Innehållsförteckning för July - August 2025 från Classic Racer

Is it really 45 years since Kenny Roberts won his final 500cc World Championship? It seems like yesterday. Kenny was at the front of the American revolution in Grand Prix racing, a revolution spearheaded by the likes of Stevie Baker and Pat Hennen – the first American to win a 500cc Grand Prix race. Of course, Kenny had been around for some time before he finally went to Grands Prix full-time in 1978. His mother lied about his age so he could go racing in his teens on the oval dirt-tracks near his Modesto home – California’s dirt-track central. And he was clearly special, becoming Grand National Champion in 1973 – his second year as a senior. It wouldn’t be his last. He finally raced in Europe in 1974, but…

Mick Ofield left his mark on the world of motorcycling for all to see and enjoy. Mick’s work graced our pages for a number of years, and it was the sheer detail in these drawings that impressed. It’s why that – in 2020 – I had to make the change of the Line-Art feature to go to a double page spread from a single page. It was a no-brainer. And it’s why I thought we should see more of Mick’s work over three pages this issue. It would be his eye for detail that would mean he would research thoroughly any subject he was drawing at any given time. His background as a designer surely helped – he earned a degree in product design at Leicester Polytechnic and would work…

Back in 1987 the Bimota YB5 was one of the most amazing, expensive, out-of-this-world and radical motorcycles on the planet. It was fast, real fast. It was draped in the highest specification Grand Prix-quality running gear and it handled like a 250, despite housing the lump of an engine that the mighty Yamaha FJ1200 was at the time. In comparison, the original donor FJ1200 was a boat... well, more like a cruise liner. To carry the maritime metaphor on a little, the Bimota was like a little powerboat with a big motor strapped on the back… Around 38 years later, the YB5 numbers don’t even count but the legend of the bike remains, and with only 208 units originally made, it is as rare as rocking horse poop. So rare,…

VERY MUCH THE WRONG WORDS! Occasionally during commentary, the words that are spoken are not exactly the words as intended. The thoughts that leave your brain, compared to the words that leave your mouth, can sometimes bear little resemblance. It’s because things are going at such breakneck speed… I remember being at a meeting at Brands Hatch, sometime in the 1980s and I thought I would get a bit flash and talk about the art of slipstreaming. So having completed a lengthy description, and feeling somewhat pleased with myself, I can remember then saying: “Here then before you coming out of Clearways, is a perfect example of ‘slipstreaming.’ Yes, that’s Mick Boddice, the nine time TT winner just in front, breaking wind!” And whilst perhaps I shouldn’t mention it, things…

There have been some strange or quirky motorcycles that have become race bikes over the years and BMW has made a few of them. Remember Nick Jefferies riding the TT on the big K100? This one was probably one of the best: The BMW R1100 S Sport BoxerCup. Back in the 1990s, BMW had something of a ‘difficult’ image to contend with. Its road motorcycles were often seen as those ridden by the ‘pipes and slippers’ brigade. Often ex-coppers, sitting bolt upright and attending IAM meetings and sometimes on ex-cop bikes! For those who recalled the 1960s and 1970s and machines like the very sporting R90 S, it was strange how things had turned around for BMW. But that staid image wasn’t going to last long and in 1998 the…

Suzuki had withdrawn from 500cc Grand Prix motorcycle racing at the end of the 1983 season, and, while Rob McElnea struggled through the 1984 season with long-in-the-tooth engines, by 1985 the venerable square-four RG500 was just too old to be truly competitive. The answer was an odd one. Garry Taylor set up the Ciba-Geigy Skoal Bandit team, using all of Suzuki’s old Grand Prix engines and spare parts, but with an experimental chassis. “The Ciba-Geigy bike didn’t feel that different to ride compared to a normal RG500,” McElnea says. “It was a bit more rigid, but not radically different. We had no horsepower though, so I had to ride that bike so hard. Suzuki knew their engines were so old we couldn’t really do much more with them, so they…

This year marks a half-century of excellence from braking giants Brembo as – back in 1975 – they first entered the motorsports arena with Ferrari in Formula 1. The Italian firm linked with the Scuderia Ferrari by supplying their first cast iron discs in F1, and then, a year later, got involved in the highest form of motorcycle racing: 500cc Grands Prix. 1976 was the year in which Brembo began supplying brake calipers to the Suzuki-Gallina Team. The team, led by former racer Roberto Gallina, won their first race in 1978 using Brembo products. The 1980s were to be their most successful, winning the 1981 and 1982 500cc World Championships with Marco Lucchinelli and Franco Uncini. That decade would also be a period of excitement and innovation, during which Brembo…

Tony Jefferies had just crashed out of a race at Mallory Park in 1972 when he heard his name being called over the Tannoy, asking him to go back to his car immediately. “When I got there, Pauline said her waters had broken,” Tony Jefferies explained before he passed away in 2021. “Me knowing nothing about such things, I said: ‘Is that important?’ Once she explained that the baby was on its way, I said: ‘You can’t have it here, we’re in bloody Leicestershire – he won’t be able to play cricket for Yorkshire! And he won’t be able to win the Eddie Flintoff Trophy in the Scott trial! We’ve got to get back to Yorkshire for the birth!’” Easier said than done. “The first problem was that you had…

Every era of grand prix racing has its nearly-men: Those that come so close to reaching the peak in the top class but never seem to get there. Dani Pedrosa is one such rider. Dani would be runner-up in 2007, 2010 and 2012 in the MotoGP class where he’d net an impressive 31 victories with 112 visits to the podium. So why did he fail to make that final step? Luck played its part, as did his physical size. If he’d been born into an earlier era, you can imagine Dani would have perhaps stayed in the smaller classes and dominated, perhaps even coming close to the likes of Angel Nieto and Giacomo Agostini (13 and 15 world titles.) His size (160cm/5ft 2in and around 53 kilos/117lb) was perfect for…

There’s nothing like racing success to create a motorcycling legend. For Honda’s widely-acclaimed CB400 Four, which had first appeared in UK showrooms early in 1975, there could be no better confirmation than a popular victory in the production race at the following year’s John Player British Grand Prix held at Silverstone. Tony Rutter, a double Isle of Man TT winner and seasoned racer on 250cc and 350cc Yamahas, had been campaigning the CB400 Four prepared by south London dealer Mocheck since the previous summer. Few would have backed the likeable Brummie to win on the little Honda against the bigger bikes, despite the race being a handicap event. While the riders of the faster heavyweights had to cover 12 laps, the 500cc riders had to cover one lap less, the…

Racing is a passion and a bug that is hard to shift, isn’t it? And so I’ve found over the last few years. It’s more than 20 years now since I started racing, primarily with Bemsee in MiniTwins, then Thunderbike Sport and onto Thunderbike Extreme. I’ve also done some land-speed record stuff and had a go at classic endurance racing, however, over the last few years, with a growing family, money etc. my racing had been put on the back-burner. Then, a few years ago I found I had a bit more free time and a bit of disposable cash. Hmmm… what should I do? Eventually, I thought I’d dip a toe back in the racing water and do a few rounds and enjoy getting a bike back on track.…