The Motorcycle Classics tent at the 2011 Bonneville Vintage GP at Miller Motorsports Park. Perfect weather brought great crowds.
Miller Motorsports Park doesn’t release attendance numbers, but our seat of the pants assessment is that the 6th Annual Bonneville Vintage GP was the best attended yet. Mid-80s temps and absolutely brilliant blue skies encouraged better local participation, aided further by the appearance of the Triumph Demo Truck, an enormous semi packed with the latest and greatest from Triumph. And the Motorcycle Classics tent was humming all day Saturday, with a killer selection of classic bikes at the Motorcycle Classics Vintage Motorcycle show.
Simply put, it was a great show. Competitors in the American Historic Racing Motorcycle Assoc. (AHRMA) series love the Miller track, a point well proven by the 360 entries in 33 categories for two days of racing at Miller, Saturday and Sunday, Sept. 3-4, 2011. Yours truly competed in his first-ever race, Sunday’s Battle of the CB160s Le Mans Start, after successfully completing the AHRMA race school on Friday, Sept. 2. Led by instructor Andrew Cowell, aspiring vintage racers were taken through an exhaustive day learning the basics of on-track riding and preparation. It was an unbelievably cool experience, which I’ll share in detail in a future issue of Motorcycle Classics. Suffice to say I’m now a convert to vintage racing, and I’ll be encouraging everyone I know to consider taking the AHRMA school and getting out on the track. It’s without question the most fun I’ve ever had without getting arrested; I’m still trying to wipe the smile off my face.
Special thanks to major sponsor Moto Guzzi for making our show happen, and to the sponsors shown below for their support in helping us spread the word to encourage vintage motorcycle fans everywhere to get involved and share their passion for classic motorcycles. — Richard Backus
Getting in my first laps at Miller aboard Michael Bateman’s Honda CB160/175 hybrid. You don’t need big horsepower to have fun, as CB160 racers across the country have learned.
