Gloves off

Please add my congratulations to the rest on the recent ‘ton’; think I’ve been along for most of the ride. The accolades – for you and the team – are well deserved. A couple of points, first re Bob Rosenthal’s test of the V7 ‘Guzzi (p81, OBA 102) and the positioning of the mode button near the twist grip.

BMW also came up with a design clanger; my R1150R has the indicator cancel switch in a similar spot, so thumbing the button while accelerating away from a turn nearly always leads to the dreaded ‘lurch’. Meantime, the horn button – which looks the same – sits unused on the left. I think the only time I’ve used the horn is for the annual ‘pink slip’ check. Can the buttons be swapped? I’m checking.

The other point concerns the action photo on p52 of OBA 99 – what you have captioned as ‘Jim Wilkie’s famous photograph of Herb Jefferson in full flight’. An iconic photograph if ever there was one. Had you noticed that Herb didn’t wear gloves? Glen Innes, a friend of mine, former speedway sidecar rider and brother of the late Australian Champion Gary Innes, told me plenty of riders hated wearing gloves, to the point that they would remove them between the pits and the start line. Certainly not piano players.

John Hawkins

It was very common for racers in all disciplines to shun the wearing of gloves – until it became mandatory. The oft-given excuse was that gloves reduced the ‘feel’ of the machine back to the rider. Sid Willis, perhaps our top 250 rider in the early ‘fifties, never wore gloves, but was forced to when he raced at the Isle of Man TT in 1953. On his return to local racing, it was back to bare knuckles, which continued until his retirement in 1961. – Ed