Owen Coles

Owen Coles

Debut Racer of Prototype #1

Owen was the debut racer of P1 in 1990 at Daytona, FL. He is the Owner/Director of Provide Australia and Tyre Chains Australia; supplying products and services to the mining industry. Owen lives with his wife and children.

Interview with Owen Coles

Interview by Matt Compton
15th Sept 2019

Matt
Hi Owen, I've always heard you were Ted's original racer for his first prototype. We've never caught up before but it's great to finally talk to you.

Owen
You too Matt. So you bought one of Ted’s Magnis did you?

Matt
Yes, my brother and I had bought Webrook Motorcycles from Clive Brannon, who owned it after Brook Henry, I was around 20 at the time. At first Ted just loaned us the second prototype to race then about two years later, in 1995, I purchased it from Mrs S [Dulcie Stolarski, Ted’s wife].

Owen
I know Brook well, I was his rider all through the development of the Vee Two Alchemy. I first rode Brook’s bike around 1987, it had a trellis frame on it with a bevel drive engine modified to belt drive. We went from that to the Mackintosh designed chassis which we then rode in the New Zealand 3 Summer Series and then at Daytona a couple of times. While racing for Brook I was developing the bikes and managing the front of the shop for a while before it got sold to Clive. It was on Beechboro Road in Bayswater, Brook had the engineering shop out the back.

Matt
Wow, small world! Yes, Brook was still in that back unit when we took over the shop. We had a lot to do with him, saw him most days, and bought many of his performance parts. I met Ted after we’d had Webrook’s for a short while. Ted was apparently looking for some people to take over the retail for Moto Guzzi in WA. He’d heard that customers were pretty happy with us, so he asked if we’d put Moto Guzzis on the floor. He was actually trialing us to check out how well we’d treat his Moto Guzzi clientele.

Owen
Yeah, that makes sense, Ted was pretty fussy with all things Moto Guzzi. I went to the US with Ted in 1990, we raced at Daytona and we ended up spending a couple of months together driving around in a motor home. My time travelling with, and getting to know, Ted and Dulcie was very pleasurable, there was some really funny incidences in our motorhome travels between races. Ted and Dulcie had a great chemistry together and were real characters. We also visited Moto Guzzi in the US because Ted was considering taking over the US Moto Guzzi distribution cos it wasn’t going too well. We went and had a look at some premises as Ted wanted to set up in a big retail outlet office type thing.

Matt
That’s an interesting part of the story I’ve never heard.

Owen
We had quite a few dramas during that US trip actually, mostly because the bike was delivered very late! It showed up from Italy into Ted’s shop and then we only had two days to put it in a box and send it to Daytona. Prior to packing it up and freighting it to make it on time to Daytona, we only had one short track ride opportunity at Wanneroo. This session raised issues with both motor tune and chassis tuning which unfortunately we had no time to address.

My first thought when I laid eyes on the bike for the very first time was that it was indeed a hand-crafted prototype motor. The 4-valve engine was built from 2-valve crankcases that had been welded up and modified to accept the newly constructed 4-valve heads and cylinders. Later on when I met Dr John Wittner in the USA he told me that he had personally designed, welded and assembled this very engine himself as part of his foray into the 4-valve program. I raced it against his well sorted and impressive Guzzi racebike at some of the meets we competed at in the USA. I think the riders name was Doug Brauneck.

We got to the racetrack at Daytona and did a few practice sessions. From memory we rode there the week before in the CCS [Championship Cup Series] races. CCS is a smaller regional series that was held a week or two before the AMA [American Motorcyclist Association] Daytona event. We ran in the CCS to get some track time because this bike had never been ridden basically. Frame wise, steering and handling it wasn’t too bad. The engine had a massive hole in the power around 7200-8000 rpm and basically it wouldn’t ride off the turns. It was very difficult because it would hit the hole and upset the suspension and ride height. Then the power would come back in and load the suspension up making it a bit of a handful.

Matt
Sounds like it mate, were you able to get it sorted?

Owen
Well, after that first Daytona on-circuit day I chased down the WP Racing suspension guy at the track and we worked together to quickly come up with a plan to build replacement higher-spec longer-bodied rear shocks at their US headquarters and overnight freight them to the track. The shocks greatly improved the traction and also allowed us to run a higher rear ride height which greatly improved the turn in and handling after we dialled them in. The original shocked bike was too low at the rear and continually pushed the front in the corners.

We also had to organise some emergency after hours dyno sessions at the local AMI [American Motorcycle Institute] to map out and understand the flat spot between 7,200 and 8,000 rpm which caused corner exit suspension and line holding issues. A number of carby settings and intake trumpet mods were tried until late into the small hours with only limited improvements at first. However the AMI students really enjoyed the presence of the Magni Guzzi.

Matt
And Amedeo Castellani was involved with this first outing as well wasn’t he?

Owen
Yes, Ted had flown him over to work on the debut of his first prototype. Amedeo was a real nice guy and a passionate Guzzi man. He flew straight into Perth from an English winter and after the bike got packed up I took him on an old converted cray boat to Rotto [Rottnest Island, WA] with some mates and Ted’s standup Jet-ski. Two days later he was a somewhat sunburnt Perth lifestyle convert! [Laughing]

Matt
Poor fella… [Laughing]

Owen
Amedeo and I worked well together at Daytona, especially over three very long nights at two local dyno locations. We modified the exhaust, the jetting and fabricated intake trumpet lengths and profiles; finally getting 95% of the flat spot solved. During this time Amedeo also fitted up the electronic ignition kit that he bought with him that he was running on his UK Guzzi racebike and it gained us even more midrange horsepower and top-end.

We were really happy and excited with the result and couldn’t wait to get the bike back out on the track for the race the next day as we were confident of a good result. So we finally got some much needed sleep. The next morning we were gobsmacked when we walked into the pit garage only to find that Ted had removed all the mods during the night. I said “Jesus Ted, where’s all the modified bits?” He goes, “Oh, I’ve taken it all off, cos I don’t think Arturo Magni would like to see his bike at Daytona with that other stuff on it.”

Matt
Oh no!

Owen
[Laughing] I mean, well, that was a little bit Ted you know. He was concerned that if Arturo had seen pics of the bike racing that he might be upset with the modifications we’d made. Let’s just say it was a very frustrating emotional morning for Amedeo and I pre-race and Amedeo was very much looking forward to the airport !

Matt
No doubt …

Owen
So I ended up riding the thing in the race with the massive hole in the middle, couldn’t get it off the turns and couldn’t drive it out. The midrange flat spot made mid-corner control and corner exit very tricky. The transitions at Daytona are really critical to stay smooth from the infield to get a good drive around the banking, otherwise you lose too much ground.

Then we had another disaster during the race. The wheels went down to get the race tyres fitted at Dunlop. I was focused on the race and I jumped on the bike and went out to the grid but on the sighting lap I’m thinking, “Geez these tyres are too hard, there’s way too much air in the tyres, what’s going on?”. I thought they must have inflated them to 100psi to seat the beads and not reset the pressure. So I went in and said “Are you sure you’ve got the right pressures in the tyres?”. They assured me they had the right pressure in the tyres but I thought, “It just doesn’t feel right”.

Matt
This doesn’t sound too good …

Owen
Anyway the light went green and we took off and I had absolutely no grip whatsoever on the infield. I couldn’t get any heat into the tyres at all and so had continual front and rear end slides, it was a real handful. I think I got it up to about 7th spot, really struggling. Then about 13 laps in I was just trying to push it too hard and I had a lowside on the infield slow right-hander. I picked the bike up off the ground and finished about 12th or something stupid.

When I come back into the pits and got off the bike I looked at the tyres and I went, “Holy shit, they’re like brand new!”. The tyres were shiny and the surface barely looked scrubbed after the race distance. So I took the wheels down to Dunlop and said, “What’s going on?”. They’d fitted the wrong tyres, they put Daytona 200 mile Superbike Spec construction and compound tyres on my bloody wheels. In addition the pressures were at 50psi! The Pro-Twins was only a sprint race and we ended up with endurance superbike tyres on our bike so we had absolutely no grip whatsoever. Overall it was a very disappointing outcome as we were definitely capable of a very impressive result if the correct tyres were mounted and the tuning mods had of stayed on the bike.

Matt
Sheesh!

Owen
I remember when I string lined it at Daytona I couldn’t line up the back wheel and I thought, “What the hell?”. Then we worked out that there was an offset, there was a big offset! But when you’re riding around the racetrack at Daytona and other tracks you didn’t really notice any difference. Apparently, as long as the front wheel’s pointing straight and the back wheel’s pointing straight they don’t have to necessarily be in line with each other. I think, from memory, they offset the wheel to get the wider race tyre in it, so from the shaft drive it was offset to the opposite side.

It was my first experience on a shaft driven bike and with parallelogram suspension and all that. The thing stayed very flat, like when you got on the power, it didn’t get much squat. That probably contributed to some of the problems we had when they put the endurance tyres on it cos we couldn’t get enough weight transfer to the back to get any grip. But you know, the bike around the banking was like it was on rails, cos it’s quite a heavy bike but the parallelogram suspension worked very well! There was no torque reaction from the drive whatsoever.

Matt
Oh absolutely, it’s fantastic!

Owen
Yeah, the parallelogram really helped to negate shaft drive torque ride height reactions when getting on and off throttle. So other than the big hole in the power band, it had a decent amount of power. If we’d had that bike a couple of months before the event, I’ve no doubt we would’ve made the thing a lot more competitive over there. But so often you show up at big races and you haven’t had enough time to get things right. That’s racing I suppose!

Matt
True.

Owen
We stayed on after Daytona and raced the bike in a few east coast events, down towards Miami. Ted allowed me to put the mods we had developed back on the bike, minus the electronic ignition kit which Amedeo had taken home. So the bike performed very well and we actually won races. It was a very interesting bike to ride and I had fun and enjoyed the sensations and characteristics of the very linear and strong motor and the lack of drive squat. I knew the bike had a lot of untapped potential and it was a real shame the Daytona debut was so severely time restricted. So then the trip was over and we came home.

Another highlight during our stay in the USA was that I had the pleasure of befriending Dr John Wittner. I kept in contact with him later when I was in Europe and he was living in Italy doing further 4-valve development at the Guzzi factory. Dr John was a very nice guy, quick to smile and laugh. He was a gracious and extremely passionate and talented man who had many of the same personality traits as John Britten.

So you’re setting up a website to put this information on are you?

Matt
Yeah, I started with a Facebook page last August [2019] to try to connect with people and gather more material for the website. One of the first people that messaged me was the guy that you, Ted & Dulcie stayed with in Florida, Dave Hand.

Owen
Oh, Dave Hand! Yeah, yeah. Mate, he is a great guy!

Matt
He connected with me through the Facebook group and I’ll be chatting to him later in the week. He told me you guys had stayed with him in America and he asked for your contact details.

Owen
Absolutely, pass my number on. It would be great to catch up with him again, because we became pretty good mates. He was riding another Guzzi for a guy called Don Burkett, we raced at a few of the same regional events, so we sort of got around together. I ended up staying at his house down at Daytona Beach for maybe five or six weeks. Dave had moved in with his girlfriend so he let me use the house as it was empty.

Matt
Well I’ll pass the details I have to each of you and you can connect.

Owen
That will be good, thanks!

Matt
No worries. I was wondering, do you have any photos of yourself with Ted, or you with the bike?

Owen
Not any more, my storage unit was broken into and all my racing memorabilia from 10 years of racing overseas was stolen, happened while I was away working in Kalgoorlie. I got a call from the police to say I’d been broken into and a fisherman had found my briefcase down at the river. It had all my photos in but everything was buggered.

I had some pretty cool things that I’d planned to hang up in my man cave. Some awesome photos and some event posters I was featured on from some race events in Europe. I had a friend who was a professional photographer who followed the world championship around. He took me a lot of big, poster size pictures of Schwantz, Doohan, Gardner, Rainey, Mamola and all those guys on the two strokes. Beautiful racing shots, I had them all signed, that was my treasure collection.

Then when I was coming back through the airport in Kuala Lumpur I went to a cafe in the airport. I sat the poster roll down next to me to dig my money out of my backpack to give to the cashier, and in those few seconds, someone came up behind me and stole it. So unfortunately I’ve lost everything I had.

Matt
That is such a shame! I’m sorry to hear that.

Owen
Thanks mate, yeah it was a real pain in the arse! I had about 30 or 40 really nice photographs in there. I had Doohan sign his photograph when I was chatting to him only about 30 minutes before he jumped on his bike at Assen and broke his leg. Had some really good shots of the riders from back in the 2-stroke days.

Matt
Sounds like you’ve had an interesting racing career mate?

Owen
Oh, absolutely Matt! Lots of hard work, crazy games, great stories and world adventures. I’m still missing the competitive bike racing and the skilful and intense characters I met along the way.

Matt
Oh I bet, so where did you head after the Prototype #1 debut at Daytona?

Owen
Well, that was 1990, and I stayed over and raced another three or four events with Ted after Daytona. Then I came back to Western Australia and went back to work for a living and helping with Brook Henry’s Vee Two project which we took over to Daytona beginning of 1991. After Daytona I ended up racing based in northern Italy for the remainder of 1991.

Matt
Wow, ok.

Owen
I moved to Switzerland at the end of 1991 to the Ducati Schnyder race shop. There I was both racing and building factory engines for the German and Austrian factory Ducati teams. I also attended WSBK events with these teams.

After that, I moved to Germany at the start of 1993 and raced for the German Ducati importer in the European Pro-Superbike series through to the end of 1994. It was right after this that I badly broke my back in Brno [Czech Republic] on a factory Suzuki Superbike. That ended my riding.

Matt
Whoa, that’s terrible! So sorry to hear that mate.

Owen
Anyway, I recovered and went back to Ducati Germany and crew chiefed the German Ducati Superbike team after that for two years until the end of 1996 when I transferred over to Los Angeles to set up and work on the Vance and Hines factory Ducati Superbike deal. For two of my three years there I was chief mechanic for Anthony Gobert. It was at the end of 1999 I left Vance and Hines and went to live in Holland to crew chief a factory Yamaha Supersport Team running in the 2000 World Superbike Series.

Matt
So from Europe to USA and then back to Europe?

Owen
Yep, and then back to USA again in 2001 to set up and crew chief for the Ducati Factory Team when it was moved from Vance and Hines up to HMC racing in Wisconsin. Scott Russell was one of my riders in 2001 but his serious accident at Daytona spelt an end to his racing career. And then the terrorist attack of 9/11 f***ed up that deal for me in 2002. So I came back to Oz and become national tech manager for KTM imports through 2002. Then one more trip back to America and to the USA factory Ducati Team when it moved to Texas in 2003 and then onto the Erion Factory Honda team in L.A in 2004. After that I got out of racing at the end of 2005 and came back to Oz for good.

Sorry Matt, I’m renovating my kitchen and the cabinet maker has just walked in the door.

Matt
No worries. Thanks so much for your time Owen, I really appreciate it.

Owen
You’re welcome, anytime. Speak soon.