Grass Track Racing

Grass Track Racing

B. R. Nicholls

OF THE MAJOR BRANCHES of motorcycle sport in Britain, grass track racing is probably the least fashionable but nevertheless has a very partisan band of followers. The national championship each year easily draws a crowd of ten thousand. For the championships there are two solo titles, those for 350 and 500cc machines, and a sidecar class with the capacity going as high as lOOOcc. At smaller meetings held during the season there is usually an additional solo class up to 250cc.

Racing takes place on the grass, as the name implies, with the course usually oval or kidney shaped, somewhere between six hundred and eight hundred yards long. Solos always race in an anti-clockwise direction. The “inside” footrest is spring loaded so that it does not dig in. Sidecars race in both directions (not in the same race), depending on the part of the country where the races are held, but there can be no doubt that it is far more spectacular when they race anti-clockwise, forcing the passenger to lean out of the sidecar on comers. Many argue that it is safer, as the machine is easier to control than when the passenger is virtually pillion-riding the whole time.

To the outsider’s eye the solo racing machine looks like a speedway bike, but this is far from true as the “grass cutter” must have two independently-operated brakes, is fully sprung and has a gearbox. Motive power in the big time is almost exclusively JAP, with bore and stroke 74 x 80 = 344cc for the 350 and 80 x 99 = 498cc for the 500. It takes quite an experienced eye to discern the difference between the two power units.

King pin in the British grass track world is Alf Hagon who has won ten national titles in as many years and with his vast experience on these machines has now perfected a frame which is extensively used in Europe. Rear suspension is usually swing-arm with Girling units, but the front forks are generally controlled by elastic bands which permit a large amount of adjustment for different tracks with the utmost ease simply by adding to, or taking away from the number of bands on the unit.

Tracks in Britain are not necessarily flat and are usually far from smooth. The situation on the continent, however, is different, especially in Germany where tracks are used only once a year and graded after each meeting — giving a very smooth surface. These tracks are usually eight hundred to one thousand meters (approximately Vi to %-mile) in length and have stands to accommodate up to two thousand people. The track sides are banked to allow all spectators to have an uninterrupted view of racing. Crowds are bigger, averaging fifteen thousand with as many as twenty-five to thirty thousand for an important race. Here again the JAP is the basic power unit with a two-speed gearbox. The top German riders are veteran forty-five-yearold Josef Seidl and twenty-two-year-old Manfred Porchenreider, whilst Sweden’s contribution to this branch of the sport is Sven Fahlen, whose five hundred JAP is reputed to produce 58 bhp. Two of England’s top men who tackle the continentals on their own doorstep are Martin Tatum and Don Godden, the latter being very keen to race in the States.

The sidecar class is the real crowd thriller and also gives the enthusiast variation, for no two outfits are alike. 650cc twins are the favorite power units with one competitor even going to the extent of a lOOOcc Ariel Square Four.

The 1964 championships were held at Folkestone over a half-mile track with a fair gradient at one end. As sidecars raced clockwise, we had the “high speed pillion racing” spectacle with Nigel Mead and John Justice forcing their 650cc BSA twin outfit to victory in every ride to take the championship title with consummate ease.

Alf Hagon won the 350 title after an early setback when he was led by Don Godden, but Godden missed a gear and both Hagon and Dennis Goodacre were past him. Try as he might, Goodacre could not close with Hagon and had to be content with second place just in front of the hard-trying Godden. In the 500cc final Reg Luckhurst nearly “lost the plot” on the last of the four laps when he made a superhuman effort to get the lead from Hagon; the effort paid off, he passed Hagon at the top of the hill and swept down to hold a few lengths lead to the flag. So Luckhurst won his first national title and Hagon, whose foot had been in plaster up to two weeks before following a track accident, made his total ten titles in ten years.