Round·up

ROUND·UP

JOE PARKHURST

SPEAKING of Honda, I don’t know whether I was or not, though it’s pretty hard not to, they just paid 20-million yen for various projects performed by assorted employees for the 5th annual Honda Idea Contest. The ideas entered need not have practical applications. Most are interesting, though they need not even be that. This year’s madness was staged at the company’s Suzuka Circuit test track with 5000 entries. A number of entrants developed ideas relating to themes of safety or pollution control, but most projects were simply bizarre. Fifty-one ideas passed preliminary judging and were seen at the finals by 15,000 spectators. Each is examined for the idea, creativity, mechanical value and workmanship. Mr. K. Kawashima, President of Honda, was one of the judges. A work called “Mystery of Life” won the grand prize. It demonstrated the process of the growth of a butterfly—automatically, at that. Honda’s Technical Research team built it.

Among such prolific minds-the kind that can make such things as the CVCC car engine and the GL1000-it was, as you would expect, an opportunity for some to show genuine creativity. Among such noteworthy entries as a worm car, candy car, jet cruiser, cycle bird, magic bike, etc., was a chainless and shaftless bike. A powerful pump forced oil through the hollow swinging arm, where the torque was transmitted to the rear hub.

Keep your eye on that one.

The contest is open to all Honda employees, and each main plant has an idea-producing shop. All expenses are paid by Honda. I must say, for more reasons than I have space or time to enumerate here, Honda is an unbelievable company.

WOMEN in motorcycling is a subject that CYCLE WORLD hasn’t talked about very much. Certain social pressures—and a great deal of long-overdue awareness—is changing that. CYCLE WORLD’S newly-promoted managing editor, Virginia DeMoss, is one excellent example. Her feature in this issue on the Yamaha Women’s Motorcycle Championships at Carlsbad recognizes a growing number of the “opposite sex” in our sport. CW’s> readers are, after all, only 98 percent male. For a mere two percent, the women are pretty strong, hard to overlook, and deserve the attention they receive. No sexist comments, please.

While on the subject of women in the sport, Dolores Monington, from Martinez, Calif., is a member of the Wedded Wheels Motorcycle Club, a family organization. She has four daughters and a husband to match. She is an eligibility worker supervisor at the Richmond Health Clinic. Monington has been riding for more than six years, starting in the dirt, and is now manhandling, or should I say personhandling, a Honda 500.

Dolores also helps her husband run their furniture store, is taking guitar lessons, has an A.A. degree and 72 units to her credit (including courses in parapsychology), writes country western lyrics that a friend is setting to music, water skis and does a little fishing. She was also voted the “Popular Female Rider of the Year” by American Motorcycle Association members. She received the award—beating out the top ten finalists—at this year’s AMA awards banquet in Daytona.

I’m not finished yet. Monington plans and oversees the preparation of food served on the annual Feather River run, often for more than 700 people. She cooks for her club’s functions, plans social affairs for them, and is often a guest speaker (obviously on the topic of motorcycling), in her community. Quite a person.

Following is a complete report on the Isle of Man TT races by our correspondent across the pond, B.R. Nicholls.

LIKE THE proverbial old I soldier, it seems the TT races will never die, but will only fade away. Although still holding World Championship status for 1975, it was very much the focus of attention by the FIM as to whether it should maintain that standing. Two fatal crashes involving riders of no mean experience at virtually the same spot—Milntown Cottage just outside Ramsey— will have done nothing to help the arguments in favor of the TT, for nothing is more emotive or unanswerable than such tragedies.

That the majority of stars will stay away is accepted, but it still leaves brave and skilled men prepared to display their ability in what is still without a doubt the toughest test of man and machine. Whether that test is made easier or more difficult by the smoothing of the road surface and cutting back of corners is a moot point, but it must have helped seal the fate of Mike Hailwood’s 1967 outright lap record of 108.77. Mick Grant topped it with a figure of 109.82 mph on the three-cylinder water-cooled works 750 Kawasaki. That time was achieved on a pitstop lap, as the thirsty green meanie required gas every two laps of the 37.75-mi. circuit. It looked as though 110 mph was in the cards for Grant’s last lap—which would have been the only flyingstart-and-finish one—but he broke a chain on lap three. That was the end of his attempt to win the final race of the week-the 300-1 OOOcc Open Classic TT.

Practice week had been run in perfect weather conditions, although there was a cool northerly wind. The traditional early-morning stints that used to start at 4:45 a.m. were replaced by evening sessions. Race week opened on Saturday with a 10-lap production-machine race in which two riders had to pair for each machine and neither was allowed to do more than three laps in succession. It started with the German Helmut Dahne building up quite a lead on his 900cc BMW, and ended one mile after his corider, Werner Deiringer, had taken over and had the engine seize at Quarter Bridge. Dahne, with his exuberant cornering, had worn a hole through the right-hand rocker box cover and lost all the oil!

That let in the 750 Triumph Trident that had won the previous four Production TT races. There was nothing to stop it going on to win its fifth race in the hands of Dave Croxford and Alex George, the latter putting in a class lap record at 102.82 miles per hour.

Interest and an element of competition were injected into the race, which consisted of three classes, by sending the 500cc class off first, followed eight minutes later by the 250s, with a further sixminute delay before the 1000s left the line. Each class had a Le Mans-style start, but the 250s only had to complete nine laps to the 10 of the other two classes.

From the start, the 500s never had a chance; the interest lay in the leading big machine making up the difference in starting time and catching the leading 250 once again. “Slippery Sam,” the nickname given to that fiverace-winning Trident, did it, so was pronounced the overall winner from the 250 Yamaha of Charles Mortimer and Billy Guthrie. The 500 class went to Charlie Williams and Eddie Roberts, riding a Honda CB500.

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Howling gales, rain, sleet and even some snow on the mountain nixed racing on Monday, so the program was postponed until Tuesday. It seemed that even the weather was bemoaning the absent aces.

Despite protestations from some of the solo riders, and the FIM recommendation that sidecars should always run last because of the oil risk, Tuesday’s racing started with the 500cc sidecar World Championship round. With eight TT wins already under his belt, it was to be an unlucky day for Siegfried Schauzu, whose BMW’s gearbox packed up after only 11 miles. His was not the first, neither was it the last retirement, for during the race, 37 of the 70 starters packed up for one reason or another.

But there was to be no such ill fortune for Rolf Steinhausen (König), who with passenger, Josef Huber, started 10 seconds behind the only man capable of beating them: Mac Hobson (Honda). Theirs was a classic duel. They were often in sight of each other on the road, with ultimate victory going to the Germans by the narrow margin of four seconds and a race record speed of 95.94 mph. The consolation for Hobson was a new lap record at 96.71, and his best-ever position in a World Championship round.

You need some luck to win a TT race, and no one is more aware of that than young Charlie Williams, the 24-year-old rider who eventually came home first in the 350 Junior TT that followed the sidecar race. Before the flag fell to signal his victory, Charlie had to take things easy after the engine seized in Ramsey on the third lap. There was an even more agonizing moment on the last lap when it went onto one cylinder three miles from the finish. But in more trouble was 2nd-place man Charles Mortimer, whose bike had a skittish front end, preventing an all-out effort to win. But all sympathy in that race had to go to Alex George, who set the fastest lap and went into the final lap with the narrow lead of 2.8 sec., only to suffer a seizure. Then, when that was overcome, he crashed without serious hurt.

Moved from its traditional last-race-of-the-week spot, the Senior TT was the first race on Wednesday. Conditions were not terribly favorable; the sun shone in Douglas, but in the Ramsey area roads were wet after heavy rain.

Leader for the first two of the six laps was Charles Mortimer (Yamaha), but clutch trouble put him out of the running. He eventually finished 3rd. John Williams (Yamaha), handicapped by a collar bone broken a month previously, took the lead, but a pit stop was to rob him of victory. While Grant put on 7 gal. in just 15 seconds with a quick filler, Williams took more than 40 for just 4 gal. Grant won from Williams by less than four seconds.

In the sidecar race that followed, Siegfried Schauzu gained his ninth sidecar TT victory, which must surely gain him a place for all time in the records of sidecar road racing. But he did not have it all his own way, for Rolf Steinhausen, with the 680cc Busch König, led at the end of lap one. Dick Greasley was 2nd on the 700 Yamaha. Schauzu picked Greasley off on the second lap and put in a searing third lap at 99.31 mph, knocking almost six seconds off Steinhausen’s previous record. Schauzu’s victory was assured when Steinhausen drifted to a halt at the Bungalow with gearbox trouble, some seven miles from the finish. Behind him came Dick Greasley, passengered by Cliff Holland, to a fine 2nd place. This added immensely to the 3rd they had taken in the 500 class the previous day when people were asking: “Who is Dick Greasley?” Now they knew he is an extremely competent sidecar pilot.

So to Friday and the final day of racing. It started with the 250 race in which Charles Mortimer had a start-to-finish win on a Yamaha. Not surprising, really, when you learn that 44 out of 45 finishers were Yamaha-mounted. The odd man out shall remain nameless, as he finished 45th on a Honda. Derek Chatterton was 2nd and put in the fastest lap. John Williams finished 3rd.

The favorite for the big race of the week—the 300-1000cc Open Formula TT—was Kawasaki rider Mick Grant. But, as already mentioned, he left the scene on lap three with that broken chain. That let in John Williams on a 350 Yamaha, with similarly-mounted Tony Rutter and Eddie Roberts behind him. That’s a story in itself, for most riders prefer to ride a 350 Yam in the big race rather than one of the bigger four-cylinder models.

Roberts retired on lap four, at which point Rutter had his moment of glory by leading at the end of the lap. But his ride ended with a broken chain and John Williams went on virtually unchallenged to win by almost four minutes from Percy Tait (750 Yamaha), who was followed by Charlie Sanby (Suzuki).

But at the end of it all was the melancholy feeling that perhaps we had all been watching the last World Championship TT, unless some life-saving plan is adopted. Such a plan? Perhaps two Championships; one for true road-racing courses like those in Finland and Yugoslavia, and another for specially-built circuits. But whatever happens, none will be able to claim the magnetic attraction that the Isle of Man has had for a certain breed of racer and spectator for almost 70 years. That’s a long time by any standards; let’s hope the Isle of Man goes on attracting men and machines.