Welcome to Best of the Rest, an idea we’re trying out at CMG.
We’re not shifting towards becoming content curators; the plan is to still provide original content from the worlds of racing, adventure riding and general motorcycling news, like we always have. We just figured our readers might enjoy reading the same stories we enjoy reading, so we’re experimenting with the idea of a once-a-week collection of stories from other publications, with the sole aim of sharing the fun.
Check out the links, read the articles, and let us know if this format works, or could be tweaked.
Motorcyclist – Mann’s Machine: Dick Man’s Matchless G50 Roadracer
Team Obsolete has a collection of classic race bikes with rich histories, and they’re not afraid to flog them around a track. But where do these machines come from? Wouldja believe, under a pile of scrap metal?
Here’s Motorcyclist Magazine’s tale of the Matchless G50 roadracer Dick Mann rode to win the 1963 AMA Grand National Championship. After Mann raced the bike, it passed through a series of hands, ending up underneath a pile of mufflers behind a garage. Team Obsolete’s Rob Iannucci, then an assistant DA, scraped up the cash to buy the roadracer chassis and other assorted parts in 1976.
It wasn’t restored until the 2000s, because it was in so many pieces, but Team Obsolete accomplished their task, even maintaining Mann’s original custom gearbox ratios on the bike and installing other trick pieces that Mann himself built, including wheels and triple clamps. It’s a great story, and if you’ve got a half-completed project lying around, maybe you’ll finally find the motivation to finish what’s surely an easier job than this task.
Motorcycle.com – MO Interview: Eddie Lawson
MO’s John Burns got the chance to sit down with Eddie Lawson and interview the man who won at every level he raced at, including four MotoGP titles. What would Steady Eddie have done, if he hadn’t been a motorcycle racer? Easy, Lawson says — he would have raced cars.
These days, a lot of older race fans bemoan the intrusion of traction control and other electronics into roadracing. It’s interesting to see Lawson’s take on technology and racing; he isn’t a fan, and he backs that up by continuing to flog around a no-frills bike at a motorcross park — a Yamaha YZ250F. It figures that the man who learned his craft while flat tracking, and won so many times with Yamaha, is still riding a Yamahammer in the dirt. Give it a read.
Cycle World – MotoGP Tech Update: Keeping the Fuel Cool
One of MotoGP’s arbitrary restrictions on its riders is a 20-litre fuel limit this season. Obviously, teams want to conserve every precious drop of those 20 litres, to ensure bikes don’t run out of fuel mid-race. So how do they do that?
In this piece, Cycle World’s Scott Jones looks at the various tricks in a MotoGP team’s arsenal; whether it’s clamping breather hoses, cooling fuel or other devious ploys, the top minds of motorcycling are always figuring out how to manage even the smallest variables in their quest towards victory.
Motorcyclist – Left Turn or Right Turn: Which is Your Bad Side?
Keith Code has run one of the most influential superbike training schools for many years now — he understands the mechanics of high-speed riding at a level many people will never reach. In this column, he digs into the question of why some riders have “unidirectional phobia,” turning faster in one direction than the other.
His answer? There are many factors that can skew a rider’s perception of turning, whether it’s a mental hangup, lack of skills, etc. However, there’s only one way to deal with the issue: Training. Code has a few different recommendations for breaking the curse, some of which you can practice by yourself in a parking lot, cheap as free.
Unidirectional phobia? I had this problem.