Yes the Bonanza was great.........Not only that Lightning but Stuart Penn's one was there as well..........Got some interesting comments about the machined down barrel and head fins which Stu said were done at the factory............from the drive side it looked a bit like an 880 Jap. The turn out of machines was quite unbelievable both road, and race.............Jeffery literally "Hit the ground running" and did not stop all weekend, not only riding his Flash but his Restored "B" Rapide in the road bike section and in the HRD Vincent display laps. Ken Phelps was there with his two Norvins plus the Comet and the HRD twin special. Luis Gallur brought along both the Egli's and the Flash, plus his Shadow road bike, Phil Canning had my old racer plus his Shadow in the pits...........The list goes on and on.........Friday lunch time we got our first outing on the track, with me for the very first time.............It is a different track to what I am use to, with some very tricky corners leading into and out of the two main straights. With the newly rebuilt 1200 Norvin we had taken down, I did several laps with caution, and really wasn't till several sessions latter that I started to get a feel for it. I found I was sliding back on the seat as i wound on the power down the straights and it was a huge amount of fun to ride, with the bike performing flawlessly over the whole weekend. The owner had it at the festival of speed the weekend before and in the lunchtime parade lap, he handed it over to Cam Donald who apparently;y refused to give it back..................
...............The Horner brothers were there in force with the solo bikes, the new sidecar, and the "Goodwood" bike. Phil Canning kindly let me have a ride of my old machine which was fabulous, and it was quite novel to back to back compare the original Vincent racer to the Featherbed framed 1200. I honestly felt the Vincent easier to ride mostly due to the riding position and its handling which I had put so much effort in to improving, though the Norvin definitely had more torque. On the Sunday I rode the Norvin twice, then parked it up and drained the fuel, whilst Phil Canning who has been friends of the Horner's for years was lucky enough to ride all of their Irving Vincent's at different times throughout the day..............I can not describe here the look on his face due to the excitement of it all................This was the absolute highlight of the weekend for me.........Later at about 3 pm there was one more session for the pre 63 race bikes, so Ken Horner asked Beau Beaton to go out on their "Goodwood bike" and I heard Beau say that he hadn't ridden the bike for four years since the win at Goodwood. So out on the track with many other bikes including Phelpsy on his beautiful Norvin, was Beau Beaton and Phil Canning on my old racer..............Beau was out front by about 300 yards, but backed off so Phil could catch up...............Then for no less that 3 to 4 laps they thrashed it out absolutely side by side swapping the lead with less than a bike length between them at any one time, rounding up and both overtaking any slower traffic in their way, then both side by side flat out down the straights both twins pushed to the max................The sound and sight was amazing. I was told by others that even Ken Horner was watching keenly with some disbelief to how near matched to two bikes were..................I climbed off the fence with a tear in my eye.............It was probably something never to be repeated but I'll never forget it. It's an event I've always wanted to go to, but having the Vincent marque as the main theme for this years was the big draw card. Thanks to everyone involved, especially Jeffrey Richardson who was such a driving force behind the number of bikes there, and his non stop action over the weekend was exhausting to watch. I loved it and for those of us who drove the long distance to the event I would like to say a Huge......"Thank You"..........
.......Cheers...............Greg.
