Post by wayne on Feb 17, 2022 18:05:29 GMT -5
Rumours about a race win by an RE5 have circulated for decades. More recently, we've come across photos and names and confirmation that the rumours are true.
You can understand my delight when a recent member application came from one of the winners. He kindly offered to provide the full story and pictures to boot.
I'm very grateful to Ray Battersby for taking the time to share the story. He and team mate John Wilkinson rode an RE5 to a class win and outright 2nd place in this 1976 700 klm endurance race.
Ray's story:
RACING A SUZUKI RE5 WANKEL
After I joined Heron Suzuki in January 1976, Peter Agg - the boss of Suzuki GB – rather frowned at me racing a Yamaha 250 so the RD had to go. And so I raced a borrowed GS750 (four stroke) in production events with a pal John Wilkinson.
And then I had a thought. ‘Why don’t I try to race a Suzuki RE5 with its different Wankel engine?’ Racing it would be novel, quirky and like its engine, a little eccentric. This was just up my street.
The problem was, the RE5 was not a very good racing machine. It was underpowered and slow off the mark. It was heavy and bulky. It was complex (the carburettor had myriad jets and air bleed systems). It consumed prodigious volumes of fuel and oil. The rotor tip seals wore out regularly. In fact, after pulling the plug on future rotary ventures, I recall Suzuki, Japan shipping to the UK, 112 wooden crates each containing a complete new rotor housing and rotor assembly. These crates were stored in the Heron Suzuki service department to satisfy future warranty problems. Such ‘generosity’, absolved Suzuki of future responsibilities; they’d given us new engines, what more could they do? We were on our own after that.
The RE5’s handling was also questionable being based on the GT750 chassis. I can recall the twitches and wallows I experienced around my favourite bends on my evening run home.
And yet, despite these major issues, many people loved it.
And I saw the RE5 as a challenge.
I was Heron Suzuki's technical representative at the time and asked Peter Agg if I could use the RE5 press demonstrator for the race. He refused point blank. He was concerned that following a bad result, poor publicity would make completely halt RE5 sales when quite a few of the 108 RE5s imported to the UK remained in the warehouse). However, “If you can find an RE5 of your own, good luck!” he said I’m not sure he meant this but I took him at his word.
With only a few weeks to go before the race, we found a sponsor. He was none other than the well-known tuner and racing sponsor, Geoff Monty who happened to be the Suzuki dealer in Edenbridge. He also just happened the man from whom Rex White rented an apartment at the back of Geoff's shop.
I remember Geoff as a somewhat avuncular man. Yes, he had enjoyed a legendary racing history with riders such as Tommy Robb, Bill Ivy, Alan Shepherd, Ron Langstone. And that was after Geoff’s own great racing career in the 1950s. I’ve never really understood how such a great sportsman as Geoff would be prepared to stump up a load of cash for two relatively unknowns to buy an obscure Suzuki RE5 because he didn't have an RE5 in stock. But that was the nature of this great man.
Meanwhile, it was only the perseverance of my friend and colleague Rex White (Suzuki’s race-team manager) with his pals at the ACU that allowed the machine to be raced at all. And then
the ACU wanted it classed as a 1,000cc entry and not 500cc because they were unable to agree how to calculate its swept volume. I argued that it was classed as a 500cc as far as the British Road Tax system was concerned and also by the machine's insurers. A few more words from Rex and we had permission to race the machine as a 500cc.
With the technical permission and the sponsorship issues solved, I began looking in earnest for the best RE5 deal from a Suzuki dealer. Although in June 1976 the RE5 was quite a rare machine, I found one at Suzuki’s Bradford dealer. One evening, John and I drove North up the M1 in John’s Holbay engined Vauxhall Hunter GLS. 93bhp sounds rather tame these days, but in 1976, the Holbay was for boy racers. I had a Geoff Monty cheque in my pocket and the car had our riding gear in the back. John was a hell of a driver.
On the return journey, we started running in the RE5. I had been riding the bike ahead of John's car and when I stopped for fuel, John said that its exhaust sounded like the WW2 flying bombs he remembered from his London childhood. The RE5 became the Doodle-Bug at that point.
A month later - it was early July 1976 - I entered a brand new RE5 in the 700km long distance race organised by the British Formula Racing Club to be held at Cadwell Park over two days.
The race was run in two daytime stints over a weekend. I needed a riding partner. At the time, I was racing my '37 Velocette 350cc KSS and '38 500cc Triumph Speed Twin in Vintage Club events and was friendly with John Wilkinson, a fellow racing committee member and maverick racer. He took all of two seconds to agree. John had been a stalwart of the 60s and 70s vintage scene riding a dope-swilling 600cc single cylinder vintage Norton owned and tuned by Stan Johnson, the legendary Brooklands tuner. The combination worked well and John had a mound of silver pots throughout his farmhouse. It was said by many that John had once beaten Mike Hailwood in a modern race at his home track of Brands Hatch whilst riding this vintage Norton. This was probably true because I'd often seen John beating TD350 Yams in open races on his vintage Norton whilst waiting for the vintage race.
In the days before the RE5’s race weekend, I could be found in my Pershore workshop, drilling and lock-wiring the drain plugs and filler caps and making up the brackets for the racing plates. I had been riding in every spare moment but the machine still felt slightly tight as I rode it the final couple of hundred miles to Cadwell on the Friday before the weekend race. That's where I had arranged to meet John and Rex (our team manager for the weekend) and my Oxford friends Matthew and Margaret Mason who were looking after the pit-work.
John rode the first unremarkable one-hour stint of the race. This became the pattern for the race with the RE5 running faultlessly for the entire 435 miles. But the RE5’s thirst for fuel and lubricant was incredible. The one-hour riding stints aligned with the RE5’s need for fuel and oil replenishment. The RE5 consumed one rider, three gallons of fuel (almost a tankful) and one Imperial pint of oil every hour. We were lapping Cadwell's Club circuit at around 65 mph meaning that the RE5 was returning around 22 mpg and 65 miles to the pint of oil. And boy, did it run hot!
As the slower of its two riders, it was only fair that chance had John riding the final laps of the race and would be taking the chequered flag. But then his rear tyre punctured with only 2-3 laps remaining.
Amazingly, John continued to race on what we later found was a completely flat tyre. He put the entire weekend's efforts in jeopardy when he chose to ignore the organiser's black flags and
rode gallantly past looking the other way. John later explained that it wasn't too difficult to ride because the centrifugal forces 'expanded' the tyre to its normal size everywhere except at the low-speed hairpin. My god, John was a gritty, hard rider...
I have no idea how John later persuaded the organiser, John Milligan, to rescind his Black Flag order. But it didn’t count and the RE5 finished 2nd to an 864cc Ducati SS ridden by John Knowles and the American Dennis Noyes. They had completed the full 288 laps whereas we had covered only 280 laps at an average speed of around 64mph. But it was enough to win its class in what I believed for thirty years to be the only time an RE5 had ever been raced.
Over the years I heard stories of an RE5 that had been raced in the USA in the late 1970s. After extensive research all I had was a photo of the bike apparently being raced in 1975.
A Swiss enthusiast has also been racing his Suzuki RE5 in Switzerland and Germany since 2002. Hans Reusser told me that his RE5 engine output 67bhp at 8,500rpm thanks to its Dell Orto carburettor and modified exhaust system.
The last time I saw our own Doodle Bug RE5 was at the end of the 1970s when Geoff Monty was displaying it in the window of his motorcycle shop in Edenbridge, Kent.
After Geoff Monty’s death in 2009, John Nutting, a prolific motorcycle editor/journalist since the 1970s who lives in Edenbridge, went to the shop when its contents were up for sale. There he found the pit board that Geoff Monty had loaned to us for use at Cadwell. The chalked signal RE5 RULES! that we hung out for john on his last lap was still visible.
John Nutting bought the signal board and later gave it to me. What a great memento!
You can understand my delight when a recent member application came from one of the winners. He kindly offered to provide the full story and pictures to boot.
I'm very grateful to Ray Battersby for taking the time to share the story. He and team mate John Wilkinson rode an RE5 to a class win and outright 2nd place in this 1976 700 klm endurance race.
Ray's story:
RACING A SUZUKI RE5 WANKEL
After I joined Heron Suzuki in January 1976, Peter Agg - the boss of Suzuki GB – rather frowned at me racing a Yamaha 250 so the RD had to go. And so I raced a borrowed GS750 (four stroke) in production events with a pal John Wilkinson.
And then I had a thought. ‘Why don’t I try to race a Suzuki RE5 with its different Wankel engine?’ Racing it would be novel, quirky and like its engine, a little eccentric. This was just up my street.
The problem was, the RE5 was not a very good racing machine. It was underpowered and slow off the mark. It was heavy and bulky. It was complex (the carburettor had myriad jets and air bleed systems). It consumed prodigious volumes of fuel and oil. The rotor tip seals wore out regularly. In fact, after pulling the plug on future rotary ventures, I recall Suzuki, Japan shipping to the UK, 112 wooden crates each containing a complete new rotor housing and rotor assembly. These crates were stored in the Heron Suzuki service department to satisfy future warranty problems. Such ‘generosity’, absolved Suzuki of future responsibilities; they’d given us new engines, what more could they do? We were on our own after that.
The RE5’s handling was also questionable being based on the GT750 chassis. I can recall the twitches and wallows I experienced around my favourite bends on my evening run home.
And yet, despite these major issues, many people loved it.
And I saw the RE5 as a challenge.
I was Heron Suzuki's technical representative at the time and asked Peter Agg if I could use the RE5 press demonstrator for the race. He refused point blank. He was concerned that following a bad result, poor publicity would make completely halt RE5 sales when quite a few of the 108 RE5s imported to the UK remained in the warehouse). However, “If you can find an RE5 of your own, good luck!” he said I’m not sure he meant this but I took him at his word.
With only a few weeks to go before the race, we found a sponsor. He was none other than the well-known tuner and racing sponsor, Geoff Monty who happened to be the Suzuki dealer in Edenbridge. He also just happened the man from whom Rex White rented an apartment at the back of Geoff's shop.
I remember Geoff as a somewhat avuncular man. Yes, he had enjoyed a legendary racing history with riders such as Tommy Robb, Bill Ivy, Alan Shepherd, Ron Langstone. And that was after Geoff’s own great racing career in the 1950s. I’ve never really understood how such a great sportsman as Geoff would be prepared to stump up a load of cash for two relatively unknowns to buy an obscure Suzuki RE5 because he didn't have an RE5 in stock. But that was the nature of this great man.
Meanwhile, it was only the perseverance of my friend and colleague Rex White (Suzuki’s race-team manager) with his pals at the ACU that allowed the machine to be raced at all. And then
the ACU wanted it classed as a 1,000cc entry and not 500cc because they were unable to agree how to calculate its swept volume. I argued that it was classed as a 500cc as far as the British Road Tax system was concerned and also by the machine's insurers. A few more words from Rex and we had permission to race the machine as a 500cc.
With the technical permission and the sponsorship issues solved, I began looking in earnest for the best RE5 deal from a Suzuki dealer. Although in June 1976 the RE5 was quite a rare machine, I found one at Suzuki’s Bradford dealer. One evening, John and I drove North up the M1 in John’s Holbay engined Vauxhall Hunter GLS. 93bhp sounds rather tame these days, but in 1976, the Holbay was for boy racers. I had a Geoff Monty cheque in my pocket and the car had our riding gear in the back. John was a hell of a driver.
On the return journey, we started running in the RE5. I had been riding the bike ahead of John's car and when I stopped for fuel, John said that its exhaust sounded like the WW2 flying bombs he remembered from his London childhood. The RE5 became the Doodle-Bug at that point.
A month later - it was early July 1976 - I entered a brand new RE5 in the 700km long distance race organised by the British Formula Racing Club to be held at Cadwell Park over two days.
The race was run in two daytime stints over a weekend. I needed a riding partner. At the time, I was racing my '37 Velocette 350cc KSS and '38 500cc Triumph Speed Twin in Vintage Club events and was friendly with John Wilkinson, a fellow racing committee member and maverick racer. He took all of two seconds to agree. John had been a stalwart of the 60s and 70s vintage scene riding a dope-swilling 600cc single cylinder vintage Norton owned and tuned by Stan Johnson, the legendary Brooklands tuner. The combination worked well and John had a mound of silver pots throughout his farmhouse. It was said by many that John had once beaten Mike Hailwood in a modern race at his home track of Brands Hatch whilst riding this vintage Norton. This was probably true because I'd often seen John beating TD350 Yams in open races on his vintage Norton whilst waiting for the vintage race.
In the days before the RE5’s race weekend, I could be found in my Pershore workshop, drilling and lock-wiring the drain plugs and filler caps and making up the brackets for the racing plates. I had been riding in every spare moment but the machine still felt slightly tight as I rode it the final couple of hundred miles to Cadwell on the Friday before the weekend race. That's where I had arranged to meet John and Rex (our team manager for the weekend) and my Oxford friends Matthew and Margaret Mason who were looking after the pit-work.
John rode the first unremarkable one-hour stint of the race. This became the pattern for the race with the RE5 running faultlessly for the entire 435 miles. But the RE5’s thirst for fuel and lubricant was incredible. The one-hour riding stints aligned with the RE5’s need for fuel and oil replenishment. The RE5 consumed one rider, three gallons of fuel (almost a tankful) and one Imperial pint of oil every hour. We were lapping Cadwell's Club circuit at around 65 mph meaning that the RE5 was returning around 22 mpg and 65 miles to the pint of oil. And boy, did it run hot!
As the slower of its two riders, it was only fair that chance had John riding the final laps of the race and would be taking the chequered flag. But then his rear tyre punctured with only 2-3 laps remaining.
Amazingly, John continued to race on what we later found was a completely flat tyre. He put the entire weekend's efforts in jeopardy when he chose to ignore the organiser's black flags and
rode gallantly past looking the other way. John later explained that it wasn't too difficult to ride because the centrifugal forces 'expanded' the tyre to its normal size everywhere except at the low-speed hairpin. My god, John was a gritty, hard rider...
I have no idea how John later persuaded the organiser, John Milligan, to rescind his Black Flag order. But it didn’t count and the RE5 finished 2nd to an 864cc Ducati SS ridden by John Knowles and the American Dennis Noyes. They had completed the full 288 laps whereas we had covered only 280 laps at an average speed of around 64mph. But it was enough to win its class in what I believed for thirty years to be the only time an RE5 had ever been raced.
Over the years I heard stories of an RE5 that had been raced in the USA in the late 1970s. After extensive research all I had was a photo of the bike apparently being raced in 1975.
A Swiss enthusiast has also been racing his Suzuki RE5 in Switzerland and Germany since 2002. Hans Reusser told me that his RE5 engine output 67bhp at 8,500rpm thanks to its Dell Orto carburettor and modified exhaust system.
The last time I saw our own Doodle Bug RE5 was at the end of the 1970s when Geoff Monty was displaying it in the window of his motorcycle shop in Edenbridge, Kent.
After Geoff Monty’s death in 2009, John Nutting, a prolific motorcycle editor/journalist since the 1970s who lives in Edenbridge, went to the shop when its contents were up for sale. There he found the pit board that Geoff Monty had loaned to us for use at Cadwell. The chalked signal RE5 RULES! that we hung out for john on his last lap was still visible.
John Nutting bought the signal board and later gave it to me. What a great memento!
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