10 To Remember
10 TO REMEMBER
Our Picks for the 10 best motorcycle races ever seen
1921 Brooklands 500-mile race
Brooklands was the first purpose-built racetrack in the world, and it was Freddie Dixon’s gritty performance there that made this particular event memorable. In practice, Dixon found his 989cc Vee-Twin Harley so difficult to ride that he stuck a sheet of emery paper to the seat just so he could stay in the saddle. But within 100 miles, the abrasive had worn through his leathers and into his cheeks. After a quick stop to tear off the offending paper, Dixon roared back out, taking the lead at about 200 miles. But then his front tire came off the rim, tumbling him to the tarmac at 90 mph. He put the tire back on with his hands, rode to the pits, installed another, and rejoined the race to finish second, helping make it an American 1-2-3 sweep.
1959 Ascot Half-Mile
Second-year Expert Sammy Tanner, The Flyin’ Flea, almost didn’t make the field for the first National ever
held at Ascot. Tanner and his Triumph Twin were the last to go through the pit gate, and he was the last rider to transfer to the Main. That put him in last place on the grid (there were no semis then) for the 8mile final that saw National Numbers 1 through 6—Carroll Resweber, Dick Klamfoth, AÍ Gunter, Brad Andres, Johnny Gibson and Don Hawley—on the front row. Tanner dug deep to put on a superhuman effort as he clawed his way through the entire field to win. His charge thrilled more than the crowd, though; afterward, race promoter J.C. Agajanian ran to the pits and carried Tanner bodily to the winner’s circle.
1958 San Jose Mile
Miles are known for close racing, but the ’58 San Jose event had all the earmarks of a barroom brawl in a broom closet. The 25-lap final, with Don Hawley and Carroll Resweber on factory Harley-Davidsons and Sammy Tanner and Everett Brashear on BSA Gold Stars, saw the lead change
hands 55 times. On the last lap, Hawley drove in underneath Resweber in the first turn, but drifted out, taking Resweber with him. Brashear dove for the inside and Tanner followed right on his heels, placing l-2, with Resweber and Hawley 3-4. A mere two bikelengths separated the four at the flag.
1967 Isle of Man Senior TT
Riding against the clock, Mike Hailwood, on his fast but foul-handling Honda 500 Four, started first, but Giacomo Agostini (on his 25th birthday) and his more nimble MV Triple took a near-12-second lead on the first lap. Hailwood, hindered by a loose throttle, whittled away at Ago’s advantage, clearing spectators from the sides of the 37.9-mile circuit with the antics of his wobbling Honda. After a third-lap pit stop, Ago stretched his lead to 13 seconds, but Hailwood came back to lead on lap five. On the sixth and last lap, Ago led again, but his chain broke,
handing victory to Hailwood, who barely finished, his Honda sputtering and its twistgrip spinning on the handlebar.
1971 Loudon Roadrace
Although Yamaha’s Kel Carruthers and BSA’s Dick Mann established an early lead, H-D teamster Mark Brelsford caught them with 13 laps remaining, and the trio slugged it out, riding three abreast in parts of the track that should have held only two. Through a right-hand turn on the last lap, Carruthers collided with Don Castro, almost crashing them both. Brelsford, seeing the win in his grasp, gassed it, throwing him into a lurid, feet-off-the-pegs slide. Both recovered, but in the last corner Brelsford stuffed a backmarker, who put Carruthers—feet-up and sliding—offline. Brelsford led to the finish for his sole National roadrace win, with only a bikelength separating him, Carruthers and Mann.
1975 Indy Mile
In a bid to retain his Number l plate, Kenny Roberts rode the ’75 Indy Mile on a Yamaha dirt-tracker powered by a four-cylinder, twostroke, 120-hp TZ750 roadrace engine. The bike was so unmanageable that, despite having much more straightaway speed than everyone else, Roberts spent most of the race mired in the pack, clipping haybales while trying to tame the creature. Still, using the high groove, he was able to close on the leaders, H-D riders Jay Springsteen and Corky Keener-although a win looked impossible. Almost a straightaway behind as he began the last lap, Roberts somehow found enough traction to slingshot past both astonished Harley riders for the win. After the race, Roberts said, “They don’t pay me enough to ride that thing.” And fourcylinder dirt-trackers were banned at the end of the season.
1977 Sears Point
The racing only lasted four laps, but in those four, Kenny Roberts and his OW31 Yamaha put on a show that left spectators slack-jawed. Stuck in last place on the grid, and still recovering from a hand injury and the flu, Roberts erupted when the flag dropped, and stormed through the pack like a man possessed. He passed half the field before reaching Turn 1 ; by Turn 4, he’d passed 29 of the 34 riders. By the second lap, he was in fourth, and dispatched Dale Singleton and Gary Nixon. He then erased teammate Skip Aksland’s lead within a lap, passed him and led the rest of
the way to the checkered flag. That race alone would have made Roberts a roadracing legend, even if he had not gone on to become world champion.
1978 Superbowl
In front of 80,000 people in the L.A. Coliseum, reigning Supercross champ Bob Hannah got a miserable, next-to-last start for the 20-lap final. But within six laps, he berserked through the field to fifth before sailing off the track and losing three positions. A lap later, he crashed with three other riders, but got up and soon moved into fourth. Riding wildly, often with his feet off the pegs and flailing in the air, he forced his way to second and began pressuring Yamaha teammate Mike Bell for the lead. Hannah’s reckless passion caught up with him again on the last lap when he hit a haybale with his shoulder, then fell halfway off the bike while leaping off the peristyle jump, grazing one of the Coliseum’s stone columns. He barely slowed, but lost just enough time to give Bell the win by a few scant feet.
1983 Spanish GP
season, it was only in Spain that Kenny Roberts and Freddie Spencer fought on equal footing throughout the race—and fight they did. Spencer took the point on lap three and had a good lead by the time Roberts worked his way to second on lap five. But KR caught and passed him by lap nine, and the two cleared off from the pack, tied together for the remaining 55 miles in the Spanish heat. A few laps before the checkers, a slower rider blocked Roberts, and Spencer swept by again to lead; the same thing happened to KR again on the last lap, and he lost to Spencer by only a few bikelengths. Afterward, an exhausted, Spencer admitted, “That was the hardest race of my life.” Roberts said, “That’s the hardest I’ve seen someone ride on the last lap to beat me.”
1986 Anaheim Supercross
These guys were teammates? David Bailey and Rick Johnson might have been wearing Honda colors, but they rode like they had a score to settle. For most of the 20-lap Main they fought handlebar-to-handlebar, annihilating the rest of the field. On the verge of crashing throughout their high-speed scrap, they swapped the lead a half a dozen times, each one upping the ante, fighting over every inch of the racetrack and soaring like eagles over the track’s high-altitude triple-jump. At 17 laps, Bailey managed to eke out a slight lead over Johnson, and that’s how they finished. Nineteen other riders also finished the Main that night, but their presence on the track was barely noticed by the full-house crowd.
