Vintage Scooters on the Nuerburgring

(From Rasputin:) Yesterday there was a “historic motorcycle race” on the Nuerburgring in Germany (near Cologne). For the first time they also had a class called “historic motor-scooters”, where 52 riders showed up on various machines: a lot of Vespas, quite a lot of Lambrettas, some Bellas, Heinkels, a Maicoletta, and a Z,ndapp.

For those who don’t know: the Nuerburgring is a formula-one-track,
where the “grand prix of Luxembourgh” is to be held in May. (Luxembourgh is too small to have their own racetrack; similar to the Imola race which is called “Grand Prix of San Marino”, even though Imola is in Italy, and San Marino is about 100 miles away.)

It was not a real race, it was a “consistency race”. you drove one
lap, they measured your time, and in the following laps you had to
hit your first laptime as close as possible. Reasons: there are a lot
of different machines on the track, and this way the NSU Lambretta
(average speed 52 kph) would have a equal chance for victory as the
fastest racers (around 95-97 kph average speed). Plus, you don’t need extra “motorsport insurance”.

Of course I showed up, how many times do you get a chance to race a formula-ona-track? My wife wanted to race there, too, so we grabbed the SS50 and the Primavera, and off we went. Riding there was incredible! I changed the ET3-pipe for a chromed pm40-copy pipe to get some extra speed and noise, and the tiny Pinasco102 boosted me to a top speed of 97 kph. I battled hard with a girl’s stock Lambretta 200. I ended up 28th in the consistency ranking, and 15th in the unofficial ranking for “fastest lap”, where i had an average speed of 77 kph. my wife took it slow, ended up 10th place in consistency (and 36th in “fastest lap”).

The club who hosted the race have published a lot of pictures.

please have a look at me “simulating victory” during practice:

Here’s me in the corner before the finish-line.

Here’s my wife.
-r.

This story was posted last week by “Rasputin” on the
Yahoo! Groups : vespasmallframes list. It’s reprinted here with his permission. Thanks to M1 for the tip.