Ducati Sporting Club UK > General > Idle Chat > NZ road racing

[Dave G]

Just watched a little snippet of road racing in new Zealand,a bit like the NW200 but with sunshine.
Racing was pretty good but a couple of the racers had large letters on their fairings instead of numbers,I saw S and a C among the front runners.
Anyone know the reason for this?,just curious.
There were also unfaired streetbikes amongst them,no monsters as far as I could see,but I hadn't seen those raced on roads before.

[sbwells]

Originally posted by Dave G
Just watched a little snippet of road racing in new Zealand,a bit like the NW200 but with sunshine.
Racing was pretty good but a couple of the racers had large letters on their fairings instead of numbers,I saw S and a C among the front runners.
Anyone know the reason for this?,just curious.
There were also unfaired streetbikes amongst them,no monsters as far as I could see,but I hadn't seen those raced on roads before.

Just to confuse those who don't know.

S = Shaun Giles
C= Don't know

I think someone a MNZ (Motorcycling NZ) might not be able to count past 10 but knows the alphabet fairly well

[weeksy2]

ooooh i know this one... but sort of forget... i was watching it a few weeks back with some 17 year old ripping the field apart...

ummmm

[misterpink]

from memory, letters were used for entrants who were not part of the NZACU numbering system - they might still be kiwi riders but have maybe been competing overseas for awhile. they are also used for guest riders from abroad - i remember seeing guys like randy mamola and pat hennen racing through street circuits on RG500 's and yamaha TZ750's - i might try and dig some photo's up - my local circuit(hawkesbury) was basically single lane tarmac farm roads forming a square - each side about a mile, one side perfectly straight , two sides had one-way bridges mid-way through a bend (concrete sides on one / timber on the other) and the front straight had a fast kink on it - plenty of ups/downs and trees and barbed wire fences - of course we had safety measures - silly me - the finest haybales with bind-o-twine holding them together every now and then. my best day was getting a suzuki gs400 on the second row of grid because of a fast lap time in practice and amongst all the yamaha's only to get out dragged to the first corner - predictable really - then trying to make it up for the rest of the race....aaarrrggghh