FIRST AMONG EQUALS

AT the final GP of the year at Valencia, newly-crowned MotoGP prince Marc Márquez was slated to make a lap of honour aboard his Honda RC213V alongside former GP racer Sammy Miller on the sole surviving 500cc AJS Porcupine E90 on which Les Graham won the inaugural 500cc world championship in 1949.

Alas it wasn’t to be, after some over-zealous party pooper spotted a few drops of oil from the primary chain oil-feed beneath the AJS. Panic stations! Can’t have some old vintage boneshaker leaking oil on the circuit! No point explaining this had only happened because officials had kept them so long in pit lane and that at any speed said oil would be flung off in particles so minute as to be not there. Sadly, a special moment was lost.

Sammy Miller’s passion for motorcycles was born growing up in Northern Ireland after WW2 and it was the AJS