Project ‘Likely Fail'

In a fit of madness, ad man Charles Charlie Charles decides it’s time to go racing, but doing it the easy way would be no fun, so he’s going two-stroke! Good luck!

You are going to need a little bit of background to recognize the challenge that I’ve given myself this year. I’ve spent the last ten years creating cash that has kept these pages full of mint bike stuff, working with incredible riders, all of whom have been devoted to two wheels since they could stand on two legs. My introduction to bikes is very different. I got my full licence when I was twenty, because the L-plate on my Vespa wasn’t very ‘Mod’.

Having become a half decent ad-man I fell upon Fast Bikes as the ex-owners had fired the last chap. Since then it’s been very different – running staff bikes and European tours, and being rolled out for experiences that would be wasted on the FB big guns that have sharpened my skills and added a proficiency that I wish I had learnt in my teens when I had rubber-like bones. As it is I am now forty-three and have a real hankering to get a couple of monkeys off of my back.

One is to experience the utter joy of two-strokes that the better informed generation bangs on about, the second is to get it on a grid and get racing. So that’s the plan, build a two-stroke race bike and race it. Easy, huh?

It just so happens that it was talking to advertisers that helped devise this plan. My friend Giles Harwood, the guv’nor at HPS, introduced me to the Yamaha Past Masters Racing Club, a series designated to Yamaha’s two-strokes. Giles’s talk of a jovial paddock and evidence from a closed Facebook group, where over the winter people have been trading parts, experience and advice, has filled me with confidence that this is the place to feed my curiosity.