Two-strokes is all it takes
If Carlsberg did old school trackdays, they wouldn’t even come close to this…
It doesn’t take much persuasion to get me up to Cadwell Park for a play, so when I heard through the grapevine that Classic Bike Trackdays had teamed up with Team Classic Suzuki and Suzuki Vintage parts to put on an event aimed at any Suzuki machine manufactured before 2000 I was straight on the phone to book a place. These are my kind of events, and to make things even better there was the promise of pukka classic race bikes being ridden as well as on display, alongside famous faces galore and a load of trade stands.
As it happened, Dangerous himself would also be in attendance to ride the Team Classic Suzuki XR69 race bike (which I wasn’t jealous of at all) so I agreed to pick him up en route; I even trusted him to sit in a front seat like a grown up. We arrived bright and early, the weather was stunning and it was immediately clear this wasn’t going to be your average track day. There was already the smell of freshly burnt two-stroke in the air. Suzuki technicians were everywhere, tending to bikes, and old racers were squeezing themselves into their well-recognised leathers.
After unloading and getting set up it was down to the restaurant for briefing and the obligatory bacon butty. I was itching to get out on track; however things didn’t go quite to plan on that front, as my silly turbo engine decided to give up the ghost within just a few laps in a fairly terminal manner leaving me to park it in the naughty corner. A day of watching wouldn’t be so bad anyway, and I was set to have a session out later on one of the Suzuki Vintage Parts-built bikes, but after hearing I had killed my bike Tim Davies (Vintage Parts Head Honcho) told me to use their bike as much as I wanted – and I duly obliged, only giving it back when it started running out of fuel at the end of the day. I thoroughly enjoyed myself, and judging by how busy it was and the amount of smiles on show, so did everyone else. I can’t wait till the next one.
And it was the bikes that made things so special; there was everything from full on race exotica to pristine examples of sports mopeds to gawk at, and pretty much all of the bikes there were fully functioning and could be seen tearing round throughout the day. Among the many bikes on display were numerous 500 GP bikes of all ages including Kenny Roberts’ GP-winning RGV (you have probably realised this by now), the Classic TT XR69, an XR41 and an Alstare GSX-R1000 WSB. The Suzuki Vintage Parts team had a raft of bikes they have built on show as well, including a Katana Endurance Race Bike, an all original GSXR 750F, a fully restored GSXR 1100L and a near as dammit brand spanking new TL1000S. There was seemingly no end to the interesting privately-owned bikes kicking about too, from Chris Walker’s infamous Clarion GSXR 750 BSB bike through the entire range of all the oil-cooled GSXRs including the Team Lincolnshire Suzuki Endurance GSXR Slingshot. The standard and array of bikes was awesome, and I would still be there poking round and marvelling at them now if I could be.
It wasn’t even just the bikes though, as a big part of the day was made by the many famous racers kicking about: Mick Grant, Phill Read, John Reynolds, Steve Parish, Jamie Whitham, Pete Boast and Guy Martin even made an appearance. In between playing on track they didn’t disappear though; they all stayed about chatting, posing for photos and generally enjoying themselves among us mere mortals – I even ended up feeling sorry for some of them after finding out how skint they actually are. Mr Whitham couldn’t afford any lunch and had to busk outside the canteen and Steve Parish only just had enough money to fuel his plane to get to the event, so was left having to sell copies of his book to cover his trip home!
The thing that topped it off for me though was towards the end of the day while looking over a bike with Brucey I heard a two-stroke sound and someone shouting, “Excuse me!” I turned and stepped out of the way to be closely passed by Mick Grant in his old leathers on his 500 race bike, giving a wave of thanks as he passed. Crazy. I can’t wait for the next one…