Glen Britza
WA all rounder
With the recent passing of
Glen Britza, the motorcycling community of WA lost a man who was a popular and passionate contributor to the sport throughout his lifetime, both on and off the track. Glen passed away on 27th June 2020 after a short illness.
Glen had an illustrious competition record that included picking up 11 State Titles between 1963 and 1971, across a range of classes and in both solos and sidecars. He worked tirelessly for the Bunbury Motorcycle Club and the sport he loved. Never seeking the limelight, he instead worked behind the scenes and just rolled up his sleeves, getting on with what needed to be done to support the club. He was made a life member of the Bunbury Motorcycle Club in 1972 and filled the role of property officer for the club for over 40 years. In recognition of his racing record and commitment to assisting and developing motorcycle sport, Glen was inducted into the Motorcycling Western Australia Hall of Fame in 2018. Even in his 82nd year, he was active within both the local motocross and vintage bike scenes in the south west of WA.
Born on the 11th of September, 1938, in Bunbury, his interest in scramble and motocross racing was probably inevitable given his interests as a kid. Don Collins (Jnr) who was mates with Glen from a young age and also successfully raced motocross, said of these early days, “Like many kids, we spent our time racing our bicycles around ‘scramble’ tracks on vacant blocks near where we lived. There were a few of us and we all lived pretty close to each other. As we got older and into motorcycles, there was this really tight group, Glen, Ray Buck, John Olsen, George Hall, Gordon Renfree and me. With the friendly rivalry between us, we pushed ourselves harder and the competition was intense. We all benefited as a result.” At around 16, Glen got his hands on a Malvern
Star Autocycle. It was slow and unreliable, which
really didn’t suit him, so he quickly offloaded it to Gordon Renfree. Gordon later became a multiple national and state title holder, probably no thanks to the Autocycle. A while later, Glen got his first “proper” bike, a 125cc BSA Bantam. Just as with his bicycles, Glen only had one speed! The writing was on the wall that he would gravitate to competition. Not only did he have a penchant for speed and a competitive spirit, but his older brother “Vintie” was already competing in the local scrambles. Glen’s initial foray into competition was after he bought a 250cc Tiger 70 Triumph and at 19, he had his first taste of scramble racing. It wasn’t a good choice for scrambles as it was slow and completely uncompetitive. Soon after, he bought a 350cc Ariel and started to show promise. A call up to National Service followed, which did have a silver lining for Glen.
“In those days, the army would put part of your pay aside for when you came out,” Glen said in an interview with Peter Drakeford. “You might get 70 or 80 quid, which was a lot of money in those days. So, when I came out, I bought a 1955 200cc DOT. I paid 90 quid for that bloody thing, a lot of money. In 1959 I made my debut on the DOT, riding with number 90, and raced it with limited success. It had Earles front forks and I was told these things were that damn good you could almost steer without hanging on, which I tried; but that didn’t work, and I crashed,” he joked.
In the interview, Glen mentioned one his earliest successes where he won a 200cc state championship race on the DOT. He held on to the DOT for about a year until offloading it in a bid to move up in competition. He had many bikes throughout his career and, rather than accepting sponsorship, always bought his own bikes. He found he could upgrade to a later model after each season without it costing him an arm and a leg, which became his approach. He moved onto his next ride after about a year, once again, chasing better performance.
“John Kirkpatrick built a couple of bikes of his own. They were called the JKV (John Kirkpatrick
Villiers) and had an 8hp Villiers engine that, with John’s modifications, put out 18hp. The gearboxes didn’t like it, but it was quite a good bike when it kept going,” he said. “In 1960 the only scramble bikes available in WA over the counter were C15 BSAs and 250 JAWAs, and I was leaning toward the JAWA because it was a bigger bike,” Glen recalled. “But I’d done a bit of reading and Dave Bickers in the UK rode a Greeves. Kirkie suggested I ought to get one. The only person to sell them at that time was in Burnside, Victoria, so I bought one and got the first Greeves in WA.”
It was around this time the competition numbering system changed and Glen was allocated number 23, which he kept throughout his career. “Later on, West Australian Motorcycles started selling Greeves, so I traded it in and got a Greeves scramble bike; the model with the alloy square barrels. This was a bit of a turning point and I started having more success and kept the bike for a while.”
In the late 50’s and early ‘60s, Glen also started dabbling a little in road racing. He acquired a BSA Bantam road racer. He and his group of mates, Ray Buck, Don Collins, Gordon Renfree and “Puddy” Walker, would spend hours in Glen’s shed trying to “tune it for speed.” Don Collins joked, “While we were just kids, this was pretty serious stuff and if word of mouth was that a red mudguard was faster, then a red mudguard it’d be! Glen started doing a bit of road racing on it and competed in races around the old Glen Iris circuit in Bunbury.”
But motocross was really where it was at for Glen and one of the most memorable races he recounted was a trip to Moorebank (NSW) for the Australian Championships in 1961. “Each class was decided over two races. Charlie West, who’d already established himself as WA’s legend (he’d won both state and national Championships) won both races on a C15 BSA. Johnny Burrows got a second and a fourth, I got a fourth and a second, and Blair Harley came in with two thirds. So, with the system they had at the time, all three of us tied for third.”