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Category : General Bike Chat
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Category : Racing and Trackdays
John Surtees receives CBE in UK New Year Honours List
John Surtees taken recently at Goodwood
John Surtees, the only man to win World Championships on two wheels and four, has been made a CBE in the UK New Year Honours List for services to motor racing.
The award is presented in the name of reigning British monarch, Queen Elizabeth II, and Surtees is now a ‘Commander of the Order of the British Empire’.
Surtees, 81, enjoyed a stellar motorbike racing career with 38 victories on the international stage, winning the premier 500cc class t**le (now MotoGP) on four occasions between 1956 and 1960, as well as three 350cc championships and six Isle of Man TT wins.
He switched to cars in 1960 – while still winning many top-level motorbike races that year – and continued his phenomenal record of success on four wheels.
His first of six Grand Prix victories came at the Nurburgring in 1963, but his crowning glory was winning the 1964 Formula 1 World Championship with Ferrari.
Surtees then bounced back from a life-threatening sportscar accident at Mosport Park in Canada in 1965 (due to a suspension failure on his Lola) to win the fearsome Can-Am series a year later.
While renowned for his motorbike and F1 achievements, Surtees was also brilliant in the sportscar field, winning the Sebring 12 Hours in 1963, the Nurburgring 1000km twice and the Monza 1000km.
In 1967, he took Honda’s second-ever F1 victory, having split with Ferrari in somewhat acrimonious fashion. It was to be his last F1 World Championship victory.
Surtees founded and drove for his own racing team in 1970, and while he retired from driving in 1972, he took that tenacious spirit into running his own operation.
Mike Hailwood won the 1972 Formula 2 t**le for Team Surtees, but it was disbanded in ’78 due to a lack of finance and John’s health issues.
Surtees remained active in the sport through his son Henry, who was tragically killed in an FIA F2 race at Brands Hatch in 2009. Since then, John has kept Henry’s memory alive through his tireless charity work with the Henry Surtees Foundation.
Already an MBE for his bike racing achievements in 1959, Surtees received an OBE in 2008.
Now a CBE, he is the oldest surviving 500cc/MotoGP champion and F1 World Champion and undoubtedly one of the greatest talents to have graced any grid – be it on two wheels or four.
Surtees (2) at the Ulster Grand Prix.
Source: John Surtees receives CBE in UK New Year Honours List
Category : General Bike Chat
Louis.ie
Category : Racing and Trackdays
TT star John McGuinness to have dedicated mural
TT legend John McGuinness is set to have a special mural made dedicated to his TT race history in his hometown of Morecambe.
Images of the 23-times TT winner will be painted in the style of a newspaper page on the wall of a Morecambe barber shop in the Lancashire town.
John, known as ‘The Morecambe Missile’, told The Morecambe Visitor:
‘The designer has been round to my house with some ideas and it’s going to be really cool. It would be great if it could be done in time for the TT next May.’
In this year’s races, the TT star took home first place trophies in the Pokerstars Senior TT Race and the SES TT Zero Challenge, and smashed the lap record on the second lap of the senior race with a speed of 132.701mph.
As well as this, the motorcycle rider came in fourth place in the RST Superbike TT, seventh in the Monster Energy Supersport TT 1 and eighth in the Supersport TT 2 motorbike races.
The new mural is hoped to draw tourists and motorcycle enthusiasts to the seaside town on their way to the island for the races, which takes place from May 28 to June 10 next year.
The giant collage of images will be drawn by London based illustrator Ben Tallon and is part of an art project called Victoria Press.
Elena Gifford of Deco Publique, co-ordinators of the art project, told The Morecambe Visitor:
‘It’s really important to us that John likes it. He’s been really good at giving us advice and he’s been so supportive.
‘He’s going to help us promote that area to the thousands of people who come to Morecambe.’
The Victoria Press project will tell the story of the town’s history through a series of different artworks.
Each piece will be in the style of a newspaper page as a tribute to the former home of the Morecambe Visitor Newspaper.
The new pieces of artwork aim to transform the look of the town centre to create a heritage attraction to pull people into Morecambe.
Work for the mural dedicated to the TT star is set to begin next year.
Category : General Bike Chat
IOMTT Camping
Category : Biker News
Motorcycle clubs join forces to deter looters in flooded northern towns
MOTORCYCLE clubs in the north of England have been patrolling flood-hit areas to protect homes and business from looting.
Members of clubs including the Pyeratz, Drifters, Broken Bones and Nuntii Mortis have joined forces to deter thieves from stealing possessions left on the street to dry by homeowners.
Flood victims in the Calderdale Valleys area had been posting on Facebook that that, along with having to contend with damaged homes, they also had to deal with looters. Dave Cariss of the Drifters club heard about the residents’ problems and decided to get involved by organizing a patrol with fellow club members.
The response from other local clubs has been similarly positive and up to thirty riders from different clubs have got together during the past week to patrol in 4x4s, vans and cars. Lloyd Spencer of the Drifters said, ‘We spread out and go wherever needed. The police understood what we were doing. We are not there to offer anything physical. We just show our faces. Obviously we are not vigilantes. A lot of us are quite big, chunky lads, so that helps. We don’t have to really say anything, just turn up.’
They’ve been welcomed by local communities, who have been keeping the volunteers fed and watered and have the blessing of the police, who are stretched by the aftermath of storm Frank.
Category : Biker News
CBE for John Surtees
JOHN Surtees – the only man to have won world championships at the top levels on both two and four wheels – has been awarded a CBE (Commander of the Order of the British Empire) in the New Year’s Honours List to recognise his services to motor sport.
Now 81, Surtees won four 500cc champships (1956, 58, 59 and 60) and on the last three occasions also took the 350cc t**le (1958, 59 and 60). For those years he was virtually unbeatable on two wheels. Between the start of 1958 and the end of 1960, he won 32 out of 39 world championship rounds on both 350cc and 500cc machines, including five of the six world championship rounds at the Isle of Man TT during that period.
Swapping to four wheels at the dawn of the 1960s, he worked his way up to a place in the works Ferrari team, where he took the world championship in 1964, and he remains the only man ever to have achieved such success on both two and four wheels.
He later went on to run his own eponymous F1 team, racing in his own cars until hanging up his helmet in 1972.
After the death of Jack Brabham in 2014, Surtees is the oldest living F1 champion, and when Geoff Duke died earlier this year (2015), Surtees also became the oldest surviving motorcycle grand prix champ.
While he was awarded an OBE (Officer of the Order of the British Empire) in 2008 – and the CBE is a step up from that – many are likely to see it as unfair that he’s still not ‘Sir’ John Surtees while several rivals including Stirling Moss, Jackie Stewart and Jack Brabham have all been knighted.
Category : Biker News
Fords patented monowheel
FORD has been granted a patent for a wacky design that turns the rear wheel of one of its cars into a self-balancing electric monowheel.
The idea is that you drive your car to a car park somewhere outside of a congested city, remove the rear wheel, attach a seat and handlebars that are carried in the boot and then ride the resulting contraption the last few miles to your destination.
But there seem to be a few disadvantages to the concept. First of all, it means jacking up the car (although the patent suggests a handy, built-in, self-jacking system to achieve this) and then remove the wheel before attaching it to a seat-and-bars unit that fills about half the car’s luggage space. Given that a lot of drivers these days will call the AA rather than change a wheel themselves, the idea of commuters happily removing a wheel and constructing a motorcycle around it at the side of the road seems a bit optimistic.
Of course Honda has already not only explored this idea but put its own solution into production more than 30 years ago. The fold-up Motocompo scooter (1981-83) was designed to go with the Honda City hatchback, fitting perfectly into its boot. The idea never took off, though – perhaps because it meant registering, taxing and insuring two vehicles for a commute that either one could complete on its own.
Surely, given the ready availability of folding electric bicycles, anyone wanting to achieve the two-part commute that Ford envisions can already do so without having to dismantle their car in the process? But what do we know?
