A grid full of scooters

While the scooter racing calendar is in a forced lockdown, we take a nostalgic look back to the 1980s, when the grid was packed with famous names. Stu Owen reflects…

While the current scooter racing calendar is in a forced lockdown, we take a nostalgic look back to the 1980s when the grid was packed with famous names…

This year’s scooter racing programme never really got off the ground, thanks to the current situation the world is in. With race scooters laid up in workshops and garages with nowhere to go, it’s a frustrating time. By now several meetings would have taken place and reports appeared in these very pages. Rather than forget about the world of scooter racing, we have raided the archives to reminisce about days gone by instead, bringing you memories of the 1980s – a time when grids were jampacked and the field ultra-competitive. The first full year of a British scooter racing championship was 1970 and from then on there was no looking back. Racers would come and go and though some did leave the sport, others were ready to take their place. It was a general build-up over the years but with the Mod revival of 1979, it gave a fresh new injection of riders to the race scene. Combined with those who had stuck with it in the 1970s it gave a healthy-looking grid. This peaked towards the end of the 1980s with several hundred licence holders eligible to race.

With the big numbers prepared to battle it out on the track, outright supremacy was the goal. There is no doubt that the likes of Dave Webster ruled certain classes but he didn’t have it all his own way. There were many great and talented riders who showed just how good they were throughout the decade, with many going on to win championships within the class system on the governing body. Dave

Webster was perhaps the one that set the benchmark, the person everyone wanted to beat. Rightly so – but without that person, it’s hard to get such strong competition. This led to tempers reaching boiling point at certain races with accusations of rule-bending, illegal moves out on the track and accusations of just about anything. It all added to the entertainment, with many scooterists eager to go and watch both the racing and the fallout in the pits during each meeting. With teams getting bigger and stronger there was a real sense of excitement being generated, and with development the key in making a race scooter quicker, things moved at a fast pace. The slightest advantage over a rival made all the difference between coming first or second. It was inevitable that the sport would reach a peak at some point, but thankfully a dedicated group has made sure scooter racing continues to this day. Once the lockdown is over and racers can return back to the track don’t forget to go and support them in any way you can. Without them the scooter scene would be that bit smaller, racing playing an important role. For now, have a look at the images and see if you can spot some of the well-known faces that once graced circuits across the UK.

Left: A Group 5 or 6 Lambretta was easily capable of speeds approaching or going over 100mph. Even so, all they had to rely on stopping them back then was a hydraulic version of the Innocenti disc brake and Kawasaki steering dampers. It was this kind of technology that would make its way on to road scooters, showing just how important the race scene was for developing products.

At a time when MSC was a force to be reckoned with both on and off the track, here are Dave Webster with the Lambretta and Norrie Kerr with the Vespa, chatting to each other before the day’s racing started. Norrie takes up his trademark ‘arms folded’ stance.

Extracting the true potential of a two-stroke engine has always been centred around the exhaust system. With strict regulations surrounding the standard classes back then all manner of expansion pipes were created in an attempt to gain more power. As you can see, this resulted in the most complicated of designs.

The almighty scramble to get away from the start line was so important. More so because the first corner could be utter chaos, certainly with cold brakes. This quite often resulted in several riders being unseated from their machines.