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You might not agree with what I am about write here, however I believe it to be true.
By Alan Cotterell
I watched Geoff Duke race the Gilera 4 at Fisherman’s Bend in 1954. I was thirteen, standing beside my uncle, and I was hooked forever. Duke didn’t just ride—he orchestrated. The Gilera four-cylinder was a symphony of engineering, and Duke conducted it with throttle and lean. That moment rewired something in me. I wasn’t watching a sport—I was decoding a system.
Decades later, I watched Spirit of Speed, a film about Australian motorcycle road racing in the 1950s and ’60s. I recognised some of the top riders. I’d seen them in real time, long before they were mythologised. That recognition wasn’t nostalgic—it was patterned. It reminded me that I’d been apprenticed to fluency before I had words for it.
John Surtees came later. I recently watched Built For Speed, and learned that his ambition was to beat Duke—which he did. Surtees wasn’t just a rider; he was a builder, a systems thinker. One of my friends knew him in England. I have a DVD of him racing in Australia, signed. That signature isn’t memorabilia—it’s a talisman. It dignifies the kind of racing I pursued: thoughtful, calibrated, and fluent.
Surtees once built a Mk3 Seeley AJS 7R—a very good way to go. His mindset mirrored mine. Racing wasn’t just about speed. It was about improving the motorcycle and reading the dogfight. A good bike makes a good rider. But bad bikes? They teach you to listen, to feel, to improve. The dogfights weren’t distractions—they were diagnostics.
The most valuable lesson I ever learned came from a single ride on a 1961 500cc Manx Norton. It didn’t increase its lean when gassed. That defied the orthodoxy. More lean doesn’t get you around corners faster—that’s bullshit. A bike that stays more vertical allows safer, earlier power application. If it oversteers, it can be ridden full blast from very early in corners. But only if the power delivery is smooth. A bump in torque mid-corner? That’s not just a technical hiccup—it’s a crash waiting to happen.
In 1963, everything changed. Yamaha’s two-strokes began beating the Nortons. But it wasn’t because they handled better. They demanded a different kind of fluency: smooth, fast riding at high lean angles. You couldn’t gas them mid-corner. Their power delivery was binary, not graduated. They rewarded precision, not improvisation. It wasn’t evolution—it was divergence.
And here’s the truth most riders miss: gassing a motorcycle harder does not cause more lean. Lean is dictated by steering geometry. If a bike needs to be counter-steered to tip into corners, that’s understeer—often caused by reduced rake and trail. If you gas that bike hard mid-corner, it will tend to run wide. The geometry resists the line.
But there’s another way. It should be possible to flick the bike into corners while braking and almost immediately gas it. My Seeley 850 is like that. It’s a machine that rewards fluency, not fear. Normally, no sane person would do it. But fluency isn’t about sanity—it’s about knowing when the machine is ready to dance.
Racing taught me to listen. To read. To rebuild. I didn’t chase trophies—I chased fluency. And I still do
By Alan Cotterell
I watched Geoff Duke race the Gilera 4 at Fisherman’s Bend in 1954. I was thirteen, standing beside my uncle, and I was hooked forever. Duke didn’t just ride—he orchestrated. The Gilera four-cylinder was a symphony of engineering, and Duke conducted it with throttle and lean. That moment rewired something in me. I wasn’t watching a sport—I was decoding a system.
Decades later, I watched Spirit of Speed, a film about Australian motorcycle road racing in the 1950s and ’60s. I recognised some of the top riders. I’d seen them in real time, long before they were mythologised. That recognition wasn’t nostalgic—it was patterned. It reminded me that I’d been apprenticed to fluency before I had words for it.
John Surtees came later. I recently watched Built For Speed, and learned that his ambition was to beat Duke—which he did. Surtees wasn’t just a rider; he was a builder, a systems thinker. One of my friends knew him in England. I have a DVD of him racing in Australia, signed. That signature isn’t memorabilia—it’s a talisman. It dignifies the kind of racing I pursued: thoughtful, calibrated, and fluent.
Surtees once built a Mk3 Seeley AJS 7R—a very good way to go. His mindset mirrored mine. Racing wasn’t just about speed. It was about improving the motorcycle and reading the dogfight. A good bike makes a good rider. But bad bikes? They teach you to listen, to feel, to improve. The dogfights weren’t distractions—they were diagnostics.
The most valuable lesson I ever learned came from a single ride on a 1961 500cc Manx Norton. It didn’t increase its lean when gassed. That defied the orthodoxy. More lean doesn’t get you around corners faster—that’s bullshit. A bike that stays more vertical allows safer, earlier power application. If it oversteers, it can be ridden full blast from very early in corners. But only if the power delivery is smooth. A bump in torque mid-corner? That’s not just a technical hiccup—it’s a crash waiting to happen.
In 1963, everything changed. Yamaha’s two-strokes began beating the Nortons. But it wasn’t because they handled better. They demanded a different kind of fluency: smooth, fast riding at high lean angles. You couldn’t gas them mid-corner. Their power delivery was binary, not graduated. They rewarded precision, not improvisation. It wasn’t evolution—it was divergence.
And here’s the truth most riders miss: gassing a motorcycle harder does not cause more lean. Lean is dictated by steering geometry. If a bike needs to be counter-steered to tip into corners, that’s understeer—often caused by reduced rake and trail. If you gas that bike hard mid-corner, it will tend to run wide. The geometry resists the line.
But there’s another way. It should be possible to flick the bike into corners while braking and almost immediately gas it. My Seeley 850 is like that. It’s a machine that rewards fluency, not fear. Normally, no sane person would do it. But fluency isn’t about sanity—it’s about knowing when the machine is ready to dance.
Racing taught me to listen. To read. To rebuild. I didn’t chase trophies—I chased fluency. And I still do
