English Bikes, Italian Passion
English Bikes, Italian Passion
RAT packs racetrack
Mark Hoyer
There is a certain flexibility to the Italian attitude toward life that makes things run smoothly despite an appearance of chaos and total disregard for rules and regulations.
This was plainly evident at the Italian arm of Rider’s Association of Triumph, or RAT, which held its annual Triumph Day at Autodromo Riccardo Paletti Varano, near Parma, just up the road from Modena, home of Ferrari, and Bologna, Ducati HQ. But as the official paperwork said, “Only Triumph motorcycles will be allowed through the paddocks.” About 1000 people showed up with all manner of Hinckley Triumphs (only saw one Meriden bike the whole weekend).
There was a race, but the race wasn’t really a race, because if it were actually a race, the Italian motorcycle federation would have had to been involved and that costs crazy money, so that certain flexibility of Italian attitudes allowed that there would be a group of people riding on the track as fast as they could and that perhaps there also would be an excellent accounting of times and running order, and even some prize-giving at the end, but luckily we weren’t actually racing, so everything was perfetto.
The non-race was one of endurance, and I was teamed up with two other scribes from English newspapers. We each rode our own bike for three 10-minute stints and swapped a team vest at every pit stop. I qualified us 12th on a rather blatant Thruxton Cup racer, while Rohit Jaggi of The Financial Times rode a Daytona 675 and Jane Omorogbe, writing for the Sun, took the controls of a Speed Triple. Jaggi’s job is pretty cool. He is the motorcycle and aircraft tester for the paper. As for Omorogbe, she used to be known as Rio on the TV show “Gladiators” but has since moved on to pit reporting at British Superbike races and other work. Anyway, we got royally spanked in the race against all the Italian Cup regulars (full grids of 20-30 Thruxton and Speed Triple racers at every round), but luckily it wasn’t a race so we didn’t actually lose, even though we finished seventh.
The rest of the weekend was just cruising the paddock saying Ciao to everybody and checking out the huge variety of customized Triumphs, with major emphasis on Speed Triples. Oh, yeah, and there was a righteous paddock party on Saturday night with all kinds of homemade food, wine and grappa, proving that Italians don’t just have a passion for Triumphs. -Mark Hoyer
For more on Italy’s Triuimph Day and a photo gallery, go to www.cycleworld.com
