Riding a Friduss Racing Moto Guzzi Lemans Superbike

Reader Contribution by Wes Orloff
Published on January 5, 2011
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It’s not often that a race bike gets me second guessing my meager riding skills and questioning if I am man enough to get on it from 30 ft away across the paddock. That was my exact thought process however as owner Stan Friduss pulled away the remote starter and the heavily breathed on 1000cc engine of the 1976 Moto Guzzi Lemans Superbike exploded to life. Every head within earshot turned towards the pit. I approached cautiously as the biked settled into a spitting idle as if it was pissed off for being woken up, courtesy of the gaping DelOrto smoothbore carbs. This was my first introduction to my dance partner for the weekend, and the fortuitous relationship to come.

Thanks to Stan and Pearl Friduss, I got the opportunity to ride the Friduss Racing Moto-Guzzi vintage heavyweight superbike for the AHRMA season finale at the beautiful Barber Motorsport Park. I am a huge fan of the vintage superbike class, having grown up during that exciting first era of 1025cc high handlebar superbikes. This was an era when tires and chassis hadn’t quite caught up to impressive power output the superbikes were capable of. Exciting would be a huge understatement to anyone who witnessed the original spectacle. Ever since AHRMA re-introduced the class a few years ago, I had been itching to throw my leg over a heavyweight superbike. Honestly, however, a Moto Guzzi ‘Superbike’ was pretty far down the bucket list. Why would I want to ride an old quirky pushrod, shaft drive Italian V-twin originally intended for the touring market when I could be pretending to be Eddie Lawson or Wes Cooley on a 1025cc Japanese inline 4 fire breather? Part of the draw to riding one of  Stan’s bike was his history of building quick Moto-Guzzi’s. After racing against his impressively fast Daytona based Formula 2 Battle of the Twins racer, I always wondered what it would be like to ride one.


Then 19-year-old Mike Baldwin (and friends) on the very same Guzzi superbike I would ride at Barber.

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