PUTTING IT TO THE TEST
After Maurice’s winter work, it felt like a new bike. It took a while to get the suspension set up right on smooth circuits, but the chatter had disappeared and the handling was a revelation – I could flick it from side to side like a 125, thanks to the low centre of gravity, and at a circuit like Brands Hatch, where the bike made its first real impact by finishing sixth in the BOTT round there in May 1983 against all the bigger bikes, this was a big advantage. It also accelerated like a scalded cat, thanks to the light weight and instant power delivery of the free-running engine. Our next race after Brands was the Formula 2 TT in the Isle of Man, where I was in line for a bronze replica before missing a gear starting the third lap, causing the power to drop thanks to bent valves. The Laverda still finished, albeit just outside the replicas, but it had also given me a lurid ride over the bumps. According to spectators at Rhencullen, I was the star attraction as they laid odds on how close to the cottage on the left the tank-slapper I suffered there each lap would take me! The problem was the lack of rear suspension travel. Living on Guernsey with the associated problems of developing a bike far from the mainstream of racing, meant that it was actually cheaper and easier for Maurice to get to European meetings than to Britain. Consequently we started racing the Laverda a lot on the Continent, as well as in the occasional UK race like the Brands international in October when I finished fifth in the BOTT race after that massive startline wheelie left me lying 21st on the first lap. The Dutch BOTT internationals at Zandvoort were especially fruitful, with the impressive performance of the little Laverda self-evident by the way it swept past 1000cc twins along the long pit straight. Maurice’s tuning had obviously made the Laverda pretty quick, so we decided – if we could raise some sponsorship cash – to take it to Daytona in March 1984 for the BOTT race there, which had now become a global event with entries from Europe, Japan and Australia. We succeeded in getting the Laverda factory – which had so far proved remarkably uninterested in what we and Malcolm Wheeler’s team were trying to do with their bikes, keeping the Breganze flag flying against the massed ranks of Ducatis – to help us by paying for the cost of airfreighting the bike over. But six weeks before the race I got a letter – not even a telex or telegram – saying they’d had a change of heart, and we were on our own. An intensive study of our respective bank accounts showed we could still afford to go, with the support of some Guernsey bike friends of Maurice’s; we had to, really, since with the BOTT class booming there was to be a separate 750cc
race for the Twins for the first time as part of the main AMA Cycle Week race schedule. However the Laverda had to run with only a half fairing and other detail modifications – not sure why but those were the rules. The Ogier Laverda ran like a train all week, convincingly winning the race by the length of the home straight ahead of the American opposition, which understandably (because the Montjuic was never sold in the USA) were bemused by the bike’s performance. I’m proud to say it was the first victory ever by a British rider in Daytona’s Cycle Week. The Laverda was the only machine in the entire 1984 Cycle Week race programme which had its engine stripped for measurement by order of the AMA – whose officials then had to be helped by Maurice to calculate the swept volume! It was a nuisance, they were so convinced that we had an 800cc engine instead of a 579cc one – actually, it was the smallest bike in the race, apart from a 500 Morini. I guess if you’d spent $5000 on having your Ducati Pantah engine taken out to full factory 750 TT1 spec by Reno Leoni, and got blown off by a bike you never heard of that cost less than that to build from scratch, you might be upset. After Daytona we decided to concentrate on the World Championship TT F2 series, with the odd foray into F1 as at Assen just for kicks as they didn’t have an F2 race at the Dutch TT that year, so I entered the F1 race and finished in the top 20 – very satisfying. I got a Finishers Award in the Isle of Man, then finished seventh at Vila Real after just failing to pass Trevor Nation’s Ducati going through the Portuguese city’s streets for the last time, and 11th at Brno on the old 10.92km public roads Grand Prix circuit, and we also picked up good places at other continental circuits like Chimay and Carole. I wound up 15th overall in the world championship points table – equal with none other than our esteemed editor thanks to his fine seventh place in the Isle of Man TT (By 1984 I was riding a disappointing Ducati TT2 for Moto Cinelli and the TT was the only round we contested. Ed). Just two weeks after the Brno race I had a big accident at Paul Ricard on another bike, grinding away assorted fingers on my right hand when I was one of 13 riders to crash on someone else’s oil. This inevitably caused me to rethink my racing plans – if only for a while. The standard-framed Ogier Laverda was retired to the spacious storeroom behind Maurice’s Guernsey garage, and while he briefly experimented with a Hossack-framed F2 racer, for my comeback season in 1986 we switched to the brave new world of IHRO Historic racing in support races at 500 Grand Prix rounds, with the 1966 ex-fred Stevens Paton 500. But that’s another story…
“BUT SIX WEEKS BEFORE THE RACE I GOT A LETTER – NOT EVEN A TELEX OR TELEGRAM – SAYING THEY’D HAD A CHANGE OF HEART, AND WE WERE ON OUR OWN.”