The French have a
penchant for endurance. Witness the Tour de France bicycle race or the
Paris-Dakar. It’s no surprise the 24-hour Bol d’Or, held in September, is the
country’s highest-profile motorcycle race.
As big as the ‘Bol’ is
now, its heyday was 40 years ago. Kevin Cameron called endurance racing in the
‘70s “the privateer’s last stand” meaning that it was the last time truly
independent teams competed for an FIM world road racing title.
To recapture that glory,
the Bol’s organizers created the Bol d’Or Classic in 2003. Since a full 24
hours would be too much to expect from motorcycles from that period (to say
nothing of vintage riders) the format of the race was three one-hour sessions
spread over 24 hours. Two-rider teams were mandatory; the winner was determined
on cumulative mileage. As a bonus, the format offered spectators not one, but
three Le Mans-style starts.
Patrick Bodden, was the
child of a French mother and an American GI, raised in France, he vividly
remembered seeing his first Bol in 1975. So when he heard about the inaugural
Bol d’Or Classic, he was determined to provide an American presence.
He already had a bike in
mind. Through his Heritage Racing AHRMA team, he’d met Connecticut-based
superbike collector Brian O’Shea. O’Shea’s collection is focused on historic
AMA superbikes, but he’d acquired a 1979 Honda factory RS1000. Only three of
these were ever built in endurance specs; Honda sent one each to France,
Britain, and Australia. O’Shea’s bike was raced by Ron Haslam and Alex George
at the Bol d’Or, amongst other races. It was later shipped to the US, where it
was used at one Daytona test, then left to languish. So a return trip would be
something of a homecoming for the bike, as well as Heritage Racing. Once O’Shea
had agreed to the loan of his RS1000, only three things were missing: the two
riders, and a budget.
Reg Pridmore’s definitely
a Californian now, though he was born in London. He was the first-ever AMA
Superbike champion, riding a BMW R90S. He also rode an R100 for the French BMW
importer in the 1975 Bol d’Or. Charlie Williams is known as one of the
best-ever TT riders, but he also rode Honda RCBs (the predecessor of O’Shea’s
RS1000) for Honda in several Bols. After Bodden persuaded those two to give the
Classic a go, the rider corps seemed qualified.
Sponsorship came from the
American Honda Rider’s Club, and Champion Honda of Charleston, North Carolina;
Shell UK provided fuel. Thanks to them, Heritage Racing’s team came together at
the Circuit de Nevers-Magny Cours, in the Burgundy region of central France, on
the Bastille Day weekend in mid-July, 2003. I helped only a little; since I was
living in Paris at the time, I handled some logistics at the French end.
Mainly, I rented a van from over in the 15th arrondissement and drove to
Charles de Gaulle airport to pick them, and the bike, up.
The first practice
sessions on Friday took place in blazing heat (the summer broke all French
temperature records.) Charlie Williams was first out for Heritage Racing, and
brought the bike in noting that the brakes felt soft, and the motor seemed
rich. While Williams slumped in the cool of the garage, with a towel soaked in
icewater around his neck, it was Pridmore’s turn in the leather sauna.
In the next-but-one
garage, a guy fettling a pair of Bimota HB-9s had stripped to his underpants.
Not shorts, or a bathing suit, but actual Y-front briefs, on a body as pallid
as a frog’s belly, except where it had already been sunburned. (He’d been
outside in the line up to register for the event, in the same utterly
unselfconscious state, at high noon.) His ‘team’, which was on the entry list
as Forza Bimota, seemed to be sponsored by a lap-dancing club, that had sent
along a few girls, dressed for their part Bimota T-shirts the size of Barbie clothes.
“Why don’t we have any
hookers?” O’Shea asked, in a tone suggesting that by comparison, Bodden had
already failed as a team manager. A pretty-but-world-weary blonde tanned in the
doorway of their garage, near a hand-scrawled sign that read “T-Shirts – 15
Euro – Aidez-nous!”
All in all, they made
quite an impression.
“Is that a French thing?
Wearing nothing but your underpants in public?” Pridmore wondered out loud.
Bodden (who, if truth be told had become downright defensive about post-Iraq
Franco-American relations) was quick to say “No!!”
(I’d already noticed, in
the check-in line, Patrick positioning himself to block his team’s view of the
near-naked Frenchman. When we got installed and discovered that the garage
walls were see-through wire fencing and the underpants crew was in plain site
from our space, Bodden scowled in their general direction.)
Although Patrick had been
visibly proud when others came over to admire the RS1000, when underpants man
and his rider, a kid in his 20s with dreadlocks down his back walked over to
look at the it, poking and marveling, Bodden bristled. For a moment, it seemed
he was about to snap, “Get away from there!” but instead he muttered something
to himself, in an ‘Inspector Clouseau’ accent.
After another session,
with the riders complaining of a dreadful flat spot in the middle of the rev
range, Bodden and O’Shea set about removing the carburetors to see why –
despite running the smallest jets O’Shea had on hand – the motor was still
rich.
While the float levels
were being set, the riders compared Bol d’Or notes. The race had never been
lucky for either of them. Pridmore remembered the RS100 as being a bit of an
oil-burner. “They were putting some oil in each time we stopped to refuel, but
not as much as it was burning,” he recalled the inevitable conclusion “it
stopped once and for all somewhere around the sixth hour.”
Williams rode Honda RCBs
in World Championship endurance events from 1973 to ‘78, winning at Barcelona
and Nurburgring, but scoring only one finish in five attempts at the Bol d’Or.
“I remember going around Virage du Musee, one of those years when the Bol was
held at Le Mans. The rotor had broken off the end of the crankshaft, and broken
through the cases, dumping all the oil onto the bike’s back tire, and that was
the end of that,” he said simply.
On Saturday after timed
qualifying, it seemed Pridmore’s and Williams’ run of Bol luck had changed.
Pridmore’s best lap, at 2:14.8, would have been good enough for tenth on the
grid. Williams, though, had put the team into the fourth spot thanks to a
2:06-flat.
In front of the U.S.
entry, there was a legendary Godier-Genoud Kawasaki, piloted by Alain Genoud
and Gilles Hampe (one of France’s most charming and fastest motorcycle cops.)
There was also a brutal but effective Yamaha TZ750; “It won’t go the distance,”
Heritage Racing told themselves. Finally, there was a deceptively quick Moto
Guzzi Le Mans, which again set Bodden to muttering.
On Sunday afternoon,
Charlie Williams lined up on the far side of the track with 40-some other
riders. The flag dropped, and there was an eerie moment of silence, but for the
patter of feet in racing boots, as the riders ran across to their machines.
O’Shea walked down to
turn one, and returned a little shocked after seeing Williams riding his
irreplaceable motorcycle in hot pursuit of ex-world champ Jean-Claude Chimaron.
“Man!” he said, “those guys are having a duel.”
According to the rules of
the race, rider changes had to take place between the 20th and 40th minute of
each session. Pridmore brought the first hour to a close without any trouble,
and the first official score sheet showed Heritage Racing in a respectable 6th
place overall.
Sunday evening, the night
session. Again, Williams got off to a good start, but after a few laps, the
announcer mentioned that he was off the track at “180”, a hairpin turn about as
far from the pit straight as he could get. With no additional information from
the loudspeakers, Heritage Racing didn’t know if he’d crashed or broken down.
Bodden trotted off to race control, where the entire track (built to Formula One
car specs) was covered by a CCTV system. In the cool, dark control booth,
facing a bank of video monitors, he watched Williams pushing the big Honda up a
long hill. Meanwhile, O’Shea had taken off at a run, back along the track’s
service road, hoping to find him – but unable to understand any of the track
announcements, or the yells of French corner workers.
“Here he comes!” someone
yelled. Williams – soaked in sweat but now back on the machine – was pushed the
length of the pit lane by Bodden and O’Shea. Hope springs eternal in endurance
racing. Could it just be fuel starvation? The fuel tank vent hose seemed
kinked. O’Shea ripped it off, and punched the starter. It started all right –
it started making loud metal-on-metal banging noises inside the motor. Pridmore
pulled off his leathers.
Williams – once he’d
cooled off – evaporated into the night air, while Bodden and O’Shea considered
an apparently hopeless situation. The team had brought virtually no spare
parts, as most were simply unavailable, “As much as this looks like a street
bike motor,” bemoaned O’Shea “inside it’s so different.”
Morosely, they performed
a rudimentary compression check by jamming wads of tissue into the spark plug
holes. When the motor was turned over (the electric starter, which Honda
included for dead-engine Le Mans starts, came in handy) three cylinders blew
their wads, but #1 generated no compression at all. Peering down the spark plug
hole with a microlight was inconclusive. They’d have to pull the head to know
what was wrong.
Problem #2: Honda had
packed the motor in so tightly that even removing the magnesium valve covers
meant dropping the motor onto the lower frame rails. One by one, the garages
were falling silent, and dark. Pridmore and Williams wandered back in, staying
only long enough to say that they were headed back to their hotel.
Bodden and O’Shea pored
over Brian’s copy of the RS manual. The oft-photocopied sheaf included pages of
setup notes, handwritten by engine builder Udo Gietl who worked for American
Honda at the time of the machine’s one Daytona test.
They took turns: one
would find the situation impossible, while the other proposed some solution
that was merely improbable. “I’m sitting here, and I can’t think of anything
that’s gonna work, and it sucks the wind out of me,” said Brian.
“Has anyone walked
through the swap meet? Maybe there’s a CB1100F valve set down there.” Patrick
countered. “If the valves were the right size, the head might work converted to
shim-over-bucket…” then his voice—and optimism—waned in mid-sentence.
That went on ‘till
midnight. Through the garage door, somewhere off on the horizon, Bastille Day
fireworks went off. From the infield, behind the darkened and empty grandstand,
came the sounds of a band covering old American rhythm and blues songs.
If the two of them had
ever given up hope at the same moment, the story would have ended right there.
But a sentence stuck out at the top of the parts list, “The motor is based on
the CB750/CB900F series.”
Brian: “What if we could
just take the head off a CB900, and drop it straight on?”
Next door but one garage,
the guy in his underpants was still puttering around. Their team’s spare Bimota
had just such motor. Patrick went over to ask if they could try it. Underpants
man didn’t hesitate before answering, “Bien sur.”
The Frenchman said, “Bien
sur.”
Of course. The decision
was made to at least pull the RS head. If there was a serviceable piston left
in cylinder #1, the next step would be to pull the CB900 head, and see if it
would swap onto the RS1000 barrels. The Bimota was pushed around into Heritage
Racing’s garage, where underpants man quietly went about prepping the machine
as a donor.
2:00 A.M., and the last
lights burning anywhere in the pit lane were in garage #39. A few moths
fluttered and clunked around the neon tubes. Bikers were drawn in, too; walking
from paddock parties back to wherever they planned to sleep. Mostly, they
stayed a few minutes and kept a respectful distance, but if there was heavy
lifting to be done, or oil to wipe up, they helped, then slipped away in the
next lull with a quiet “Bon courage.”
The underpants guy was in
the background, not wanting to get in the way, but ready to help if he could.
“Ca, c’est la passion,” he said, smiling to himself in a way that conveyed
there was nowhere else in the world that he’d rather be. Later he said (I’m
translating for you here, because he spoke no English at all) “No matter what
happens, there’s already enough to make a beautiful memory.”
Maybe, but the cylinder
head was ugly. One of the original Ti exhaust valves broke and slammed into the
roof of the combustion chamber. Luckily, it sliced into the aluminum head and
stuck there; while the piston crown was scarred, it looked (barely)
serviceable.
The kid with the
dreadlocks turned out to be underpants man’s son. He came in shyly, too. “Le
carter est magnesium?” he asked. Brian got the gist of his question, which was
“Are the cases magnesium?” He gestured towards the pan from the RS dry sump, which
was sitting on the work bench, “Pick it up.” The kid did. “Putain!” he said,
raising his eyebrows and grinning at his father. He had to ride the next day,
so he went off looking for sleep, but his dad stayed, watching.
At 2:54, the first wrench
was thrown. The cam chain slipped down just far enough for a few links to kink
and jam under the lower sprocket. They jerked and cursed like Tourette’s
patients for five minutes before it came free.
3:33 A.M.. Patrick, who
speaks fluent French, turned to the guy in his underpants (whose name we’d
learned was Denis Malterre) and asked him “So, where are you from?”
He was from Ault, a
little town near Dieppe which is in the upper left hand corner of a map of
France. It’s a tough port town, down on its luck now that there’s a tunnel
under the English Channel.
Denis Malterre was a
‘cantonnier’. We didn’t recognize the word, but he mimed his job, and we
recognized it; he swept the local streets. Lest you think that he drove a
street sweeper, I’ll point out that he did it with a broom. These guys, who
wear orange high-visibility coveralls, are fixtures in every French town. You
can imagine that it’s not exactly a high-paying job. It’s about the
lowest-paying job in France.
Denis Malterre attended
every Bol d’Or from 1970 to 1986.“All my life,” he told us “I dreamed of being
on this side of the straightaway” (meaning part of the event, not part of the
crowd.) As a street sweeper, with no background in racing, he may as well have
aspired to ride an Apollo moon rocket. In 1986, he was injured in a terrible
accident; his wife was killed. Then he knew: the dream wasn’t going to come
true.
The street sweeper raised
his son, alone. The dreadlocked kid became a biology prof in Switzerland.
Denis Malterre’s pair of
Bimotas were both bought as wrecks, out of junkyards, for less than a thousand
francs each. (Call that about $150 a piece; i.e., they were total writeoffs.)
It took 15 years of street sweeping to save enough money to restore and race
prep them. This event (for which a full race license was not required) was the
little family’s once in a lifetime shot. “For me,” Denis said “racing is
impossible. But now I hand the baton to my son.”
When I translated this
story for Brian, a tear literally rolled down his cheek. While he himself had –
more than once – drained his bank account to save some aging superbike from the
crusher, he was rich by the standards of the hamlet of Ault’s street sweeper.
And Patrick was spending money he didn’t really have, running up his credit
card, to field the Heritage Racing team, too. Again, no comparison; he had
credit cards. Yet it was the French street sweeper – his Bimotas had stickers
supporting the French communist party – who, without a second thought,
volunteered to lend ‘Les Americains’ his cylinder head.
After all that, the CB900
head did – to mild surprise – drop right on the RS1000 barrels. At 5:00 A.M.,
Denis ran over to his pit, returning with a beautiful torque wrench, and we
heard the “crea-ak, click” of the head being tightened down. It was too late,
and everyone was too tired, to reinstall the motor. Heritage Racing needed a
few hours sleep. Denis slipped away, and the sun came up as Patrick and Brian
drove their rented van back to the hotel. They were giddy with fatigue.
Everything they said or saw along the way was #ü¢&ing hilarious.
Monday morning. The
trickle of curious bikers from the previous night picked up at garage 39. They
whispered and pointed into an oily cardboard box shoved out of the way in a
corner. The factory cylinder head had been ported by the legendary Jerry
Branch, who had once tuned Kenny Roberts’ Yamaha flat trackers. Now, it looked
as forlorn as some hunted deer, dangling off the tailgate of a cowboy’s pickup
truck with its dead tongue lolling.
When the time came to
wrestle the motor into the frame, with maybe an hour to go before the final
session, there was no shortage of hands to lift it into place. Then there was a
lull; a weird feeling that was hard to place until you realized there was no
noise, no bikes running, no one even seemed to be talking up or down the pit
lane. Brian looked at Patrick and gathered his nerve and pushed the Honda’s
starter button and it roared back into life as though nothing had ever been
wrong. There was cheering and applause from all ‘round.
“Wow,” said Brian under
his breath “that’s never happened to me before.” He didn’t mean that motors
he’d reassembled never started right off the button; he meant that a crowd of
spectators had never burst into spontaneous applause when one of his engines
had fired. The loudest cheer had come from over at Forza Bimota. Denis came
over to shake hands.
In the Hollywood version
of this story, Heritage Racing would win the race. But even a cursory
examination of the compiled results from the night session made it obvious that
was impossible now. Pridmore and Williams were in 31st place, 25 laps behind
the Guzzi. (Ironically, TZ750 had lost its gearbox and would not come back out;
had the Honda remained intact, a podium would’ve been on the cards.)
The new plan was to baby
the motor, and circulate. Just get to the checkered flag. That, everyone
repeated trying to believe it, would constitute a victory of sorts.
That was the plan. On the
third and final drop of the green flag, Charlie stalled the bike. Somehow, it’d
been gridded in second gear. The entire field streamed past him. You don’t win
nine TTs without being a racer; the plan exploded in a red mist.
Charlie passed 12 riders
on the opening lap. Then eight more, in the next four corners. The track
announcer went hyperbolic. Then, we heard a fateful “Williams has pulled off!”
This time, he’d rolled to a stop at a spot where Patrick and Brian could see
him, though it would be a two-mile run around the track perimeter to reach him.
There was no point anyway; even at that range, Charlie’s body language made it
clear the problem was terminal. Pridmore wriggled out of his leathers without
turning a wheel. Again.
The race? The win went to
the Guzzi, despite a late-session stop-and-go penalty for making their rider
change outside the prescribed window. Forza Bimota, Denis Malterre’s private
dream, with his son and his son’s childhood friend as riders, finished eighth
in their only motorcycle race. Every team ahead of them had a real racing
pedigree, as did most of the 30-plus teams that finished behind them.
“This has been,” the
biology prof told me, “the weekend of my life.”
The Honda? Charlie
finally arrived back in the garage with the bike, after baking in one of the
circuit’s vans for well over an hour. He’d stripped his leathers down to his
waist to avoid heatstroke. “It just tightened up,” he said. To emphasize it, he
struck a little pose like a bodybuilder’s “crab” and made a sound, “Cr-r-ck”.
Then he repeated, “It just tightened up.” Even his voice was tight, which is
not at all like him.
As usual, people started
loading up right away. Since taking off the borrowed CB900 head would involve
removing the motor again, Patrick asked Denis (who was back in underpants,
though not technically just underpants – he was also wearing a pair of white
latex gloves) if it would be alright if they took it back to Connecticut on the
bike, and returned it later. “Bien sur,” was the answer again, of course. After
all, he’d only worked half his adult life to buy it. Of course he’d let a group
of complete strangers fly away to America with it.
Heritage Racing pretty
much shut down the beer concession before even starting to pack. “Next year,
I’m coming back with a cheater motor from hell,” Brian vowed. Finally, the RS
was rolled into its shipping crate. Charlie headed back to his home in
Cheshire, Pridmore and his girlfriend went off to do a little sightseeing,
Patrick and Brian drove back to the freight terminal at Charles de Gaulle.
In a final Freudian slip,
Patrick and Brian left their little Bol d’Or Classic ‘participants’ trophy on
the rental van’s dashboard when it was returned. After having traveled the
longest distance, fielded the rarest of machines; after having their hopes
raised and dashed, raised and dashed; after working through the night; after
all that, no one deserved to see the checkered flag more.
Except for Denis
Malterre.
