Motorcycle road racing - smoothness and knowledge

I was watching the video Doug MacRae's ride on the Commando at Mosport. It was a very good ride. I think there are two very important factors relevant to winning road races - smooth riding and knowledge about machine preparation and race tactics. From what have read and from watching the documentaries about Surtees, he was older than Hailwood. He helped Hailwood get started in road racing even to the extent of donating a very good race bike. I have only two videos which show them racing. In both of them they easily take the outside line around other riders when approaching corners, which is something many of us would not choose to do. Personally I always choose to go under rather than over.

Fun videos, Alan. I'd been racing my Norton for 5 or 6 years in 1978, the year of the Mallory Park video, and those guys were the riders we all aspired to be like back then.

Ken

When I first started racing, a much older rider told me 'you need a lot of racing miles under your belt and the bike has to do something for you'. I suggest that even if you looked carefully at Surtees' or Hailwood's bikes, you would not see a difference from most other bikes. However I'm certain the differences are there. If you have the mindset that the bike is perfect and you can do anything with it, you will be very fast. I helped Hailwood when he raced Dunster's Manx at Winton in the 70s. All I can remember was that he was super-smooth and extremely confident and competent. He rode through the corners as though they were not there. With him, it was all tucked in at all times - no hanging-off antics whatsoever. He won extremely easily, even though his clutch was probably still slipping after we fixed it. I once had a conversation with Hugh Anderson from New Zealand. He said 'on your day, when you are good, nobody can beat you'.

I did not see Surtees race in Australia. But my friend was in that race shown in the video. He was a very good A-grader and had raced internationally. He got nowhere near Surtees. If you notice, in that video the guys who were near him were Jackie Saunders and Alan Burt. Both were international riders with loads of experience. If you road race yourself, I suggest you should talk to a few of the top riders. Some of them are compulsive obsessive, but most will talk if approached in the right way. You can learn a lot. Surtees and Hailwood were obviously way above the level most of us can aspire to.

acotrel, Thanks, That was fun!

Having fun is what racing is all about. When it stops being fun, we lose the urge to continue doing it. These days I often find I have to walk away, then come back and start afresh.

I have fun all the time on my Norton or any other bike without going near a race track and smoothness as well as knowledge also play a big part on the road if you want the bess out of your bikes, I have been riding with mates for over 45 years now and we are always trying to out do the other and we all know where the good corners are coming up, but I have to out think them as they have more powerfull bikes than my own to get into the corners first.
Mike the bike I was a big fan of him.

Ashley

I don't usually ride motorcycles on public roads because you cannot use them there in the way they were intended to be used. If you did that, the cops would jump all over you, so it becomes extremely frustrating. There is a group of old A-grade road racers in the north-east suburbs of Melbourne who go out for Sunday rides together. It is about egos and out-braking each other - silly stuff and dangerous, but I like their style. They go up around Warburton and the Black Spur where there are really twisty roads- those places are often full of Sunday drivers. One of the worst things about where I live, is there are very few roads with lots of bends. When I first came here, I had an RD250LC Yamaha. Sitting on it droning along our roads which are mostly straight was not very interesting. However I once rode it way over the back across one mountain at race speed, which was bit interesting. One of the guys who was with me got knocked off his bike by the mirrors of a utility truck which was coming the other way. He was a bit in front of me because I'd been held up. As I came around a corner going very quickly, he was picking himself up off the road and I rode around him.

Well Alan thats your opinion on riding on public roads, where I live on the North side of Brisbane its only a 15 minute ride to get out into the ranges and twisty roads we have some of the best outer roads here but we even go further out no cops ever, yes they hit all the close roads on Sundays where all the normal bikers ride but we go further out, keep off the main roads, we have been doing this for over 43 years now and know some great riding roads in the S.E corner of the state, a lot of the popular mountian roads are getting hit hard by the cops because of all the boy racer crashing at high speeds but where we go they have left us alone but these days I do a lot of riding mid week on the popular mountian roads when not many bikes around and of course no coppers.
I am a full time biker and it would put me in a early grave if I couldn't ride my bike anytime I felt like it, taking a new 1200 Thruxton for a test ride today my mate work at the local Triumph dearlership and he does the test rides so its going to be a good long ride, I am rebuilding his Norton motor at the moment, I have only had my Thruxton for 5 year now and has well over 50k on it, you can't do that on a track, I do more miles on my bikes than I do in any car.

Ashley

I wish we had roads like that around Benalla. There are only a couple I can think of and you need to ride a long way to get to them. Most of our roads are straight and end with right-angle street-corner bends. And they always go somewhere, so there is always traffic. Sometimes you might find a sweeping bend out in the middle of nowhere, but you could never set up and blast through them safely. you would be going miles too quickly.. In the old days around Melbourne, I could take the race bike out on the public roads and give it a blast. Sadly, those days are over.

S.E.Queensland has some of the best mountain range roads In Australia, but even from the state boarder all the way to the top of our state the Great Divide is not far from the coast and where ever you travel here there will always be a mountain road that has tight twisty corners to long fast corners, I went exploring one day on my Thruxton and turned off one of out great riding roads from Malaney to Woodford and found a road that was so tight in the corners with fast short straights and very steep decends and the road was in good condition but not well used, I had a big workout on that road and it ended back out on the road I started on just near one of my mate's farm.
A few weeks later I took my mates on that road and even my mate that lived in the area didn't even know about this road, they were amazed in how tight some of the corners were with quire a few hair pin corners and short straights, the funny thing about this road it was about 20 ks in distant, went no where, was no houses or farms off it, it was a road in the middle of nowhere in a very hilly area with hardly anyone ever driving on it, it had concrete barriers on the tight corners, lots of deadbry on the bitumen from lack of use, but it was so much fun riding on it, to this day I still wonder why this road was ever built and a lot of money was put into it to be unused, even google maps was hard to see this road as lot of cover from the bush around it.
Would make a great speed trial circuit or drift car circuit, but I am not going to tell anyone about except for my riding mates.

Ashley

I was in North Queensland when I was a kid. A lot of the roads were built by the Yanks during WW2. You might find the site of an old training centre somewhere near your road.

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