FERAL & FLAMBOYANT

May last year marked 40 years since a 24-year old New Zealander named Graeme Crosby entered 500GP racing as a member of the factory Suzuki team run by their British importers, Heron Suzuki. His arrival on the UK racing scene in 1979 had caused a sensation – as much because of the bike he was riding, the unfaired, upright Kawasaki Z1B Superbike with high-rise handlebars, prepared by Japan’s small and then unknown Moriwaki factory. Remember, major league Superbike racing had only just been invented in the USA three years earlier, with the running of the first-ever Daytona Superbike race in 1976, so there had been no time for the concept of high-’barred naked four-stroke monsters to migrate to Europe.

Britain’s ACU had invented TT Formula 1 in 1977, with tuned production engines in full-race chassis, as a means of saving the Isle of Man TT’s World Championship status, and that meant US-style Superbike racing didn’t get a look-in there for another decade. So, at a time when a full fairing and clip-on handlebars were considered de rigueur for a racing motorcycle, here was an unknown Kiwi who’d come out of nowhere sitting bolt upright on a Japanese-built roadbike, with no bodywork apart from a tiny handlebar fairing, who immediately had the measure of stars like