Today in motorcycle history, August 29, 1962

  




  

  

  One of the most successful racers in Grand Prix motorcycle racing history, Jorge "Aspar" Martínez, is born in beautiful Valencia, Spain. 

  Jorge "Aspar" Martínez became the 80cc World Champion in 1986, '87 and '88 while a works rider for Derbi.  A double-champion in 1988, Martinez owned the 125cc Class, claiming the World Championship also aboard a Derbi.  


  Aspar quit twisting the throttle competitively in 1997 after 22 Grand Prix victories to his name in the 80cc Class and another 15 in the 125cc Class. In a GP career that began in 1982 he would have 196 starts, 37 wins, 61 podiums and 1599 points.




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Today in motorcycle history, August 28, 1978

  









   On August 28, 1978, Don Vesco averaged an insane 318.598 mph on his streamliner,  Lightning Bolt. The 21-foot streamliner featured dual 1016cc turbocharged Kawasaki KZ1000 engines. After failing for weeks to reach speed in the Lightning Bolt, Vesco salvaged some high speed gears and clutch parts from World War II airplanes at neighboring Wendover Airforce Base, and then pushed the streamliner to two record-breaking runs within four days, first to 315.441 mph and then to the 318.598 mph.








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Today in motorcycle history, August 27, 2005

    

  Iranian daredevil, Javad Palizbanian dies while attempting to break the world record for jumping over buses on a motorcycle.

  Iranian motorcycle daredevil, Javad Palizbanian, was trying to leap over 22 buses parked side by side when his bike came down on the 13th bus, killing him instantly.

  State television broadcast the start of Palizbanian’s attempt in Tehran's Azadi Sport Complex stadium, but then cut the footage.

  The newscaster reportedly said,“The crash scene was too disturbing to show publicly.”

  Just minutes prior to his attempt, Javad had told an audience of hundreds: “I am going to break the world record and do something for my country to be proud of.”



  Javad Palizbanian was well known in Iran for his motorcycle stunts. No stranger to Knievelesque jumps, in July, 2005, he successfully cleared a river that was 153 feet wide.




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Today in motorcycle history, August 26, 1946

   

  

  

   During the first motorcycle event on the Isle of Man after World War II Arthur Johns is killed in the Senior race of the Manx Grand Prix. On a practice run he crashes his 500cc Norton on the last right-hand bend in the approach to Sulby Straight, close to the small town of Ramsey.

  


  The first week of Manx Grand Prix is devoted to 'Practice.' Riders are given the opportunity to get themselves familiar with the course and must complete a minimum number of laps at a satisfactory speed in order to qualify for the races held in Week Two.


  The 1½ mile Sulby Straight, was originally part of Four Inch Course (now Snaefell Mountain Course or Mountain Course) used for the Tourist Trophy car races between 1905 and 1911. Sulby village is also on the Mountain Course used since 1911 for the Isle of Man TT and Manx Grand Prix Races. 


  In the 2006 TT practices, New Zealander Bruce Anstey achieved the unofficial current top speed record for the Mountain Course with a leg-wetting 206 mph at the end of Sulby straight on a Suzuki 1000cc. This alleged speed was registered by the onboard data-logging equipment and so cannot be considered as an official record.


  The Senior Classic race is one of the most popular and features the most diverse range of bikes. Entrants must field a machine with an engine capacity between 350cc and 500cc. Most riders opt for classic marques such as Norton, Seeley, Matchless and BSA.




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Today in motorcycle history, August 25, 1962

      
  





  

   Neftyanik speedway racetrack opens in Oktyabrsky in the Republic of Bashkortostan, Russia.

  At one time, the hammer-and-sickle motorcycle racing team was world-famous, the Russian riders repeatedly the victors at international Speedway competitions. With the disintegration of the USSR the Soviet school of cinder-track speedway racing suffered an almost complete decline. In today's Russia there are still are a few places where the fine traditions of Soviet motorcycling are alive and well. The city of Oktyabrsky is one of those places.



  Stop anyone in Oktyabrsky and ask what their city is noted for, is it art? Music? Dance?  Nyet. It's Speedway Racing. The first Speedway races in Bashkortostan were held on May 18, 1937. Those were not circuit races but a 110-kilometer (68.35 mile) heat along a road leading from a suburb of Oktyabrsky to Ufa, the Republic's capital. A fireman named Alexey Pallo, on a Harley, took the checkered flag in 2 hours 12 minutes and 16 seconds.



  The head coach of the world renown LUKOIL-Bashkortostan team, Merited Master of Sport Mikhail Starostin, a living legend of Russian Speedway, knows the history of this sport in Bashkortostan better than anyone else. "The history of Speedway in Oktyabrsky goes back more than fifty years. It all began on August 25, 1962, when a motorcycle racetrack was opened at a local stadium called Neftyanik. It became the venue of international competitions in which Soviet and Austrian racers took part. Later on, in 1970, the city acquired its own Speedway team which was variously named Burovik, Neftyanik and Stroitel. What remained constant, however, was the high racing skill and will-to-win of our athletes."



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Today in motorcycle history, August 22, 1954

  


 
     

  Austrian Rupert Hollaus wins the 250cc Class Swiss Grand Prix at Circuit Bremgarten in Bern, Switzerland. 

  Hollaus dominated the 1954 125cc Class by winning the first four Grand Prix aboard his NSU Rennmax Twin. Tragically, on September 11, 1954, Rupert Hollaus was killed during practice for the Italian Grand Prix at Monza. He became the first posthumous World Champion in 1954, in the 125cc Class and was runner up to his NSU team-mate, West German Werner Haas, in the 250cc Class.

  He is the only Austrian to win a road racing World Championship.




  The Circuit Bremgarten was built as a motorcycle track in 1931 in the Bremgartenwald (Bremgarten forest) in the north of Bern. The circuit itself had no true straight, instead it was a collection of high-speed corners. In 1934, it's first auto race claimed the life of driver Hugh Hamilton. In 1948 it claimed the life of Italian racer Achille Varzi.  From Day One, Bremgarten's poorly-lit, tree-lined roads and dramatic changes in road surface made for an extremely dangerous track, especially in wet conditions.

  Bremgarten has not hosted an official motorsport event since 1955, when spectator racing sports, with the exception of hillclimbing and rallying, were banned in Switzerland following the 1955 Le Mans disaster.

   During the 24 Hours of Le Mans a crash caused large pieces of debris to fly into the crowd. Eighty-three spectators and driver Pierre Levegh perished at the scene with 120 more injured in the most horrific accident in motorsport history.

  Today in motorcycle history proudly supports the National Association for Bikers with a Disability (NABD).  www.nabd.org.uk

Today in motorcycle history, August 21, 1966

  Now held on Memorial Day weekend and again over the Labor Day holiday, the Springfield Mile was once held on the last day of the Illinois State Fair.  The once-a-year AMA National would be no more after it's 1966 race, and what a farewell it would be.

  The race then was 50 miles long, twice the distance of today’s final, and the winner, more often than not it seemed, was decided by mechanical failure. Let's be honest, race-bike engines 50 years ago were not known for their durability when cranked flat out for any length time. Sure enough, the leader, then nearly 20 seconds ahead of the pack, blew a piston with one lap to go. Four riders had a chance and fought tooth-and-nail all the way to the finish, with Oklahoma's Gary Nixon finally taking it at the line without his protective steel hot shoe, which had come off 10 laps earlier. The future AMA HOFer collected $3,230 in winnings before a rabid crowd of nearly 30,000.


  But the day would begin on a sad note when Bill Corbin of Marion,Ohio, and San Francisco's Rick Vetter, would tragically die in a five-bike wreck while competing in the first heat for the Five Mile Amateur race held in conjunction with the AMA Grand National event on the mile oval.  It remains the deadliest day in the history of the Springfield Mile. There was no race for the next 15 years.





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Today in motorcycle history, August 20, 1971

  

       

  On Friday, August 20 at 8:47am, production begins on the 1972 Triumph TR6 in Meriden. A partial solar eclipse should have served as an omen.

  The 1972 Triumph TR6 was being billed as the 'sister-bike' to the  Bonneville and was the second year for the oft-complained about, rarely complimented on, oil-in-frame.



  A year earlier both the 1971 Bonneville and the TR6 got an entirely new one-piece, all-welded steel frame that held the engine oil in its huge 3" diameter backbone, instead of in a separate oil tank, like normal. Great idea in concept, but somehow the boys at Umberslade Hall couldn't figure out how to keep the oil from foaming up and spilling over, so they relocated the filler cap from just behind the steering head to just under the front of the seat, lowering the oil level and abandoning all that internal oil in the large portion of the backbone under the tank. So this enormous 'drain pipe' of a backbone that was supposed to be filled with oil was now only filled about halfway, leaving the new bike woefully in short supply, (read as; ran way too fucking hot).

  Another big problem with the oil-in-frame was that it raised the seat height to 32-1/2", too tall for many riders.  Yet, with all the complaints BSA (Triumph's parent company) did it again in '72. Thanks.


  Triumph did offer four TR6 models for '72: TR6R (the standard Roadster); TR6C (with high pipes running along the left side); TR6P (UK Police version); TR6SS (US Police version) and TR6RV (a Roadster with optional 5-speed). Engine & frame numbers ran from JG033084 to EG057252, built from August 20, 1971 to May 17, 1972.

  Thomas Simpson, British mathematician was born on August 20, 1710.

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Today in motorcycle history, August 19, 2013

     

  



  

  Steve McQueen's 1946 Indian Chief sells for *$143,750 at the first-ever California Auctions America at the Marriott Burbank Airport Hotel in Los Angeles, California.

  The bike is believed to be the first bike that McQueen purchased and the auction just happened to coincide with the launch of Indian Motorcycle's 2014 Chief line-up of the Classic, Vintage and Chieftain.

  The Indian was documented by the original McQueen Certificate of Authenticity to prove its ownership.

  Reminiscing about the bike in "McQueen's Machines: The Cars and Bikes of a Hollywood Icon", the film star wrote: "I was going with a girl who began to hate the cycle - just hated riding in the bumpy sidecar.

  "She told me, 'Either the cycle goes or I go!' Well, there was no contest. She went."

  *The auction was actually held August 1-3 but, payment was not received until the later date due to a previous agreement.
  

  Today in motorcycle history proudly supports the National Association for Bikers with a Disability (NABD).  www.nabd.org.uk