Hundreds of lady bikers will be gathering  at the Ace Cafe in North West London on 16th August 2015 in an attempt to create a new world record for the largest number of female motorcyclists meeting together in one place.

Between 400 and 600 women aged 24 to 65 years are expected to ride to the meeting, coming from as far afield as Ireland, North Yorkshire, Dorset and Wales.  In September 2014, 221 Australian women on 190 bikes set a record for being the most women riding motorcycles at once.  

The world-famous Ace Cafe London has agreed to host the event on their annual Ladies Day and confirmed sponsors include Circuit of Wales, Mike Dawson Racing, Oval Motorcycle Centre (OMC) and Woodridge Motorcycles. OMC and Mike Dawson Racing will be in attendance on the day.  Mike Dawson and his team will be offering free suspension advice and basic suspension adjustments and the Team from OMC will be offering free 9 Point Safety Checks.  

There will be a charity fund raising raffle, with prizes including Moto GP tickets, bike services, tyres, biketime suspension set up, workbench time, Motorcycle Maintenance training courses and Ace Café goodies.  The charity to benefit from the day is The Hospice of The Valleys, whom Circuit of Wales support.

The meeting is the brainchild of bikers Nimisha Patel from London and Sherrie Woolf from Wales. They are keen to raise awareness of the increasing number of women riding motorcycles, particularly for bike and clothing manufacturers in the hope of seeing improved product ranges aimed at women. “When shopping for protective clothing, the female section is usually lacking in options and often the quality is lesser than the male counterparts. Sizing is also a huge problem that could be resolved with quite simple solutions. The assumptions are very frustrating with many ladies leather trousers not having the Velcro area to attach knee sliders. It’s time to realise that women are no longer just sitting on the back of the men’s bikes, we’re buying our own and using them for touring, off-roading, track days and commuting, just like the guys!” quotes Sherrie Woolf.   

Karen Cole, Safety and Training Director at the Motorcycle Industry Association (MCIA) and a long term rider herself explained:  “We believe the industry’s Get On programme has been instrumental in bringing more women into motorcycling.  40% of people who took a free ride with Get On were women, according to survey replies from nearly 9000 people. 

Get On made it easy for women to try motorcycling for the first time.*Social-media has surely played a part in bringing women riders together in the past few years. The proliferation of female biking groups on Facebook has meant women riders can easily find friends to ride out with locally.  As a result, small informal groups have been springing up across the country, which obviously helps generate and sustain interest in riding.”  Pages have been set up on social media sites to share news of the event and organise logistics. Even celebrity bikers are spreading the word, including James Whitham and Maria Costello, herself an ambassador for ladies in the sport of motorcycle racing.  “We hope that even more women will hear about the record attempt in the lead up to the event so that we can get as many lady bikers together as possible on 16th August. It will be a great opportunity for women to meet, share information and hopefully encourage more ladies to get involved with bikes.”

For further information about the event, please contact Nimisha Patel and Sherrie Woolf on [email protected]

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Italian Night Special!

The fourth annual “Milan to London Marathon”, for classic and sports cars, departs Milan to arrive at Ace Cafe London on the evening of Thursday 13th August – occasion of the cafe’s increasingly popular “Italian Night”, held regularly on the 2nd Thursday of each month.

Amongst the 65 cars taking part in this 10 day, charity fundraising rally, is a 1938 500cc Fiat Topolino, a 1959 2-litre Alfa Romeo ex- Monte Carlo rally car, along with some special Ferrari’s, Fiat’s, Lancia’s and Maserati’s!

For more information about the rally, which also plans to visit www.acecafeluzern.ch, check out: www.millonmarathon.eu

For more information about Ace Cafe London and what's on, check out www.ace-cafe-london.com

MV AGUSTA MOUNTED TT STARS JOHNSTON AND HARRISON LEAD STRONG OKELLS BREWERY 350cc CLASSIC TT RACE ENTRY Spacer

A stellar line up has entered the Okells Brewery 350cc Race at this year's Classic TT presented by Bennetts and with the riders and machines, arguably, more evenly matched than any other race, it could prove to be the closest of the festival. The race, which was oversubscribed with a number of high quality entries, is scheduled to take place on Bank Holiday Monday 31st August.

Lee Johnston, last year's race winner heads the entry list with the Northern Irishman having romped to victory in record breaking style 12 months ago. The 26-year old shattered the lap and race records and returns on the Black Eagle Racing 350cc MV Agusta and few would bet against him serving up a repeat performance.

As usual, he'll start at number 13 and will head down Glencrutchery Road ten seconds behind his teammate Dean Harrison who could well prove to be his closest rival. The Bradford rider missed last year's race but he has shown in the past his aptitude for anything with two wheels and won the 2013 Formula Classic Race.

Honda-mounted riders form the bulk of the entry and a number of them will provide Johnston and Harrison with some stiff opposition, none more so than the Davies Motorsport pairing of William Dunlop (6) and Alan Oversby (4), the latter having taken a good runners-up spot to Johnston twelve months ago.

Michael Rutter (Ripley Land Racing) makes his debut in the class and gives the Japanese manufacturer another great chance of victory. Other contenders include Olie Linsdell (Flitwick Motorcycles/SMV Engineering), James Hillier and Alex Sinclair (CSC Racing), Jamie Coward (Ted Woof Racing) and Andy Lawson (Easy Air Conditioning). Chris McGahan, Nigel Moore, Phil McGurk, Paul Coward, Pete Boast and Chris Petty give Honda further strength in depth.

Like the 500cc class, Norton will be well to the fore with the Team Molnar Manx pairing of Cameron Donald (number eight) and Dan Cooper (number five) expected to be running at the head of the field while Keith Amor will have strong expectations on Tony Dunnell's machine, the Scot leading the field away at number one. Wattie Brown, Nick Jefferies and Gavin Lupton are just three more fancied Norton runners.

The father and son combination of Bill and Chris Swallow are likely to be in the mix on their respective Ripley Land Racing AJS and Fawcett Aermacchi machines as will Mark Herbertson on another AJS whilst the consistent Doug Snow is again on the entry list with his trusty 340cc Ducati.

Meanwhile, there are no less than 15 250cc machines in the field and all will be aiming to win the Phil Read Trophy awarded to the class winner. The T20 Suzuki's are the choice of many including Adrian Harrison, Tom Jackson, Jeff Ward, Maria Costello, Billy Cummins, Andy Wilson and Alan Bud Jackson but the Yamahas of Chris Moore and Dave Edwards and Pete Symes' Kawasaki will ensure they don't have it all their own way.

The Institute of Advanced Motorists (IAM) have expressed disappointment at the findings of the latest long term review of drinking and driving data issued by the government this morning (6 August) which shows a stagnation in progress since 2010.

Drinking and driving data from 1979-2014 shows there were an estimated 8,320 drink-drive casualties in 2014 in Britain, up from 8,270 in 2013. This is the first increase in casualties since 2002 (1). More importantly drink-drive related deaths have remained unchanged since 2010.

Neil Greig, IAM director of policy and research, said: “While good progress has been made over the years, we are very concerned that we may have reached a plateau and are not making much progress in further reducing alcohol related crashes.

“The new government has a great opportunity to set the agenda right at the start of the new administration and top of their list should be a consultation on reducing the drink drive limit in England and Wales to align with Scotland and most of the rest of Europe.”

ENDS

Reference:

1

The IAM is the UK’s largest independent road safety charity, dedicated to improving standards and safety in driving and motorcycling. The commercial division of the IAM operates through its occupational driver training company IAM Drive & Survive. The IAM has more than 200 local volunteer groups and over 90,000 members in the UK and Ireland. It is best known for the advanced driving test and the advanced driving and motorcycling courses. Its policy and research division offers advice and expertise on road safety.

Indianapolis (USA), 9 August 2015 - An extremely demanding weekend for the Aprilia Racing Team Gresini has just come to an end where they found a stubborn adversary in the American Indianapolis track. The characteristics of the Indy track penalised the RS-GP, especially in the second half of the race when tyre wear kept Alvaro Bautista from battling for a finish in a position that would have earned him championship points, where he had been hanging on, and it kept Stefan Bradl from holding onto the positions he had gained after a good start. The German rider also had to deal with pain in his recently operated right wrist, but he is leaving the United States with good sensations after his debut on the Aprilia.

At the start Alvaro Bautista was unable to find his way through to move up in position through the first turns, finding himself stuck in a thick group of riders. Bradl, on the other hand, got off the line well, even moving up to thirteenth position at the beginning of the race. However, both riders suffered a drop in grip which was particularly penalizing in right-handers. Alvaro finished his race in 18th place, whereas Bradl crossed the line in 20th.


ROMANO ALBESIANO (Aprilia Racing Director)
“We had some difficulties with the rear tyre in a way that we had never experience before, especially on the right side, so much that both riders at a certain point were forced to slow down significantly. For Stefan the pain in his operated right wrist added to the problems, so both riders lost a bit of their edge toward the end of the race. The fundamental problem, which was closing out turns, has an impact on the grip and that is where we need to work. Thanks to Bradl’s comments, which add to the great job Alvaro is doing, we may have identified some new solutions that we’ll be testing in the next race at Brno."

FAUSTO GRESINI (Team Manager)
“This was a difficult race in terms of the result which was certainly not the best, but I should point out that we did a good job with both riders throughout the weekend and this is important in view of the coming rounds. Alvaro rode a good race, but when the tyres began to wear he struggled a lot to maintain a good pace, whereas in the final phases of the race Bradl was feeling the pain in his injured right race and he crossed the finish line under a lot of stress.”

ALVARO BAUTISTA
“This was a really hard race. We had the same difficulties that had come up in practice. At the start I struggled because on the first turn I found myself stuck in a group of a lot of riders and wasn’t about to gain any positions. From there on I tried to set my pace and I was in the zone to be able to battle for fifteenth place and a points finish, but I had trouble keeping up with the others. This track posed some difficulty for us, especially when we started feeling the tyre war. In right-handers I was losing a lot of time. In any case, we finished the race and collected some more fundamental information for 2016. I’d like to thank the team for their hard work this weekend.”

STEFAN BRADL
“After spending three days on the track I expected to have problems with my right wrist today. Already this morning in the Warm Up session I started feeling some pain and after the midway point of the race I wasn’t able to control the bike as I would have liked at a lot of places on the track. In any case, we gave it our all and I consider this first weekend for me on the RS-GP as a positive one. I learned a lot about the bike and together with the team we made a lot of changes in the little time we had available, doing a good job. I wasn’t used to riding the entire race distance on this bike and if you add my injury to that obviously I wasn’t able to be as fast as I would have liked. For the moment we are satisfied anyway and we are looking forward to Brno where we’ll try to take a step forward.”