What was it like being a Grand Prix rider 50 years ago?
In 1963 Ginger Molloy left his New Zealand home with nothing but a bike and his dreams. In 1971 he returned home having earned his GP stripes, 50,000 dollars and a wife…
When Ginger Molloy decided to become a grand prix racer he gave his Matchless G50 a polish, packed a suitcase, filled a toolbox and got a lift to the local train station. This was January 1963 and Molloy was a tough youngster from Huntly, New Zealand, where he worked down the coalmines to make money to go racing.
After a ten-hour train ride he arrived at Wellington station, from where he pushed the G50, with toolbox and suitcase perched on top, the mile and a bit to Wellington docks, where he boarded a boat to Southampton, England, a six-week voyage away.
When Molloy finally returned home almost a decade later he was a 500cc world championship runner-up, a grand prix winner and he was married, with three kids.
The adventures he had along the way – living on the road like a gypsy, cheating death and ducking and diving to put enough gas in his bikes and food in his mouth – would sound as likely to a modern-day Motogp rider as would tales of racing on Mars. It is said that history is another country. In this case it’s another planet.
Molloy was a gritty, talented rider who wrote some racing history along the way. In 1969 he became the first rider to score 500cc world championship points on a two-stroke, so he blazed the trail along with Barry Sheene, Kevin Schwantz and Mick Doohan. He was also the first to win a grand prix for Spanish manufacturer Bultaco.
During Molloy’s first seasons in Europe he raced his G50 in 500cc races, an AJS 7R in 350 events and a Bultaco 200 in 250 outings. He bought the Bultaco from Frank Sheene (Barry’s dad), which led to an official ride with the Barcelona-based factory.
He made his bit of two-stroke history at the 1969 Spanish 500cc GP, riding an over-bored 350cc Bultaco single. The following spring he graduated to a very different kind of two-stroke 500.
‘I flew to the US and drove over to Tallahassee in Florida, where this motorcycle shop had a Kawasaki H1-R for sale,’ he recalls. ‘It cost me $1500. I put the bike together, started it up and went up the road on it, still wearing shorts. It was quite a step up from the 370 Bultaco. When I came back I realised I’d done
150 miles an hour!’
Molloy rode the bike – a racing version of the H1 road bike – to seventh place in the
Daytona 200, then shipped it to
Europe, where he finished second in
the 1970 500cc world championship, beaten only by Giacomo Agostini and his mighty MV Agusta four-stroke.
That year Molloy would’ve become the first rider to win a premierclass GP on a two-stroke, but for the H1-R’S thirstiness. At Imatra in Finland he qualified fastest and was leading Ago until he had to refuel. ‘We didn’t have a quick filler, so I heard the roar of the MV as it went past and had to be happy with second,’ adds Molloy, who scored four 500 podiums that summer.
Nowadays a Motogp rider of Molloy’s standing would fly to races in a private jet, eat dinner prepared by his team’s chef and sleep in a motorhome bigger than some people’s apartments.
Molloy and his wife Claire crisscrossed Europe in a tiny Ford Thames van which was their transporter, kitchen, lounge and bedroom. Sometimes they had a friend along to help, which could get cosy. ‘One time we had my friend Gary with us,’ Ginger remembers. ‘We were driving in Czechoslovakia and it was getting dark, so we stopped by the roadside and set up for the night. Gary got into his sleeping bag and we pushed him feet first under and between the bikes in the back of the van. There wasn’t room for him to even roll over. Claire and I had rubber squabs we pushed on top of the bikes and then wriggled ourselves onto these, jammed between the bikes and the roof of the van. Other times Gary just crawled under the van in his sleeping bag.’
Ginger and Claire – 25 and 22 years-old at the time – met on the boat to England, married soon after and are still together. Luckily Mrs Molloy could handle basic living because she had grown up in the Aussie Outback – lighting by kerosene lamp, cooking on a wood-burning stove and water from a well in the backyard.
‘In Europe we had a small primus stove with a single burner, a pot, a kettle and three thermos flasks,’ Ginger recalls. ‘Claire would cook the meals in stages, keeping things hot in the flasks until all was ready.’ During the winters the Molloys lived in London, where Ginger worked as a car mechanic and Claire as a teacher. Each spring before they sallied forth to the Continent they stocked up with tinned food, because this was the cheapest way to eat.
‘Some shops sold tins, which had lost their labels, for half price. A friend thought this was a great trick, so he bought a load of these tins. We had a great laugh because 90% of them contained bully beef, so that’s what he ate all summer!’
Often Claire had an hour’s walk from the paddock to the local town, where she bought groceries. Sometimes the Molloys went hungry, simply because they ran out of food or money.
‘Once we only had rolled oats, so we had porridge for breakfast and the leftover porridge was left to go cold, so Claire made it into porridge fritters for our dinner.
‘Some racers didn’t eat breakfast they were that nervous, but on a hot day I’d go to the grid wearing shorts, eating an ice cream’
‘Other times breakfast consisted of a couple of cans of baked beans, heated up on the primus, and washed down with a cup of tea. But if I earned some good money, at a meeting, we’d have a meal in a restaurant. Otherwise we couldn’t afford that.’
Despite living the rough and ready life of petrol-head gypsies the Molloys loved what they did.
‘As long as I was racing I was happy,’ says Ginger. ‘I was doing what I wanted to do – it all made perfect sense at the time.’
Claire’s original plan had been to travel to Europe for two years, then Canada for a year, then home. Instead she spent eight years on the grand prix trail.
‘We had to rough it and sleep in some funny places, but I’d made my decision and I enjoyed it,’ she says. ‘It was a big adventure. When I look back now I think how did I cope when the kids came along? But you do, because you have to.
‘In all the years I was in Europe I never once got to speak to my parents because they were so far Outback there wasn’t even a phoneline. I wrote a lot of letters home and made lots of cups of tea for lots of riders who came around for a chat in the evenings.’
Paddocks were usually exactly that – grassy fields where riders camped out and tinkered with their bikes, with tarpaulins slung between vans to provide extra working and living space. Paddock life
was basic but often blissful, at least until the hole-in-the-ground toilets overflowed. And if the weather turned cold the Molloys kept warm by huddling around a small kerosene heater in the back of the van.
The Dutch TT at Assen was their favourite paddock. ‘Assen was something else,’ says Ginger. ‘There were hot showers, the only riders’ camp in Europe to have them! And good toilets. And in the mornings you were woken by the ring of the milkman’s bell – such luxury to have fresh milk and butter delivered to our doorstep each day, because we didn’t have a fridge.’
The season schedule was punishing, because riders needed to race as often as possible to earn money to eat and buy petrol to get to the next race. Grands prix paid little because the promoters knew the riders had to contest GPS to get the world championship points they needed to get decent start money at the more lucrative non-championship meetings. During 1963 Molloy raced consecutive weekends at: Chimay in Belgium, Assen in the Netherlands, Spa in Belgium, Schleiz in East Germany, Jicin, Piestany and Brno in Czechoslovakia, Monza in Italy and Madrid and Zaragoza in Spain. And all the time driving a van that could nudge 65mph downhill, along single-carriageway roads often busier with horse-drawn carts than motor vehicles.
Many non-championship events were part of summer festivals and fiestas, like in Spain, where the racing happened in the mornings, so the locals could watch bullfighting in the afternoon. Inevitably, most of the circuits were laid out around the streets, with little regard for safety. Molloy knew it was important not to crash, not just because he didn’t want to die but because he couldn’t afford to take weeks off in hospital. ‘You tried hard not to crash because there were walls everywhere. There were always new guys arriving on the scene – they’d be very fast, then they’d have a big crash and disappear. You couldn’t afford to ride out of your depth.’
During Molloy’s eight years on the grand prix trail there were 24 fatalities in world championship racing, but like many riders he had that it-will-never-happen-to-me conviction. ‘I didn’t think about the danger. Some people didn’t eat breakfast because they were that nervous, but on a hot day I’d go out to the grid still wearing shorts, eating an ice cream. Some of the riders didn’t like me doing that!’
Danger wasn’t limited to brick walls and lampposts. ‘In 1965 we did a race in Malaga. The track consisted of two roundabouts, connected by a one-kilometre straight. Both roundabouts were cobblestones, where I’d get into a controlled drift on the exit. In the no-man’s-land between the two straights there were several daredevil youths who played chicken with the fast-approaching racers. I did my best to avoid their antics.’ Sometimes Molloy was well paid for his work. A good weekend at a non-championship event might end with an envelope stuffed with local currency, maybe £1500 in today’s money. Very occasionally he might walk away with five grand.
Most riders got on well – people usually gang together when times are hard – but Molloy had his enemies, mostly anyone who robbed him: in 1968 the wife of a famous rival asked Molloy to fix a race so her husband could collect a bonus worth £9000 now. Molloy agreed, for a 50% cut, and dutifully finished behind his rival. ‘I caught up with this guy’s wife later and asked her for my cut. She looked me straight in the eye and
‘There were always new guys arriving on the scene – they’d be fast, then they’d have a big crash and disappear’
said, “He beat you fair and square, you bastard!” and walked away.’ Money was always tight in spite of occasional good paydays, so Molloy was involved in various extra-curricular moneymaking activities. At most major meetings the oil, petrol, chain and tyre companies gave the top riders product for free. Molloy always took more than he needed, so he could run his van on race gas and sell the surplus oil, chains and tyres to riders who didn’t get free stuff. And there was extra cash to be made through a little low-key smuggling: buying 50 bottles of Bacardi and a few thousand cigarettes in Spain to sell in the UK, or even better in Sweden. So long as customs didn’t get you. Drug-smuggling was another option. ‘I was told by some chap that if I went to this garage in London before I went to Europe they would change the van’s driveshaft for me. Obviously they intending to weld drugs in there. But I hadn’t travelled halfway around the world to do that sort of thing.’
There was also the lucrative business of importing cars and old race bikes to New Zealand while getting around the country’s hefty commercial import duties in the process. ‘When I did go back to New Zealand I’d take cars, bikes and all kinds of bits and pieces to sell down there. You could buy a Mk2 3.8 Jag for less than a thousand pounds in London and sell it for £3000 in New Zealand.’ That’s a £30,000 profit in today’s money.
At the end of 1971 Molloy went home for good and opened a motorcycle shop. ‘I went to Europe to race motorcycles, but I wanted to make money too. I came home with 50,000 New Zealand dollars, which was enough to buy a house, start a business, buy a car for Claire and a ute [pick-up] for the business.’
All the risks and all the hardships had been worth it.