A 'Hollister' for the new century

I think this group calls itself "Hollywood Stuntz". Rhymes with "Peckerwood C...."

A few days ago, a gang of 'stuntahz' (my word) had the poor judgement to film themselves terrorizing a guy driving through New York, with his wife and kid. Bad judgement was exercised all around--I'm 95% certain that if it had been me in the Range Rover, I would have seen them approaching from behind, pulled to one side to let them pass, then followed at a safe distance to watch their madcap antics. No one--at least, no one in my car--would've been hurt.

Instead, at least one biker was injured, and the driver took a shit-kicking. Still, nothing about this would have made it more than a local news story, except that one of the idiots involved posted a video to YouTube that went viral within hours. I won't bother posting the video because you've all seen it; most of you have made up your minds about it and posted comments on it.

What's interesting to me is not the first wave of reaction to the story, but the second wave. Within a day or two the NBC Nightly News had produced a sensational story with the requisite footage of police describing the phenomenon as a growing threat.

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There has never, ever, been a cop that downplayed the potential risk of some new threat trumpeted by sensationalists in the media. Why would they? Any increase in public paranoia translates into increased power and prestige for the cops. Ironically, it doesn't matter whether the populace is afraid of criminals, or afraid of the police. Either one is good for cops.

What does this remind me of? Hollister. On July 4 1947, 4,000 'straight-pipers' rode into Hollister. Their plan was to spend the long weekend partying and watching local, AMA-sanctioned flat track races, but the partying got a little out of control. Even the local police admitted that the bikers "did more harm to themselves than they did to the town" but the press blew the story out of proportion. Police all over the U.S. used those exaggerated stories when pressing for increased budgets and, often, military style weapons and equipment. 

It's hard to believe now, but right after WWII, the Hells Angels were an AMA-sanctioned club that put on events open to all motorcyclists. Then, the L.A. cops framed several members on rape charges so flimsy even the cops' usual co-conspirators--local DAs--threw them out. In the process, though, the cops encouraged the criminalization of the club, helping to turn it into a gang. After all, if you're going to be harassed and charged anyway, why not commit the crimes?

When the Hollister events were dramatized by Hollywood in 'The Wild One', America's image of motorcycling changed for decades, until Honda's "nicest people" TV ads made Americans reevaluate motorcycles and the people who rode them.

If you read Backmarker, you probably have no trouble telling these urban stuntahz apart from serious sport riders. (Hint, if they're just wearing a t-shirt and a cheap Icon back protector, and have a girlfriend perched on the back in short shorts and high heels, they're not serious.) But that distinction is harder to make for the average cager or cop.

AMA: here's a chance to redeem yourself in the eyes of real motorcyclists. Step up here and get ahead of this story, if there's still time. Otherwise, it's a 'Hollister' for the new century. And that's all American motorcycling needs.

Hookers love motorcycles

It's been a tiring month or two here at bikewriter.com's sprawling corporate campus, and I have posted very little.

I've got some excuses, of course. (If I've learned anything in the last decade in the U.S., it's that nothing is anyone's fault.) I'm just putting the finishing touches on two books that I want to have available for Christmas, and I finally finished a long promised screenplay for a sci-fi short. Meanwhile, I'm occasionally distracted by several other film projects that are 'in development' as they say. That's movie-business talk for 'looking for money'.

It's not that there hasn't been lots to write about in motorcycle land. The other shoe finally dropped vis-a-vis Laguna Seca losing its MotoGP round; the fact that Dani Pedrosa's Honda was rendered immediately and utterly unrideable after Marc Marquez made incidental contact that disabled the traction control system. Don't get me started on Casey 'Whingebag' Stoner -- who won the championship because he was the first rider to completely trust traction control -- saying he'd return if the bikes made even more power and had no TC.

That rogue gang of stuntahz and the Range Rover guy -- I'd write about them, but everyone else already has. My scooter got stolen -- and I caught the guy but haven't yet recovered the scoot -- there's a whole real-life cops-and-robbers story there. And then there was the guy (another cop!) who sent a press release to Roadracing World, announcing that he was going to start a business in which hot nurses would rehydrate and re-oxygenate club-level motorcycle racers... Well, that one is so crazy that maybe I will revisit it in the coming days.

This guy walks into a motel office. As he's paying for the room, he says to the clerk, "I hope the porn channel's disabled." The clerk says, "No, it's regular porn, you sick fuck."

Anyway, last night, I found myself fondly hearkening back to the days when I worked at Motorcyclist, and spent two or three nights a week in L.A. Fond thoughts about that period of my life aren't common, because with a couple of exceptions, I worked for/with psychopaths and L.A. is one of the world's biggest urban failures. The one good thing -- besides the free motorcycles and OEM-paid travel to exotic destinations like Willow Springs -- about working in L.A. was, it was the only place I've ever lived that had a good place to grab a beer on Monday night.

I don't know what it is about me, but I seem to be inclined to work out, work, stay home and cook; I do boring shit all weekend and never really feel like going out. Then come Monday, I find myself thinking, "I've gotta' get out and do something." Yesterday was one of those Mondays. I actually went the whole day without having a single face-to-face conversation of any kind with another human. But last night, when I would have gone out somewhere, I realized that on a Monday night in Kansas City, there was probably nowhere to kill an hour amongst entertaining strangers.

That wasn't the case when I worked at Motorcyclist. At least not after I found out about that bar.

I have no idea what the bar was called. It was in NoHo -- a neighborhood that actually should'a been called "lotsa' hos" -- and if the bar had a name, it wasn't posted anywhere. It had a street number, and a very large man at the door. And Mondays, it rocked. The place was packed.

It was not for Monday Night Football. Nope. It was packed because the clientele were sex trade workers, and if you're a hooker, Monday is your Saturday.

That un-named bar wasn't the only place I encountered hookers on my Motorcyclist beat.

While I worked in L.A., I lived in San Diego. So my commute, door-to-door was 120 miles. I typically worked one or two days per week on assignment, one or two days per week from home, and a couple of days per week in the Petersen Building on Wilshire Boulevard. My office window looked north across Hollywood; if the smog was not too bad, the sign was visible on the hills. But if you looked south from my floor, you were surveying a vista where, on any given night, someone was being murdered.

Since living in San Diego was my problem, the magazine had no interest in subsidizing my accommodation for a night or two in L.A. And since I was making shit money, I had to find a cheap motel.

There were a couple of candidate hostelries commensurate with my rather stringent budgetary constraints. They were fucking dives yes, south of my office.

The one I settled on was $40 a night.

In central L.A.

Use your imagination.

Go worse; go way worse. The building presented some gay coral-hued stucco facade to the street. To enter the motel, you drove (or in my case, rode) through a sort of portico into an inner "court". I'm using that word very, very loosely. A square of motel rooms, each presenting a single window and door into the court, were numbered from about 1 to 20. They were usually dark, but when a new vehicle entered, there was often a rustle at a few curtains.

In the corner, there was a lighted window, and a sign: Office.

The owners were Chinese, or of that descent anyway. Food smells, and Chinese soap opera soundtracks wafted from the heavy wrought-iron window grille. A crude sign blared the message:

No drugs!

No prostitutes!

Beneath it, there were rates for a week, a night, and an hour. The first time I paid for a room, they actually let me use a credit card. On all subsequent visits they screeched, "Machine broken! Cash only".

You've gotta' understand; at the time, I was riding motorcycles from Motorcyclist's press fleet. It was a selective filter for machines on the sublime-to-ridiculous spectrum. I'd show up on a different new bike ever time; a Ducati 99-whatever it was in 2004, a new Gixxer 1000; once I showed up on a Honda Rune and another time on what was probably the only Rocket III in the country. The manufacturers who'd loaned us those bikes would've shit themselves if they realized where I was leaving them overnight. Although in truth, it wasn't that dangerous; the owners let me park the bikes right by their window. It was open all night, and there was always someone in there watching TV. It would've taken a pretty brazen thief, and it wasn't a place anyone casing high end bikes would ever have entered looking for a high end bike.

Typically, what I'd do is get my room, and walk a block to the nearest 7-11. I'd buy a bag of chips, a beer, a bottle of OJ, and a banana, and walk back to the dump. There was a side-entrance into the courtyard, from that direction. Before going to sleep, I'd drink the beer, eat the chips, and watch whatever passed for TV. It wasn't like they had a full satellite package; it was more like rabbit ears. The next morning I'd get up, eat the banana, drink the juice, and try to shower and dry off without getting some nasty foot fungus, then hightail it to Starbucks.

The thing was, those motorcycles made me cool in there. Hookers love bikes. Well, there was that time I arrived on a brand new Ducati and one girl, after admiring it, went next door to get another girl to come and see it.

"You should see this guy's crotch rocket," she said.

Her friend came out, took one look and said, "Oh. I thought it was going to be a Ninja."

Kawasaki were getting good money out of their Ricky Gadson sponsorship, I guess.

Most of those chicks were pretty hardened, desperate crackheads. (I think it was still crack back then; when I found drug paraphernalia in the room, which happened fairly often, it was usually a crack pipe. But maybe they used the same type of pipe for meth. Whatever.)

Some of the girls, however, were sweet and sad. They were occasionally funny. Once they came to grips with the fact that I was not in the market but didn't hate them, either, we struck up little two-minute friendships.

There was one that I saw often enough that I got to know her name -- though I've long since forgotten it. I recall it being something rural and anachronistic, like Beulah. I'll call her that, anyway, for the rest of this story.

Anyway, one night I was walking back from the 7-11 with my goodie bag, and noticed two things: First, there was a hooker standing out on the street by the main entrance, and she was white. That never happened. Second, there was a tough looking white dude standing mostly out of sight at the corner of the building, near the side entrance. The guy gave me a real what-are-you-looking-at staredown as I approached, and I knew immediately he was a cop. I also knew he had nothing on me and my story checked out, so I gave it back to him.

In the courtyard, Beulah hissed "psst" from a doorway, and whispered that the white girl on the sidewalk was a cop. She said it like she was really worried I might try to tap that thing. I told her, Sweetie, if anybody in here ever gets my money, it'll be you.

That made her smile.

I didn't think much more of it until, at about two o'clock in the morning, there was an enormous fucking ruckus right on the other side of a wall that was probably just wallpaper laid right on 2x4s, with no drywall or anything.

"Police!"
"Freeze!!"
"You're under arrest!!!"

It turned out the female cop was bringing johns back to a room right next to mine. And that happened again at about three o'clock, and four. The fucking LAPD didn't even have the decency to buy the rooms on either side of their sting room. I don't know what saps ever hired that white "hooker"; she and her minder couldn't have looked more like cops if they'd been wearing their uniforms (which, come to think of it, would probably have attracted business up in NoHo, where there was a much kinkier vibe.)

They must've ruined Beulah's business that night. They ruined my night's sleep, that's for sure. My only consolation was that the asshole who'd given my stinkeye never got the satisfaction of cuffing me. And that early the next morning, they were probably watching from some window as I rode out on some brand-new bitchin' bike, looking suspicious as hell.

Now available on Kindle!

On Motorcycles: The Best of Backmarker is now available for $9.99 at the Amazon Kindle store, here. My friend and ad partner Mark Eimer nailed another awesome cover, eh? The print version of this book is over 400 pages and will be available soon at Amazon for $27. If you're on my mailing list, I'll send you an email offering a signed/inscribed copy with free shipping, as soon as I have the first copies in hand.

Watch the Monsters of the Salt trailer now

UPDATE: OK, so we fell woefully short of our vainglorious budget target. But we're not done yet, by any means. Our immediate goal is to find sponsors who will cover the cost of shooting the first act of the film, in Paris, before the 2014 season on the salt. If you donated money in the first round of our Indiegogo campaign, the money you gave will be used to find the sponsors we need for that first major block of shooting. THANKS! We'll keep you informed.

Moron motorcycle marketing. Oops, I meant 'More on' motorcycle marketing

Forgive me if I rant for a minute, will you?

I followed the Laguna Seca MotoGP round from a distance, lurking on various motorcycle-racing web sites and, of course, getting an extra few pieces of motorcycle spam delivered via email, because it was a race weekend.

MotoGP is a big marketing opportunity and in the course of a few minutes last weekend, I experienced two epic marketing fails. The first came in the form of a photo on one of the popular racing news sites.

The photo was one of the tiresome obligatory images you see every race weekend of umbrella girls, standing around and looking hot. What got me to look at it again was photo's caption...

Honestly, Red Bull girls??? There are at least 20 Monster Energy trademarks or wordmarks visible in this image. Monster's marketing guys must be asking themselves, What would we have to do, in order to not just be slotted into the 'Red Bull' file in the caption-writer's brain? I'd like to think this was a joke, purposely punking Monster, but I doubt that the purveyor of this web site really wants to alienate one of the sport's biggest sponsors.

The thing is, although Monster totally dominates this one photo, the problem that it illustrates is paddock-wide, in the sense that the wild proliferation of logos at events like MotoGP (compare photos from today to photos taken even 20 years ago and you'll see what I mean) has created an environment so cluttered and chaotic that it's possible there isn't anything they can do to be memorable.

When everything's branded, nothing's branded.

Another brand that put a push on at Laguna Seca was Motus. They brought bikes out, which I learned because I got an email from them telling me that they brought bikes to Laguna Seca. It was an email that I opened, because I've been wondering what ever happened to those guys.

Sadly, I wasn't able to glean much from the email. Now, maybe I'm super-critical because I'm a copywriter and companies (admittedly bigger ones than Motus) pay me to write emails like this but I couldn't help but wonder... Who approved this copy?

I mean, come on. You spend what, tens of thousands of dollars going to Laguna Seca, and then you publish this? Read the FAQ section of the email...

Let's go through those questions again, one by one, and translate Motus' answers into plain English:

Q: Where can I see, test ride, and purchase a Motus MST or MST-R?

A: Yes, we have some dealers. But if you can you think of a shop near you that might be willing to take on a Motus franchise, please tell us. Ideally, we'd like you to convince them to take us on.

Q: What are the differences between the MST and the MST-R?

A: We refuse to tell you. Here's a list of ways they are the same. But, you can make them different with lots of options. Call us.

Q: What are the retail prices of the MST and MST-R?

A: MST models start at $30,975. MST-R prices start at... "Look! There goes Valentino Rossi!"

Q: Does Motus have plans for an adventure bike, street fighter, trike, hovercraft, or track car?

A: "Do you believe that Lorenzo and Pedrosa both rode with broken collarbones?"

Q: Can I buy a crate motor?

A: Yes, we're now taking reservations for motors that will be delivered in Spring 2013. (While we may or may not be planning to sell a hovercraft, we've obviously perfected a time machine that will allow us to go back in time at least a month or two, to Spring 2013, when we'll deliver your motor, in the past. So give us your deposit today, and tomorrow you'll open your workshop door to find your build-it-yourself project half-built. Bet you can't wait to see what you're doing with your motor.)

Honestly I wish Motus well. I really do. But what the fuck is the message they're sending with these non-answers? I suppose in Motus' limited defense, they do say that these are Frequently Asked Questions, not frequently answered ones.

Tracing the origins of "The Pass" to the source: Alex Zanardi

So, I note that you can watch the replay of Marquez using the, uh, "extreme inside line" at The Corkscrew, in order to pass Rossi. five years ago, Rossi pulled the same move on Casey Stoner. Marquez obviously knew about Rossi's pass, but probably doesn't know that Rossi had been inspired by a guy who won a gold medal in the London Paralympics.

Ex-F1 and IndyCar driver Alex Zanardi lost his legs in one of the most horrific motorsports incidents ever, but he continues to inspire with his personal strength and courage. As an ex- (and admittedly crap) TT racer, I've dissed plenty of car racers in my time, but not this guy. Legs gone, 'nads apparently fully intact.

Most Backmarker readers remember Rossi's epic pass on Stoner, through the gravel in the Corkscrew in 2008. Photographer Andrew Wheeler certainly does. The expat Englishman lives just up the coast from Monterey and calls Laguna Seca his home track. So, he was perfectly positioned to shoot Rossi's move, and the resulting photos cemented his reputation as one of the top photographers in MotoGP.

 
Rossi-Stoner Laguna Seca 2008 Battle - Images by Andrew Wheeler

Stoner thought Rossi should've been penalized for cutting the course, but Rossi was well aware that Alex Zanardi had gotten away with the same stunt on the last lap of a CART race about 10 years before that.

Check it out here...

 

UPDATE... Monday morning crew chief, Tuesday edition: But wasn't it against the rules? 

All three moves beg the question that Stoner asked in 2008: Wasn't the move illegal? Every racing organization has a rule to the effect that a racer should not gain an advantage by leaving the course. All three of them were all already ahead of their victims when they entered the second part of the Corkscrew (it's usually listed as turn 8A on track maps.) So in one sense, no one “gained an advantage” by leaving the track, they already had the advantage and just maintained it.

That said, look closely at the Corkscrew. It’s a left-right flick over the crest. I haven't raced there since 2001, and haven't tested there since about 2008, but I think I remember it pretty clearly; and if my memory serves, the slowest point through the complex is the left, not the right. You can carry a ton more speed through the first part of the Corkscrew and make your pass there, if you’re prepared to straight-line it across the gravel, inside the apex of the second half of the complex. 

Marquez took Rossi on the outside of the left, and was ahead but not fully past him when Rossi used all the track on the exit line of the first part of the Corkscrew. Unlike Rossi vs. Stoner, Marquez could have argued (if needed) that he’d been pushed wide but that wasn’t really the case, his momentum was simply too great at that point.

Rossi (and Zanardi before him) took the inside line in the left turn. They were fully past their rivals and weren’t forced wide, they were just going too fast to complete the direction change and keep it on the asphalt. Inside or outside, it makes no matter; in all three cases, blowing the right turn was a consequence of intentionally carrying too much speed a second or two earlier. All three racers gained an advantage by leaving the track. If there’d been a wall there, or even deep gravel, they would either not have tried the move, or not have succeeded.

Still, none of them were penalized. Nothing ventured, nothing gained, eh?

Riding Man, textbook?

I got a couple of cryptic emails and phone messages earlier this summer, from the manager of the Austin College bookstore in Sherman, TX, enquiring about stocking Riding Man. It turns out, my book's on the reading list for course entitled 'The Irish Sea', taught by historian Hunt Tooley. Cool, eh?

Here's a screen cap of the course description (click to enlarge)...

Indian punks Harley with clever launch ad

It's not often that ADWEEK pays attention to the motorcycle business. Why should they? Most motorcycle industry advertising is lame. But ADWEEK perked up this week when it noticed this great teaser ad for Polaris' new Indian.


Indian Motorcycle ~ "Choice Is Coming" from Pagoda Pictures on Vimeo.

This ad was created by Colle&McVoy, an ad agency based in Minneapolis. Ironically, Carmichael Lynch, another Twin Cities agency, produced great Harley advertising for decades. I'm not sure where this ad is running, but I assume it will air quite a bit between now and the worldwide unveiling of Polaris' 2014 Indian Chief, which will take place in Sturgis in the first week of August.

A smart concept and tight execution already distinguish this from most of the dreck advertising in our category. Licensing Willie Nelson also indicates that Polaris is taking the launch seriously. Is Harley?

Bastille Day Blues

An American entry encounters a peculiar Frenchman in his underpants – at the inaugural edition of France’s Bol d’Or Classic in 2003...

The French have a penchant for endurance. Witness the Tour de France bicycle race, or the Paris-Dakar. It’s no surprise the 24-hour Bol d’Or, held every fall, remains the country’s highest-profile motorcycle race . 

As big as the ‘Bol’ is now, its heyday was 30 years ago. Kevin Cameron called endurance racing in the ‘70s “the privateer’s last stand” meaning that it was the last time truly independent teams competed for an FIM world road racing title.

In order to recapture that glory, the Bol’s organizers created the Bol d’Or Classic in 2003. Since a full 24 hours would be too much to expect from motorcycles from that period (to say nothing of vintage riders) the format of the race was three one-hour sessions spread over 24 hours. Two-rider teams were mandatory; the winner was determined on cumulative mileage. As a bonus, the format offered spectators not one, but three Le Mans-style starts.

Patrick Bodden, was the child of a French mother and an American GI, raised in France, he vividly remembered seeing his first Bol in 1975. So when he heard about the inaugural Bol d’Or Classic, he was determined to provide an American presence.

He already had a bike in mind. Through his Heritage Racing AHRMA team, he’d met Connecticut-based superbike collector Brian O’Shea. O’Shea’s collection is focused on historic AMA superbikes, but he’d acquired a 1979 Honda factory RS1000. Only three of these were ever built in endurance specs; Honda sent one each to France, Britain, and Australia. O’Shea’s bike was raced by Ron Haslam and Alex George at the Bol d’Or, amongst other races. It was later shipped to the US, where it was used at one Daytona test, then left to languish. So a return trip would be something of a homecoming for the bike, as well as Heritage Racing. Once O’Shea had agreed to the loan of his RS1000, only three things were missing: the two riders, and a budget. 

Reg Pridmore’s definitely a Californian now, though he was born in London. He was the first-ever AMA Superbike champion, riding a BMW R90S. He also rode an R100 for the French BMW importer in the 1975 Bol d’Or. Charlie Williams is known as one of the best-ever TT riders, but he also rode Honda RCBs (the predecessor of O’Shea’s RS1000) for Honda in several Bols. After Bodden convinced those two to give the Classic a go, the rider corps seemed qualified.

Sponsorship came from the American Honda Rider’s Club, and Champion Honda of Charleston, North Carolina; Shell UK provided fuel. Thanks to them, Heritage Racing’s team came together at the Circuit de Nevers-Magny Cours, in the Burgundy region of central France, on the Bastille Day weekend in mid-July, 2003. I helped only a little; since I was living in Paris at the time, I handled some logistics at the French end. Mainly, I rented a van from over in the 15^th arrondissement and drove to Charles de Gaulle airport to pick them, and the bike, up.

The first practice sessions on Friday took place in blazing heat  (the summer broke all French temperature records.) Charlie Williams was first out for Heritage Racing, and brought the bike in noting that the brakes felt soft, and the motor seemed rich. While Williams slumped in the cool of the garage, with a towel soaked in icewater around his neck, it was Pridmore’s turn in the leather sauna.

In the next-but-one garage, a guy fettling a pair of Bimota HB-9s had stripped to his underpants. Not shorts, or a bathing suit, but actual Y-front briefs, on body as pallid as a frog’s belly, except where it had already been sunburned. (He’d been outside in the line up to register for the event, in the same utterly unselfconscious state, at high noon.) His ‘team’, which was on the entry list as Forza Bimota, seemed to be sponsored by a lap-dancing club, that had sent along a few girls, dressed for their part Bimota T-shirts the size of Barbie clothes. 

The team in the next garage was actually sponsored by a strip club

“Why don’t we have any hookers?” O’Shea asked, in a tone suggesting that by comparison, Bodden had already failed as a team manager. A pretty-but-world-weary blonde tanned in the doorway of their garage, near a hand-scrawled sign that read“T-Shirts – 15 Euro – Aidez-nous!” (Help us!)

All in all, they made quite an impression.

“Is that a French thing? Wearing nothing but your underpants in public?” Pridmore wondered out loud. Bodden (who, if truth be told had become downright defensive about post-Iraq Franco-American relations) was quick to say “No!!” 

(Actually, I’d noticed in the check-in line that Patrick had tried to position himself so as to block his team’s view of the near-naked Frenchman. When we got installed and discovered that the garage walls were see-through wire fencing and the underpants crew was in plain site from our space, Bodden scowled in their general direction.)

Despite the fact that Patrick had been visibly proud when others came over to admire the RS1000, when underpants man and his rider, a kid in his 20s with dreadlocks down his back walked over to look at the it, poking and marveling,  Bodden bristled. For a moment, it seemed he was about to snap, “Get away from there!” but instead he muttered something to himself, in an ‘Inspector Clouseau’ accent.

After another session, with the riders complaining of a dreadful flat spot in the middle of the rev range, Bodden and O’Shea set about removing the carburetors to see why – despite running the smallest jets O’Shea had on hand – the motor was still rich. 

Patrick Bodden now lives in France, I believe.

Brian O'Shea. One of the best guys ever.

While the float levels were being set, the riders compared Bol d’Or notes. The race had never been lucky for either of them. Pridmore remembered the RS100 as being a bit of an oil-burner. “They were putting some oil in each time we stopped to refuel, but not as much as it was burning,” he recalled the inevitable conclusion “it stopped once and for all somewhere around the sixth hour.”

Williams rode Honda RCBs in World Championship endurance events from 1973 to ’78, winning at Barcelona and Nurburgring, but scoring only one finish in five attempts at the Bol d’Or. “I remember going around Virage du Musee, one of those years when the Bol was held at Le Mans. The rotor had broken off the end of the crankshaft, and broken through the cases, dumping all the oil onto the bike’s back tire, and that was the end of that,” he said simply.

On Saturday after timed qualifying, it seemed Pridmore’s and Williams’ run of Bol luck had changed. Pridmore’s best lap, at 2:14.8, would have been good enough for tenth on the grid. Williams, though, had put the team into the fourth spot thanks to a 2:06-flat. 

In front of the U.S. entry, there was a legendary Godier-Genoud Kawasaki, piloted by Alain Genoud and Gilles Hampe (one of France’s most charming and fastest motorcycle cops.) There was also a brutal but effective Yamaha TZ750; “It won’t go the distance,” Heritage Racing told themselves. Finally, there was a deceptively quick Moto Guzzi Le Mans, which again set Bodden to muttering.

On Sunday afternoon, Charlie Williams lined up on the far side of the track with 40-some other riders. The flag dropped, and there was an eerie moment of silence, but for the patter of feet in racing boots, as the riders ran across to their machines.

O’Shea walked down to turn one, and returned a little shocked after seeing Williams riding his irreplaceable motorcycle in hot pursuit of ex-world champ Jean-Claude Chimaron. “Man!” he said, “those guys are having a duel.”

According to the rules of the race, rider changes had to take place between the 20^th and 40^th minute of each session. Pridmore brought the first hour to a close without any trouble, and the first official score sheet showed Heritage Racing in a respectable 6^th place overall.

Sunday evening, the night session. Again, Williams got off to a good start, but after a few laps, the announcer mentioned that he was off the track at “180”, a hairpin turn about as far from the pit straight as he could get. With no additional information from the loudspeakers, Heritage Racing didn’t know if he’d crashed or broken down. Bodden trotted off to race control, where the entire track (built to Formula One car specs) was covered by a CCTV system. In the cool, dark control booth, facing a bank of video monitors, he watched Williams pushing the big Honda up a long hill. Meanwhile, O’Shea had taken off at a run, back along the track’s service road, hoping to find him – but unable to understand any of the track announcements, or the yells of French corner workers.

“Here he comes!” someone yelled. Williams – soaked in sweat but now back on the machine – was pushed the length of the pit lane by Bodden and O’Shea. Hope springs eternal in endurance racing. Could it just be fuel starvation? The fuel tank vent hose seemed kinked. O’Shea ripped it off, and punched the starter. It started all right – it started making loud metal-on-metal banging noises inside the motor. Pridmore pulled off his leathers. 

Williams – once he’d cooled off – evaporated into the night air, while Bodden and O’Shea considered an apparently hopeless situation. The team had brought virtually no spare parts, as most were simply unavailable, “As much as this looks like a street bike motor,” bemoaned O’Shea “inside it’s so different.” 

Morosely, they performed a rudimentary compression check by jamming wads of tissue into the spark plug holes. When the motor was turned over (the electric starter, which Honda included for dead-engine Le Mans starts, came in handy) three cylinders blew their wads, but #1 generated no compression at all. Peering down the spark plug hole with a microlight was inconclusive. They’d have to pull the head to know what was wrong.

Problem #2: Honda had packed the motor in so tightly that even removing the magnesium valve covers meant dropping the motor onto the lower frame rails. One by one, the garages were falling silent, and dark. Pridmore and Williams wandered back in, staying only long enough to say that they were headed back to their hotel. 

Bodden and O’Shea pored over Brian’s copy of the RS manual. The oft-photocopied sheaf included pages of setup notes, handwritten by engine builder Udo Gietl who worked for American Honda at the time of the machine’s one Daytona test.

They took turns: one would find the situation impossible, while the other proposed some solution that was merely improbable. “I’m sitting here, and I can’t think of anything that’s gonna work, and it sucks the wind out of me,” said Brian. 

“Has anyone walked through the swap meet? Maybe there’s a CB1100F valve set down there.” Patrick countered. “If the valves were the right size, the head might work converted to shim-over-bucket…” then his voice – and optimism – waned in mid-sentence. 

That went on ‘till midnight. Through the garage door, somewhere off on the horizon, Bastille Day fireworks went off. From the infield, behind the darkened and empty grandstand,  came the sounds of a band covering old American rhythm and blues songs. 

If the two of them had ever given up hope at the same moment, the story would have ended right there. But a sentence stuck out at the top of the parts list, “The motor is based on the CB750/CB900F series.” 

Brian: “What if we could just take the head off a CB900, and drop it straight on?”

Next door but one garage, the guy in his underpants was still puttering around. Their team’s spare Bimota had just such motor. Patrick went over to ask if they could try it. Underpants man didn’t hesitate before answering, “Bien sur.” Of course. The decision was made to at least pull the RS head. If there was a serviceable piston left in cylinder #1, the next step would be to pull the CB900 head, and see if it would swap onto the RS1000 barrels. The Bimota was pushed around into Heritage Racing’s garage, where underpants man quietly went about prepping the machine as a donor.

2:00 a.m., and the last lights burning anywhere in the pit lane were in garage #39. A few moths fluttered and clunked around the neon tubes. Bikers were drawn in, too; walking from paddock parties back to wherever they planned to sleep. Mostly, they stayed a few minutes and kept a respectful distance, but if there was heavy lifting to be done, or oil to wipe up, they helped, then slipped away in the next lull with a quiet “Bon courage.” 

The underpants guy was in the background, not wanting to get in the way, but ready to help if he could. “Ca, c’est la passion,” he said, smiling to himself in a way that conveyed  there was nowhere else in the world that he’d rather be. Later he said (I’m translating for you here, because he spoke no English at all) “No matter what happens, there’s already enough to make a beautiful memory.”

Maybe, but the cylinder head was ugly. One of the original Ti exhaust valves broke and slammed into the roof of the combustion chamber. Luckily, it sliced into the aluminum head and stuck there; while the piston crown was scarred, it looked (barely) serviceable.

The kid with the dreadlocks turned out to be underpants man’s son. He came in shyly, too. “Le carter est magnesium?” he asked. Brian got the gist of his question, and gestured towards the pan from the RS dry sump, which was sitting on the work bench, “Pick it up.” The kid did. “Putain!” he said, raising his eyebrows and grinning at his father. He had to ride the next day, so he went off looking for sleep, but his dad stayed, watching.

At 2:54, the first wrench was thrown. The cam chain slipped down just far enough for a few links to kink and jam under the lower sprocket. They jerked  and cursed like Tourette’s patients for five minutes before it came free. 

3:33 a.m.. Patrick, who speaks fluent French, turned to the guy in his underpants (whose name we’d learned was Denis Malterre) and asked him “So, where are you from?”

He was from Ault, a little town near Dieppe which is in the upper left hand corner of a map of France. It’s a tough port town, down on its luck now that there’s a tunnel under the English Channel. 

Denis Malterre was a ‘cantonnier’. We didn’t recognize the word, but he mimed his job,  and we recognized it; he swept the local streets. Lest you think that he drove a street sweeper, I’ll point out that he did it with a broom. These guys, who wear orange high-visibility coveralls, are fixtures in every French town. You can imagine that it’s not exactly a high-paying job. In fact, it’s about the lowest-paying job in France.

Denis Malterre attended every Bol d’Or from 1970 to 1986.“All my life,” he told us “I dreamed of being on this side of the straightaway” (meaning part of the event, not part of the crowd.) As a street sweeper, with no background in racing, he may as well have aspired to ride an Apollo moon rocket. In 1986, he was injured in a terrible accident; his wife was killed. Then he knew: the dream wasn’t going to come true. 

The street sweeper raised his son, alone. The dreadlocked kid became a biology prof in Switzerland. 

Denis Malterre’s pair of Bimotas were both bought as wrecks, out of junkyards, for less than a thousand francs each. (Call that about $150 a piece; i.e., they were total writeoffs.) It took 15 years of street sweeping to save enough money to restore and race prep them. This event (for which a full race license was not required) was the little family’s once in a lifetime shot. “For me,” Denis said “racing is impossible. But now I hand the baton to my son.”

When I translated this story for Brian, a tear literally rolled down his cheek. While he himself had – more than once – drained his bank account to save some aging superbike from the crusher, he was rich by the standards of the hamlet of Ault’s street sweeper. And Patrick was spending money he didn’t really have, running up his credit card, to field the Heritage Racing team, too. Again, no comparison; he had credit cards. Yet it was the French street sweeper – his Bimotas had stickers supporting the French communist party – who, without a second thought, volounteered to lend ‘Les Americains’ his cylinder head.

After all that, the CB900 head did – to mild surprise – drop right on the RS1000 barrels. At 5:00 a.m., Denis ran over to his pit, returning with a beautiful torque wrench, and we heard the “crea-ak, click” of the head being tightened down. It was too late, and everyone was too tired, to reinstall the motor. Heritage Racing needed a few hours sleep. Denis slipped away, and the sun came up as Patrick and Brian drove their rented van back to the hotel. They were giddy with fatigue. Everything they said or saw along the way was #ü¢&ing hilarious.

Monday morning. The trickle of curious bikers from the previous night picked up at garage 39. They whispered and pointed into an oily cardboard box shoved out of the way in a corner. The factory cylinder head had been ported by the legendary Jerry Branch, who had once tuned Kenny Roberts’ Yamaha flat trackers. Now, it looked as forlorn as some hunted deer, dangling off the tailgate of a cowboy’s pickup truck with its dead tongue lolling. 

When the time came to wrestle the motor into the frame, with maybe an hour to go before the final session, there was no shortage of hands to lift it into place. Then there was a lull; a weird feeling that was hard to place until you realized there was no noise, no bikes running, no one even seemed to be talking up or down the pit lane. Brian looked at Patrick and gathered his nerve and pushed the Honda’s starter button and it roared back into life as though nothing had ever been wrong. There was cheering and applause from all ‘round. 

“Wow,” said Brian under his breath “that’s never happened to me before.” He didn’t mean that motors he’d reassembled never started right off the button; he meant that a crowd of spectators had never burst into spontaneous applause when one of his engines had fired. The loudest cheer had come from over at Forza Bimota. Denis came over to shake hands.

In the Hollywood version of this story, Heritage Racing would win the race. But even a cursory examination of the compiled results from the night session made it obvious that was impossible now. Pridmore and Williams were in 31^st place, 25 laps behind the Guzzi. (Ironically, TZ750 had lost its gearbox and would not come back out; had the Honda remained intact, a podium would’ve been on the cards.) 

The new plan was to baby the motor, and circulate. Just get to the checkered  flag. That, everyone repeated trying to believe it, would constitute a victory of sorts.

That was the plan. On the third and final drop of the green flag, Charlie stalled the bike. Somehow, it’d been gridded in second gear. The entire field streamed past him. You don’t win nine TTs without being a racer; the plan exploded in a red mist. 

Charlie passed 12 riders on the opening lap. Then eight more, in the next four corners. The track announcer went hyperbolic. Then, we heard a fateful “Williams has pulled off!” This time, he’d rolled to a stop at a spot where Patrick and Brian could see him, though it would be a two-mile run around the track perimeter to reach him. There was no point anyway; even at that range, Charlie’s body language made it clear the problem was terminal. Pridmore wriggled out of his leathers without turning a wheel. Again.

The race? The win went to the Guzzi, despite a late-session stop-and-go penalty for making their rider change outside the prescribed window. Forza Bimota, Denis Malterre’s private dream, with his son and his son’s childhood friend as riders, finished eighth in their only motorcycle race. Every team ahead of them had a real racing pedigree, as did most of the 30-plus teams that finished behind them.

“This has been,” the biology prof told me, “the weekend of my life.”

The Honda? Charlie finally arrived back in the garage with the bike, after baking in one of the circuit’s vans for well over an hour. He’d stripped his leathers down to his waist to avoid heatstroke. “It just tightened up,” he said. To emphasize it, he struck a little pose like a bodybuilder’s “crab” and made a sound, “Cr-r-ck”. Then he repeated, “It just tightened up.” Even his voice was tight, which is not at all like him.

As usual, people started loading up right away. Since taking off the borrowed CB900 head would involve removing the motor again, Patrick asked Denis (who was back in underpants, though not technically just underpants – he was also wearing a pair of white latex gloves) if it would be alright if they took it back to Connecticut on the bike, and returned it later. “Bien sur,” was the answer. “Of course.” After all, he’d only worked half his adult life to buy it. Of course he’d let a group of complete strangers fly away to America with it. 

Heritage Racing pretty much shut down the beer concession before even starting to pack. “Next year, I’m coming back with a cheater motor from hell,” Brian vowed. Finally, the RS was rolled into its shipping crate. Charlie headed back to his home in Cheshire, Pridmore and his girlfriend went off to do a little sightseeing, Patrick and Brian drove back to the freight terminal at Charles de Gaulle. 

In a final Freudian slip, Patrick and Brian left their little Bol d’Or Classic ‘participants’ trophy on the rental van’s dashboard when it was returned. After having traveled the longest distance, fielded the rarest of machines; after having their hopes raised and dashed, raised and dashed; after working through the night; after all that, no one deserved to see the checkered flag more. 

Except for Denis Malterre.

I've spent a good part of my life writing about motorcycles and motorcycle racing
 and I have little to show for it. Meeting these guys and hearing their story,
however, felt like a rich reward at the time.

The motorcycle industry's charitable efforts are full of shit, er, misguided

This is a repost from last spring. I'm putting it back up again, because again, with the recent injury to AFM veteran Dave Stanton, I'm reminded that as motorcycle riders & racers, the one charitable cause we all need to back is spinal injury research.

However, before you read on, there's something I want you to do: go here, and PayPal $10 to Dave Stanton.

Here, then, is what I wrote in April 2012 (which is itself a rehash of one of my old columns from the Road Racer X web site, but I'll keep harping on this until as a group, motorcyclists focus our charitable efforts on something closer to home than Toys for Tots or Pediatric Brain Tumors.

It's been a bleak early season for the World Superbike Championship in terms of injuries. A fellow Canadian, SBK racer Brett McCormick just barely dodged a paralyzing injury at Assen, throwing a huge downer on what had been a fairy-tale story. (McCormick showed up in Europe last fall to ride all the SBK contenders' bikes at a press day, as the representative of a Canadian bike mag. He ended up being recruited by the Effenbert team to ride in the European Superstock championship and was then upgraded to SBK.) Being sidelined for several months so early in the season is a bummer for the Canuck, but at least he'll make a full recovery.

Kawasaki rider Joan Lascorz has been relocated to Institut Guttmann, a Barcelona hospital specializing in the treatment and rehabilitation of spinal cord injuries. It remains to be seen just what degree of recovery Joan will make; Institut Guttmann is a world-class facility, but the hospital's logo, in which the 'G' is formed out of the wheel of a wheelchair, makes it clear that serious spinal injuries are still resistant to treatment.

The so-called 'back protectors' that most of us wear offer some protection from impact, but little or no protection for the sorts of compression, extreme flexion, or hyperextension injuries that result in spinal cord injuries. All they really do is give you a false sense that you've taken a step to protect yourself.

Leatt and Alpinestars, which make neck braces for riders of sit-up-and-beg-type motorcycles are, presumably, working on similar devices for  road racers and sportbike riders. And the increasing availability of 'airbag' racing suits shows that companies are actively working on improved injury prevention strategies.

That's great, as far as it goes. But.

For the foreseeable future, all motorcycle riders and racers will continue to expose themselves to high risk of spinal injury. The only thing we can, collectively, hope for is progress in treating those injuries. And that hope is not forlorn; there's a real chance that spinal lesions that currently cause incurable paralysis will be healed in our lifetime; there's promising research on several fronts.

IF THERE IS ONE CHARITABLE CAUSE WE SHOULD ALL CONTRIBUTE TO, IT'S SPINAL CORD RESEARCH. For most of us, a paralyzing injury is the ultimate downside to our sport; something we fear more than death itself. And yet (or, I suppose, because of that fear) the motorcycle industry seems determined to pretend that there are other causes we should support.

So Kyle Petty's big charity ride collects funds for a sick children's summer camp. And every fall, there's Toys for Tots runs. There are rides to raise money for pediatric cancer research, Bikers Battling Breast Cancer, and a Ride For Autism. (I guess most of the participants in those rides are Harley guys who don't even wear crash helmets; they have less to fear on the paralysis front, since they'll typically be killed by brain injuries.)

Leaving aside the obvious criticism that it should be a ride against autism, not for it, I'll point out for the nth time that sending sick children to camp, gathering toys for poor kids, and defeating cancer or autism are all great causes.

For other people.

Riders for Health is probably the highest-profile charity for the helmet-wearing set. Yes, getting health care delivered to people who need it in Africa is great, too. We should support Riders for Health enthusiastically.

After we've found a cure for spinal cord injuries.

Motorcycle riders and race fans should support spinal cord injury research, and that's all we should support, until technology to heal those injuries is widely available. I'm pretty skeptical of Red Bull generally, but I admire Red Bull founder Dieter Mateschitz for -- almost alone in the world of action sports -- confronting the reality of spinal cord injuries face-to-face.

Red Bull's Wings for Life program collects money for spinal cord research and distributes it to researchers working towards a cure. If someone knows of a better umbrella group specializing in spinal cord research, please let me know. Until then, contribute to Wings for Life here.

Why can't American Honda make an ad this good?

ADWEEK recently raved about this brilliant, two minute-long commercial for Honda UK. As far as I know, that spot is running only in Britain (notwithstanding the use of Garrison Keillor for the few words of voiceover.)

This in not an ad for any one product or even any one division of the company. It's a view of the whole brand from 30,000 feet, which pays homage to the ingenuity of Honda's R&D and engineering. It's all about the engineers' imaginations; the background is, literally, a clean sheet of paper.

The spot's running on Channel 4 over there, where Honda is sponsoring a documentary series. The 2-minute length makes it impractical to run on U.S. TV, and frankly I hope that American Honda doesn't adapt it, because I'm sure they'll cut most if not all the motorcycles! But I'd love to see them run the full-length spot in American cinemas.

Anyway, the spot is loaded with stuff motorcyclists and motorsports nuts will appreciate, like the Honda RC143 125cc Grand Prix bike from the '60s, and the snippet of voiceover mentioning John McGuinness.

Enjoy!



Oh, to have a full corporate brand ad here in the U.S. pay such homage to the company's motorcycle roots. The ad does have some indirect American content, in the sense that it was produced by the London office of the U.S. agency Weiden & Kennedy.

Backmarker kudos to Honda UK marketing boss Olivia Dunn, and W&K's highly regarded creative team of Chris Lapham and Aaron McGurk. Apparently the creative team's working on an even longer format piece that will appear online.

I'll try to highlight that, too.

In the meantime, while we're on the subject of great ads, here's two minutes worth wasting, in the form of another Honda long-form ad, also voiced by Garrison Keillor...


And, for those of you who know I'm also a dog lover, a follow up to 'The Cog', in the form of this new spot. Imitation, they say, is the sincerest form of flattery. Or is it 'plagiarism'?

Hero, Buell, and Indian traffic: context

It's always a little weird hearing about motorcycle manufacturers, like Hero, that are virtually unknown in the U.S. market, but huge in India, China, or Southeast Asia.

With annual revenues in the $4B range, Hero is almost as large as the Buell brand's previous owner, Harley-Davidson. And, if one considers the two companies' model ranges--most new Heros are under 200cc and retail for about $1,000--it's clear that Hero sells far more units than H-D.

It's hard to believe now, but there was a time, in the U.S., when motorcycles outnumbered cars. Then, Henry Ford released the Model T, which was more practical than any motorcycle of its day, and less costly than top-of-the-range bikes. It sold for $851 when introduced. Corrected for inflation, that's about $21,000 today. That was a tipping point for cars in the U.S. market.

It took a lot longer for that to happen in the U.K. Motorcycles provided the only affordable day-to-day transport for working blokes until the '60s. Scooters and motorcycles outnumbered Italian auto registrations into the '70s. But in those markets, too, small affordable cars like the Fiat 500 gradually became the default choice for working-class transportation.

I just saw a chart of vehicle registrations by type for the city of New Delhi. Scooters and motorcycles outnumber private autos by 2:1. (There are about 2.3M cars and 4.6M bikes in that one Indian city!)

What's telling, though, is the rate of growth in registrations. While two-wheeler registrations in the last decade have increased 6.4% on average--good news for Hero, which is the largest Indian motorcycle manufacturer--auto registrations have increased even more; on average, 7.9%.

The Indian auto industry has its sights set squarely on consumers who are now buying scooters and small motorcycles. The Tata Nano, for example, bills itself as 'The people's car' (=volkswagen?). It's powered by a fuel-injected 600cc twin motor and sells for about $3,000.

The Tata Nano is probably easier on the environment, on balance, than a lot of motorbikes. Luckily for Hero, road congestion will probably slow the automotive juggernaut there. The ability of bikes to filter through clogged streets may continue to appeal to a lot of commuters who will in the future be able to afford cars.

Even in India, however, cars will eventually shoulder aside motorbikes.

Hero buys half of Erik Buell's company for $25M

India Today and other Indian financial news sources are reporting that Hero, India's largest motorcycle manufacturer, has just completed a deal to invest $25,000,000 in Erik Buell Racing.

According to India Today...

The country's largest two-wheeler maker Hero MotoCorp on Monday said it has picked up 49.2 per cent stake in US-based Erik Buell Racing (EBR) for USD 25 million (about Rs.148 crore).

The company has incorporated a wholly-owned subsidiary in the US by the name of HMCL (NA), Inc for the purposes of investing in Erik Buell Racing Inc, Hero MotoCorp (HMC) said in a filing to the BSE.

"HMCL(NA) has agreed to invest USD 25 million in EBR for a total stake of 49.2 per cent in the share capital of EBR. The first tranche of USD 15 million has been invested by HMCL (NA) on June 28, 2013," it added.

The second tranche of USD 10 million is proposed to be invested within the next nine months, the company added.

Last year, Hero MotoCorp had entered into technology sourcing pact with EBR as it looks to strengthen presence in the high-end bike segment.

The development is a part of the Indian firm's strategy to enhance technological prowess, post the break-up of the erstwhile joint venture with Honda - Hero Honda.

The idea behind entering into partnership with EBR was a part of HMC's overall strategy to have multiple technology source for different segments and enhance its own R&D capability.

In December 2010, the Hero Group and Honda had agreed to end their 26-year-old relationship, with the Indian partner agreeing to buy out Honda's 26 per cent stake in Hero Honda for Rs.3,841.83 crore.

The two erstwhile partners had, however, signed a new licensing agreement under which Hero will pay Honda 45 billion yen (about Rs.2,450 crore) till 2014.

Shares of HMC were trading at Rs.1,677.55 on the BSE in morning trade, up 0.92 per cent from their previous close.

This makes a lot of sense to me. Hero, like several other Indian companies (Mahindra leaps to mind, too) is making the jump from building Japanese designs under license to creating its own machines from scratch. And despite the fact that there are hundreds if not thousands of small, garage-building operations run by guys who'd claim they're capable of designing a bike for mass production, there are in fact a very small number of guys who can actually do it. More to the point, there's a very, very small number of guys who can say, "I've done that."

Erik's one of them. Hero effectively gets a proven R&D operation, albeit one a long way from its Indian base. I wonder if you can get a decent curry in Wisconsin? (Note to Erik: Don't even try to find a decent brat in India. And forget about their cheese curds.)

$25 million will also give EBR some breathing room. I'm not sure how much mass production that will buy, and how much as a result, EBR will be able to lower prices. But getting more bikes to market, sooner, and at more competitive prices, is obviously a key to that company's long term survival.

I'll shoot Erik a message now, and see if he cares to expound upon what, exactly, this means for EBR. (Besides the fact that the company's July 4 picnic will be damned cheerful.)

Yamaha strategy, post-Lorenzo crash

Lorenzo's crash and broken collarbone, early in the Assen weekend (which begins extra-early at Assen, so that the racing can be over before Sunday's mass at a nearby cathedral) threatens to derail #99's effort to repeat as champion this season.


His injury -- broken collarbone -- is relatively minor. It's something almost every motorcycle racer deals with, often more than once, in a career. And he's only 7 points behind Pedrosa. And there are still a dozen races to go. So, mathematically, Yamaha's a long way from admitting defeat.

But.

There've been questions about Yamaha engine longevity, haven't there? And while Lorenzo may only miss one race -- that oddball Assen schedule actually buys him one more precious day of recovery time between races -- there's a real chance that he'll be sore and weak for the next couple of races. By the time Lorenzo is back up to full fitness and speed, Pedrosa could have 25 points in hand, and Yamaha will have lost the title.

That would suck for me because I like Lorenzo and dislike Pedrosa. Now is when Yamaha would love to have a #2 rider capable of winning, in order to deny Pedrosa full points. I mean, if it had been Pedrosa who'd crashed, Honda could quite realistically have hoped Marquez would step up and defend P1 from Lorenzo.

Unfortunately for Yamaha, they've got Valentino Rossi on the distaff side of the garage. I suppose they can pray for rain; Rossi's always been fast in the wet, and he's been ahead of Pedrosa in wet sessions at Assen this weekend. But if it's dry, Cal Crutchlow's faster than Rossi.

Which begs the question, how much of an advantage could Yamaha give Cal, with full factory support, for the next few races? There's lots of reasons those tuning forkers might not want to support Cal. First of all, he's been a vocal critic of the bike he has been riding, even though it is probably the fifth-best bike on the grid. He's bitterly complained that Yamaha aren't showing him the respect he deserves. If Yamaha does throw some extra support his way -- by, for example, allowing Tech 3 to slot a motor from Cal's allotment into a full-factory rolling chassis -- they might in fact give Cal the tools he needs to win, effectively handing valuable points to Lorenzo in the larger title chase. But if Cal could win on a 'factory' bike, it would make all of his whingeing seem justified, and it would make Yamaha seem like pikers.

I still think they should do it.

There's also stuff they could do to Rossi's engine management system, to give him a tiny edge in the next race or three; things that would expose Rossi to risk, vis-a-vis engine longevity, later in the season. What it they upped his rev limit a little (I'm perhaps oversimplifying, but you get the idea)?

With a tiny edge, Rossi  might be capable of winning, which would do him a world of good. He's second right now, behind Marquez, in a dry session, so he's close; Assen, seems to agree with the aging ex-champion.

Rossi's not a championship contender, so who cares if, later in the season, he needs a seventh engine and has to start from pit lane?

The wild card in this mix is Marquez. While I wrote, above, that if it had been Pedrosa who'd broken his collarbone, Honda could reasonably hope Marky Marq would win, the truth is that Marquez may win anyway. He won't listen to team orders. And judging from the way Pedrosa and Marquez seem to relate to each other on track, there's a real possibility they'll both end any race in a gravel trap, beating on each other.

Still, if I ran Yamaha's race effort, I'd bring in the crew chiefs. They should do anything they can to make Crutchlow and Rossi faster this Sunday, and at the next couple of races. Even if it means losing face by proving Crutchlow right, or using up Rossi's motor allotment later in the season. Because if Pedrosa can win at Assen, where Jorge will score no points (then pad his lead over the next couple of races while Jorge recovers) all bets are off.

Sid Biberman Nov. 24, 1930-June 22, 2013

"Big Sid" Biberman, a legendary drag racer and Vincent tuner, passed away in Louisville, KY on Saturday, June 22.

Sid first came to attention as the creator of "The Rattler", one of the fastest drag bikes of its day, in the Mid-Atlantic region. Later, Sid owned a motorcycle repair shop in Virginia; it was the kind of place where, when you walked in, there was always something interesting in a state of disassembly. It'd be a Vincent, or a Brough, or a Laverda... Sid was a magnet for the rare and exotic.

Sid's son Matthew is an English prof and writer. He wrote a book about his relationship with his father -- a relationship that was resurrected as, together, they created a 'Vincati'. 

Sid, Matthew, and their creation -- a tuned, '50s-vintage Vincent motor set in a '70s-era Ducati frame -- are featured in this video from Jay Leno's web site.