|
|
 |
Comeback Chariot
|
|
|
|
|
|
Hailwood’s 900TT1
Alan Cathcart
08/01/2007
|
|
|
|
|
 |
|
|
Photography by Kyoichi Nakamura
|
Long Girling shocks mean you sit quite high off the ground,
slotted into that comfy, well-padded seat. Those Girlings were a godsend to
those of us racing Ducatis in mid-‘70s Production events. They improved handling
via extra wheel travel and helped jack up the rear end to remove ground
clearance problems, and steepened the effective fork rake and sharpened up the
steering making you less aware of the V-twin’s truck-like 59-inch wheelbase.
However, the Hailwood bike’s riding position isn’t quite as
rangy as the 750SS Ducati I’ve been racing on and off for the past 30 years. The
fat backpad that wedges you in place also helps push you forward a little, to
offset the 52% rearward weight bias. The footrests feel lower and a little
farther back than usual on a racing Duke, a testament to Hailwood’s crash at the
Nurburgring in ’74 that ended his Formula 1 car-racing career. The permanent
damage to his right leg and foot made even walking sometimes painful. So, after
a classical career of right-foot shifting, he had to learn how to use a
modernist left-foot one-up race-pattern gearshift for his TT comeback.
 Steve Wynne of Sports Motor Cycles, the original owner of the
Hailwood Ducati. (Click image to enlarge)
While the low footrests may be more comfy, in winning the
Mallory race, Hailwood ended up dragging his right foot hard enough on the
tarmac to wear away the boot leather and finish with a bloody foot. Never having
encountered a similar problem with any of the several big-twin Ducatis I’ve
raced down the years, I surprised myself by emulating the master at Mallory.
Even Kushitani’s effective toe scrapers could not prevent 40 laps of cranking
round Gerards and the Esses delivering a severely chamfered right boot. No
blood, though. Obviously, I was not trying hard enough.
I had expected the TT-winning Ducati’s overbored 883cc
90-degree V-twin motor measuring to deliver a muscular, meaty power delivery
down low. Even with the high-lift cams fitted, it did not disappoint—the higher
11:1 compression ratio helps it pull crisply and cleanly out of the walking-pace
Mallory Park hairpin or chicane from very low revs. The lazy-feeling engine is
as smooth and tractable, building revs relentlessly up to 7,000 rpm. Then,
suddenly, things start to happen quite a bit faster, as the exhaust note hardens
and acceleration becomes suddenly more purposeful. But, at any revs, the big
twin feels loose and free-revving, with notably reduced inertia compared to any
other bevel-drive desmo V-twin I have ridden, including Paul Smart’s 1972 Imola
200-winning 750. Smart’s 750 did not have a lot less power, but it definitely
was not as torquey as Hailwood’s bike, nor, in spite of having a smaller engine,
such an appetite for revs.
Really, any gear you throw at the Hailwood bike is the right
one. Even with the vastly improved shift action of the Hewland gearbox—which the
British car racing transmission specialist made for the Ducati as a favor to
Hailwood—you don’t need to work the gearbox as hard as you’d expect. Yet, even
with the very high bottom gear that allows you to thunder out of the Mallory
hairpin and into the chicane without a shift, acceleration is strong enough to
leave modern 600 Supersports weighing only a little more than the Ducati’s
half-dry 166 kg, in your wake. The 87 hp on tap is delivered to the rear wheel
at 9,000 rpm in a forgiving yet deceptive manner.
Legendary #12 back in action at Mallory Park.
Riding the Ducati in what Wynne termed "something approaching
anger" at Mallory Park only increased my appreciation and awe at Mike Hailwood’s
achievement—winning the F1 race there against the better accelerating, shorter
wheelbased, more agile fours, even without the chicane that now disfigures the
track. The long wheelbase chassis feels ultra-stable round the fast Gerards
180-degree turn, especially with the Kawasaki steering damper mounted below the
right clip-on to stop front wheel flapping over the bumps on the exit. That
didn’t prevent the period Marzocchi forks chattering there, however. There was
fairly dramatic power understeer on the exit both here and again at the
right/left third-gear Esses, where I had to work hard at muscling the Ducati
back on line. Hailwood’s relatively unsung Mallory victory was arguably an even
greater achievement than his TT win, as this motorcycle is fundamentally
unsuited to such a relatively tight though deceptively fast track. What a
hero.
One factor would have helped out, though, and that’s the
stellar way the Ducati brakes compared to the heavier fours of two decades ago.
Just remember never to use the hefty same-diameter rear disc, though, so as to
avoid locking the rear wheel on the overrun as you do so—one reason, as Wynne
confirms, that Hailwood never ever used the rear brake, in those days before the
slipper clutch was invented.
But with the Girlings on their softest setting, the Ducati must surely have
been a great ride by the standards of the day over a bumpy course like the Isle
of Man—fast but forgiving, stretched-out but stable. Now, after riding it at
Mallory Park I know that is indeed the way it was on a short, tight and twisty
track, too. Just as Mike Hailwood proved, almost three decades ago...
|
| |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
; function voidFunc() { } voidFunc();)
