Classic Racer

With two-wheeled Grand Prix racing celebrating its 1000th event at Le Mans, here’s the first winner of the 500cc world crown. He was the first of a string of British champions, a remarkable man called Robert Leslie Graham, known as Les… Les Graham’s

Renzo Pasolini was always going to gravitate towards two wheels as his father was already a motorcyclist and Renzo himself was born and raised in Rimini, a part of Italy steeped in motorcycling and motorcycle racing… The young Pasolini showed a sport

Scott Russell was the perfect foil for our own Carl Fogarty back in the early 1990s… Brash, loud, funny, and straight-talking, it’s almost as if both were cut from the same cloth… Of course Foggy was from Blackburn and Scott from East Point, Georgia

The Clubman’s TT was a praiseworthy effort by the ACU and the Manx Government to add a new dimension to the International TT race programme on its reintroduction in 1947. Based as it was on catalogue road and sports machines, there was more than a ‘n

In the early 1950s the world famous Isle of Man TT was regarded as the pinnacle of road-racing and as a colonial boy Hugh Robertson Anderson dreamed of racing there and doing well. All Anderson had to do was grow up, secure a job to buy a bike, learn

I’m sure I’m not telling you anything that you didn’t already know here – but time really does fly, especially as you get older. So, can it really be 18 years since I got the motorcycle journalists’ golden ticket of the day – a chance to ride a full

The premier Grand Prix class had been 500cc since the series started in 1949. Initially four-strokes of various engine configurations dominated the series. In the early 1970s two-strokes started to give the ‘diesels’ a run for their money. By the lat

Silverstone began life as RAF Silverstone in 1943, where Wellington Bomber pilots of No 17 Operational Training Unit trained in night-bombing techniques. After the war the airfield lay derelict for a few years, until, in 1948, the Royal Automobile Cl

On September 29, 2002, riding what was a glorified road bike, Steve Hislop lapped Donington Park faster than Valentino Rossi managed on a priceless Honda RC211V MotoGP bike just a few months earlier. It shouldn’t have been possible, but that didn’t m

“The weirdest experience I had in 1977 was in the south of France,” Steve Parrish recalls. “We were driving from our hotel to Paul Ricard in Barry Sheene’s Rolls-Royce, sitting with Barry and Stephanie and George Harrison, listening to a pre-release

There are lots of different reasons why road riders take up racing, but Gary Lingham’s route into the sport must count as one of the most unusual. “I was riding my Triumph Bonneville in Elephant and Castle, going round the roundabout then down the Ol

For more than 50 years, circuit commentator Fred Clarke provided the soundtrack of British motorcycle racing. He gave the commentary for the on-track action for generations of fans at every level from grassroots club events to the British Superbike C

Bertie the editor has asked me my opinion of racing today. Bloody hell, where do I start without pissing someone off? Firstly, my racing CV: 1972 club racer, 1977 factory rider, 1986 retire. From then (1987) I was race team owner for Loctite Yamaha t