The Fastlane Motorsports Forum

It was announced yesterday that the first ever FIM Trial World Champion Harold Martin Lampkin passed away from cancer aged 65.

Thoughts and condolences are with his wife Isobel and his sons Dougie and Harry

RIP

RIP

John Hinchhaugh just mentioned it on radiolemans. Sad to hear.

RIP

RIP Harold Martin Lampkin.

Tomorrow the first race of the EWC season goes ahead with the 24h du Moto at Le Mans. In its support the world sidecar championship will have another race before the 24h starts.

Andy wrote:Tomorrow the first race of the EWC season goes ahead with the 24h du Moto at Le Mans. In its support the world sidecar championship will have another race before the 24h starts.

Yeah, and I noticed our local Eurosports is offering all 24 hours on TV, as it does the car version in June.

What a race it was.
OK, the SRC squad won by like 10 laps but behind the race was dramatic as any sprint could be. Team of the race for me is YART Yamaha with its riders Ivan Silva, Max Neukirchner and Broc Parkes. With about 2h into the race Ivan Silva crashed and broke his shoulder. Once the bike was back in pits and fixed Neukirchner and Parkes shared the remaining 21.5 hours between them and finished on an 11th place after recovering from the dead end of the field.
Both Neukirchner and Parkes needed to be pulled and carried away from the bike the longer the race went on. Also during the night the temperature dropped to zero degree Celsius which made it everso harder as knees and fingers froze during the stints.

Roll on Portimao

A very enjoyable race inspite of the lack of an outright lead battle following early retirements. One thing that struck me was the night racing, which although difficult to follow at times was fairly frantic with plenty of passing. Taking into account the low temperatures I was surprised at the intensity of the racing given as Andy mentioned the chill factor on the riders. I felt quite sorry for the relief riders being taken from the warmth of the garage / motorhomes to have to become accustomed to the dark and the cold at high speeds with little onboard lighting. (espially the case with bikes which had been damaged and restarted with lights that seemed focussed only illuminating a couple of metres in front)

Unfortunately our coverage was not the promised full 24 hours with chunks where they (Eurosports) thought we would prefer to watch Netball or something else equally yawnworthy. But end of the day it was more coverage than ever before so thankful for what we got.

New Barry Sheene movie (trailer).

erwin greven wrote:New Barry Sheene movie (trailer).

Thanks erwin, from the trailer is hard to see whether it is a documentary or a "Rush" style movie. From the film's website it appears it will be somewhere in between:

www.sheene.com wrote:IO Films Australia and Deep Spring Pictures UK are proud to announce the development of a narrative bio-pic on the life of British motorcycle legend Barry Sheene.

The script is an adaptation based on the book “Barry: The story of motorcycling legend Barry Sheene” written by Steve Parrish & Nick Harris.

To keep up to date with developments, subscribe to our YouTube Channel, like our Facebook Page or follow us on Twitter.

#SheeneMovie

Would not be surprised when it is close to "Rush". Barry and James were the playboy characters in the seventies motorsports.

I can't believe it's been 13 years since he passed away. He was such a brilliant character.

PS: The 12th Man parody of him - still gold.

Sad news from Portland, Oregon. Michael Czysz, 52, died from a rare form of cancer. Czysz' designed motorcycles and had them raced in the TT zero races from 2010-2013.

Among the few things that stood out from my early years of education was the impression, notion, and historical fact that the world is shaped by clever and talented individual scientists, engineers, mathematicians, inventors, explorers, philosophers etc. They were all 'great' men, and it wasn't until later in life that I became aware that women could and did achieve in these areas of human endeavour too.

source : http://www.wemoto.com/news/article/1018/michael_czysz

To continue with the sad stuff, Malachi Mitchell-Thomas, the rider who got killed at the Northwest 200, was laid to rest today


RIP

The book below arrived early, Tuesday last week (proposed towards the end of TT race week). In it Liam writes about his time with Robert Dunlop. It follows Rob's career until his untimely death in practice to the NW200 in 2008. Also I couldn't put it down and read it one go on Saturday/Sunday which made me missing out on large chunks of the N24 and WSB. The penultimate chapter had me in tears. A fantastic, highly recommendable read.

Today the 12h of Portimao start off with private practice sessions. Race should be on for full length on Eurosport again. Needless to say who will conclude his two week festival of motorcycling with the endurance race