Britten On the Gas

BRITTEN ON THE GAS

RACE WATCH

THE BRITTEN

SMITIEN WITH?~ BRITTEN: One of a select few to have ridden, let alone raced, the V1000.

NICK IENATSCH

Few realize how devastatingly well John Britten’s V1000 circulated a racetrack. Some may remember that it won a BEARS championship in 1995 and Sound of Thunder at Daytona with Andrew Stroud a few times, but those victories came while competing against other twin-cylinder machines.

By 1995,1 had raced Jim Flunter’s V1000 three times, twice in twins races, carding one win. I then led CCS’s Unlimited GP class at Daytona for three laps against some of the biggest AMA teams of the era (on open-class machines) before crashing because of a loose steering damperthat jammed into the exhaust system. I was just a journalist and not Scott Russell, proving how good that bike really was.

A few months ago, watching a Britten slowly circulate Barber Motorsports Park at the AHRMA Vintage Festival,

I wondered if anyone would ever get to see a Britten at speed again. But that thought failed to take into account Bob Robbins and Hunter. These collectors own Brittens and believe that the “bikes should be ridden.”

I was then, by a stroke of luck, reunited with Hunter’s V1000 on the Friday of that AHRMA event. After a warmup lap, I paid my personal respects to John Britten by putting the hammer down.

I wanted to leave no doubt that even after 20 years it was the real deal.

When you pull the trigger on this bike, the sounds of heaven crash down to accompany the rapidly advancing blue and pink machine. It wants to wheelie out of any secondor third-gear corner with the slightest suggestion at the clip-ons. The harder you push the bike the better it feels. More speed and tire loads put this bike into its element, and I went ahead and tucked in, hung off, pinned the throttle, ran it to redline, and maximized the brakes.

There’s a mesmerizing effect this bike has that no other machine can match. You’re perched on a not-soft seat behind a big fuel tank, your hands wide apart and the bubble way up in your face, inviting you to drop your chin on the tank and go.

As the revs come up, the bike mesmerizes you. It’s a combination of sound and effortless forward propulsion. The bike digs down and growls at you, building into a roar followed by a mechanical jet-engine-like symphony unlike anything I’ve ever felt, heard, or sensed. And don’t be mistaken: Riding a Britten quickly is a full-sense extravaganza, in part due to the bike’s unique layout.

It would be forgivable if this engineering masterpiece simply “made it around the track,” but my Friday laps, and Andrew Stroud’s Next Generation Superbike win that Sunday, didn’t just show off the Britten but the reason the world remembers the V1000 with such clarity.