well known in the world of racing and that of Yamaha’s FJ series of sports-tourer motorcycles. Yes, Phil’s skills built this amazing machine, which even he says “is the FJ Yamaha could and should have built!” So, let’s have a look at the spec. First off, if you need proof of the power available from this lump, this has seen 162bhp at 9750rpm on the dyno and it weighs just 196 kilos. It didn’t all start at that level, though… five years or so of hard graft got Phil a very powerful and reliable machine. Internally, you’ve got Wiseco high compression pistons, and the head is skimmed and gas-flowed. Meanwhile, Cosworth camshafts provide more lift and duration to the bigger valves. A Dyna ignition kit…

Mick Hemmings, legendary racer and tuner, passed away on May 17, 2021 and still managed to get a ‘final lap’ in of Silverstone circuit in June. Mick’s final lap was in a private ambulance, driven around Silverstone for two ‘spirited’ laps on Friday June 4. At the wheel was his best friendTim Abbott and also aboard were son Steve and Mick’s great pal Keith Huewen. Wife Angie looked on, happy that one of Mick’s wishes would be fulfilled, one which was made more than 30 years previously withTim at a clay pigeon shoot. Mick was a legend. He joined the motorcycle trade in 1959 and worked in a number of Northamptonshire motorcycle dealers. In 1969 he bought his first Norton Commando – it was a crashed and sorry-looking machine, but…

A profile of 1950’s Norton works rider Ray Amm in the 1960 publication ‘The BP Book of Motorcycle Racing’ ends with the words: ‘…his star may only have shone for a short time, but it shone very brightly.’Those words of appreciation could equally have been applied to one of Amm’s contemporaries in the Lightweight and Ultra-Lightweight classes, Werner Haas. Haas’s name will forever be associated with NSU, for whom he rode from his introduction to the team in 1952 through until his retirement at the end of 1954. In that short time he won three world championships, in 1953 becoming the first German to win a world title, in fact ‘doppelweltmeister’, or double world champion, in the two lightweight classes. Werner Haas was born on May 30, 1927, in Augsburg,…

For the first time since 2017, the Bob Smith Spring Cup was held at the legendary Scarborough road-race circuit of Oliver’s Mount. And while the number of spectators was restricted due to the ongoing Covid/social distancing measures, the bumper entry of ‘race-starved racers’ gave the enthusiastic ‘race-starved crowd’ a weekend of top class entertainment! But – of course – this is north eastern England and the omens were not good on the Friday as a torrential monsoon-like weather system swept over the picturesque seaside mountain course. Then the road-race gods smiled and apart from a damp track on Saturday morning and a few light showers on Sunday the weather played ball and spectacular action was seen in all classes. First an update: sadly there will only be two meetings at…

There was a time when the Suzuka 8 Hours was the most important race on the calendar for the Japanese factories. This shows in the list of winners – many were the various factories’ golden boys of the time, which is why it reads like a roll-call of the great and the good, from both two-stroke and four-stroke racing: Wayne Gardner, Eddie Lawson, Mick Doohan, Wayne Rainey, Aaron Slight, Scott Russell, Fred Merkel, Kevin Magee, Colin Edwards… And, Valentino Rossi. Interestingly, Rossi actually WANTED to race the 8 Hours, when previous Grand Prix legends would see it as an unwelcome distraction to the real aim of 500cc championship glory, especially with the fact that most 8 Hours were held in 35°C heat with 80% humidity. But Rossi – ever a…

Even by the standards of Italy’s array of little-known marques that have contested Grand Prix racing down the years, Sanvenero’s meteoric rise to success exactly 40 years ago in 1981, and his equally sudden burnout into bankruptcy the following year, takes some beating… For in that short space of time, the company, based on Italy’s Adriatic coast in Pesaro – one of the hotbeds of Italian motorcycling down the ages as the home of Benelli, Morbidelli, MBA, RTM, Ringhini, TM and others – succeeded in registering three GP victories: one of them in the prestigious 500cc class, another a 125cc 1-2 team finish, and placing two riders in the top five of the end-of-season World Championship points table. Not so shabby! The team’s founder was construction magnate Emilio Sanvenero, who…

IN DE TA IL : Politics have always been a part of the racing scene, usually the average fan is unaware of the ‘goings on’, but sometimes political decisions affect what is seen on the racetrack.The birth of the RS54 was the result of such a decision. Just before the Second World War broke out, Germany was dominating the European Championships and GPs with their 500cc BMW RS255 Kompressor (supercharged) machines. Germany’s Nazi party, to show national superiority through race wins, heavily subsidised the factory effort. After the war the newly formed FIM banned supercharging from their fledgling World Championship series.This decision penalised both German and Italian factories (the losing sides), forcing new machine development. Work began on a replacement for the RS255 in 1950, when BMW was allowed to…

Welcome to a new section called ‘Back in the Day’. We want to see your old photographs from way back when... They could be of you racing, or meeting your racing idol – or maybe just snaps you’ve taken at a race event from yesteryear. Be mindful of copyright, though! We hope to have a prize for the best from the next issue. Send them to: BSimmonds@mortons.co.uk BERTIE SIMMONDS SAYS: “Well, I figured I’d show you the sort of thing we are after this issue, but don’t worry – I’m not going to win anything and no, this isn’t vanity publishing! So, I only raced four times – and loved it! To be fair, this was at a time (2004) when I was ‘fast’, but that word is only comparative…