{"id":35,"date":"2010-03-24T20:12:58","date_gmt":"2010-03-24T09:12:58","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/GuzziRacer.com\/blog\/?p=35"},"modified":"2010-03-24T20:12:58","modified_gmt":"2010-03-24T09:12:58","slug":"35","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/guzziracer.com\/blog\/35\/","title":{"rendered":"BEARS Racing in Australia"},"content":{"rendered":"

BEARS racing has been running in Australia since about 1985. For those of you who dont know , BEARS stand for British-European-American-Racing-Series. To compete your bike must be 500cc \u2013 1300cc and engine and frame must be non-japanese origin. We run five formulas in our national bears series and all the bikes run on a combined and progressive grid. If you visit the Australian BEARS website you can read up on the formula rules at http:\/\/www.ozbearsracing.com<\/a>. You may recall there was an international BEARS series running in Europe in the 1990\u2019s.<\/p>\n

I raced my first Moto Guzzi Le Mans Mk4 in around 1987 when BEARS first started in Australia. It was very difficult to race but still managed top 10. In 1994 I purchased a new Daytona 1000 to race in the National BEARS. I competed on it for a couple of years before retiring because of family committments. I still have my 1994 Daytona 1000 and ride it regularly at track days. At the end of last year I decided to come out of my 14 year retirement and race in the 2010 National BEARS challenge. I was reluctant to punish my Daytona any more and decided to look for something new to ride. Of course I knew about the MGS01 from magazines and internet sites but I had never seen one in the flesh. It is rumoured that only 3 bikes ever came to Australia. Through various Moto Guzzi dealers in Australia I tried to get the factory to make me a bike. Sadly the answer was no. One dealer that I spoke with told me that he knew someone who had an MGS01. I asked him if he could find out if the guy wanted to sell it. The answer was YES, so I went and paid him the money before he could change his mind. I ran the bike in late last year at a couple of track days, and prepared for a full racing season.<\/p>\n

The camera footage you might have seen on you tube<\/a> is from my first race meeting in 14 years. I dont feel that I rode very well, but I got to the end of the weekend without falling off, and I am confident that I can improve quickly to become very competitive. The bike is absolutely amazing to ride. On the other hand it still behaves like a very typical Guzzi in many ways. The gear box is still slow and as we say agricultural. The handling and brakes are excellent, and the power is pretty good too.<\/p>\n

This year I will take video at all seven rounds of our National Series. Hopefully by the end of the year I will be really kicking Ducati arse. I am amazed at the interest my bike has raised both in Australia and Overseas. I have decided to start a web site dedicated to my year of racing so that anyone who is interested can follow along. I will let you know when its up and running.<\/p>\n

Our next race is in less than a couple of weeks in South Australia. I will be sure to post my video from the meeting.<\/p>\n


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BEARS racing has been running in Australia since about 1985. For those of you who dont know , BEARS stand […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3337,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0},"categories":[1],"tags":[12,13,16],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/guzziracer.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/guzziracer.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/guzziracer.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/guzziracer.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3337"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/guzziracer.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=35"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/guzziracer.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/guzziracer.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=35"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/guzziracer.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=35"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/guzziracer.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=35"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}