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From - Ray Whitham:
Tune into `Motor Sport Half Hour`
CLASSIC FESTIVAL 2004:
The New Zealand road racing summer moves into festive mode this week when the NZ Classic Motorcycle Racing Register: celebrates its 25th Anniversary and they plan to do it in style next weekend at Pukekohe Park Raceway with special guest John Surtees and his MV Agusta the star-billing in a festival of classic stars.
John Surtees has the remarkable distinction of being the only racer to become world champion on two wheels and four. He was world Formula One champion in 1964 driving for Ferrari, but before that he had won 7 world titles for MV Agusta.
The son of a racing father Surtees won his first race at Brands Hatch as a 17 year old and in the following four seasons he rode with outstanding success on the British short circuits. He joined the Norton works team in 1955 and a year later he joined MV Agusta. That year, aged 22, he won his first world championship. In the next three years he won six more world titles, six TT\'s, and in the 1958-59 season he won every one of the 27 world championship races he contested to become double 350cc and 500cc world champion in successive years.
Racing legend Mike Hailwood, perhaps the greatest rider of all, talked Surtees into trying his hand at car racing. \"They stand up easier\" was the advice he gave Surtees. Two years later, driving a Formula One Lola-Climax, Surtees won the first ever NZ International Grand Prix to be run at the new Pukekohe circuit in 1963, before moving to Ferrari, and the ultimate prize in world motor sport.
Surtees will ride his own ex-Hailwood MV Agusta 500/4, and the secretly-developed but never raced Norton F at Pukekohe.
While the event as always will be attended by a veritable \"Who\'s Who?\" of New Zealand motorcycling of years past, beginning with the 1954 TT rider\'s reunion on the Friday night, the list of competitors still transcends generations. Talented teenage 125GP riders from the recently completed national series Nicholas Cole and Sam Smith will swap their Honda\'s for a 1962 Triumph 3TA and a 1961 C15 BSA respectively. Last year\'s classic Junior Champion Adam Chambers will be on a 1952 AJS 350. And the NZ 125GP champion Midge Smart, will watch his spannerman, David Cole, riding the Ross Graham G50 Matchless.
Recent sidecar stars Colin Buckley/Darren Abrahams make their racing comeback on a 1974 BMW outfit, along with former champions John Blaymires, and Dick Leppard.
Current racers Jerry Frith/Paul Teare will be aboard a 1973 840 Norton Replica.
At least twenty four overseas competitors from Germany, Austria, USA, England and Australia have also entered, proof, if needed of the very high profile this New Zealand classic festival now enjoys amongst the international classic racing fraternity.
Ray Whitham
