Russell Aylward

Interview with Russell

Interview by Matt Compton
2nd October 2019

Matt
Hi Russell, thank you so much for calling.

Russell
That's alright. So how are you going?

Matt
Yeah good mate, how’ve you been?

Russell
Yeah I'm doing fine. I had a couple of people call me and say they’d read the Facebook page and that I should contribute. So you're starting a website about the racing Magnis?

Matt
Yes, for years I’ve tried tracking down more history and been frustrated at the lack of info online. Then I thought, “Well most of the history about Ted and his two Magni-Guzzi prototypes was before the internet really took off. l was there for part of that history, and I know quite a few people that were involved, maybe it’s my job to get that info out there?”. So I started the Facebook page to connect with people from those days and I’m now in the process of building a website in honour of Ted and to preserve the history of his bikes.

Russell
That’s really great. So how can I best help out?

Matt
Well , I remembered that flip book of photos you showed me in the 90’s and how involved you were in the beginning with the bikes; and Mark Purdy mentioned how heavily involved you were too. So I was hoping you’d share some of your recollections with me.

Russell
Definitely, I can give you the story right from day one! In 1989 Ted Stolarski decided he wanted to go racing again and that he wanted a racebike. So he got in touch with the factory in Italy and asked if they could send him a racebike but they didn’t have anything to give him at the time. They said, “Look, we will send you an engine and you put it in a frame yourself and go racing”. This was just after Dr John Wittner had made his bike; he'd raced that in 1987, 88 and 89 and he'd won the Battle of the Twins at Daytona with his home-made special. It was Dr John who had developed the four valve heads with the factory. The factory had a prototype engine and they told Ted, “We will send you an engine if you want to put it in a bike”, and Ted said, “Okay, thank you!”.

Ted then had to look around and find someone to make a frame or build a racebike for him so he got hold of Arturo Magni. Arturo had been the lead engineer at MV Agusta for many years and he built the race frames that won Giacomo Agostini 15 world titles, so he knows a thing or two about building racebikes! Ted explained to Arturo, “Look I've got a 4-valve engine but I need a frame”. Arturo said, “Oh good! We need to get hold of a 4-valve engine so we can make our new sports bike [The upcoming Magni Australia]. You loan us the engine and we'll give you one of the new frames we’re developing to fit your engine. Then we'll have our jigs set up, we can get to work on our new bike and hopefully get an engine supply from the factory soon!”.

So that's what happened! Ted got the engine from the factory, it was sent out to Western Australia and he promptly put it in a box and sent it straight back to Italy. It could've gone from Moto Guzzi to Magni but the factory didn't want to be involved, so they sent the engine to Ted and he had to send it back over there; it was a bit of an arse-about way of doing it. The Magnis were happy that Ted had sent them the engine because there are slight differences in the frame geometry required to fit a 4V engine. So Arturo built a frame around Ted’s engine and sent the completed bike back to Perth in 1990. It had special fully-enclosed bodywork, which Magni included as part of the deal. So that’s the story of how Ted’s first prototype came to be with the Moto Guzzi engine and the Magni frame. Ted wanted to debut the bike at Daytona in the Pro-Twins race, but by the time it arrived in Perth they only got about six laps in around Wanneroo, that was all the time they had before it had to be crated and sent to Daytona.

Matt
Right!

Russell
They got hold of Owen Coles who was riding for Brook Henry’s Vee Two, and he agreed to race it for them. This is how I came into the story, I happened to be at Daytona racing a Superbike at the same time. I was mates with Owen, we’d met in Western Australia earlier when I started racing my road bike at Wanneroo. So we met up and I helped them tune P1 and get it going, so that's where my relationship started with Ted.

Matt
Interesting …

Russell
Owen crashed it at one stage, I can't remember if it was during the Pro-Twins race or one of the pre-race practices, but he had a bit of an off. I remember we had a lot of problems with the exhaust. Magni made some megaphone exhausts that were too short which affected the power delivery. It happened that while we were in the pit bay some people from Rennsport rocked up and they liked the look of the bike. They said, “Could we do some development on the bike and provide you with some exhausts?”. That's how it ended up with the Rennsport exhaust which was when Owen won his races cos the exhaust freed up a whole heap of power that wasn't there when he raced at Daytona. So that's how P1 was developed while I was involved, it had the exhaust fitted and that was it, that was about the only thing we changed on it. After Daytona we went separate ways, I came back to Australia and resumed racing my proddy bike, they stayed on in America for a little while longer. Later, Owen raced to a couple of wins at some other events, so he got a couple of wins on American soil even though it was bog stock; almost no development, no go-fast bits, it had hardly anything done to it!

From the US Ted’s Magni-Guzzi prototype went to Simon Turner from New Zealand, he’s the nephew of Keith Turner. Keith used to be a factory Suzuki rider he also had a motorcycle dealership in Napier, New Zealand. I don't know how Ted got involved with Keith; I think he was selling Moto Guzzis as well. So Simon raced it in New Zealand and he got quite good results on it. He also came to Australia and raced in a couple of events. They had road races around Kambalda in WA, and that’s where I caught up with them again. He had reasonable success, like I said it was very underpowered, it was only a stock engine. From there it went to Victoria and was given to a couple of different riders. I can’t remember who the riders were but it was raced in Victoria, New South Wales and South Australia, although mainly events around the lower part of Victoria I think.

Matt
I see.

Russell
About a year later, I wandered into Stolarski’s, just to catch up with Ted and see how he was. He said, “I haven’t seen you for a while what have you been doing?”. Then he said, “Oh, by the way, I’ve got another bike!”. “What do you mean?” I said. He went on to explain how the Guzzi factory was so happy with the racing results that they gave him another prototype 4V-OHC engine, and this was one of five they gave to various national distributors around the world. One went to the German distributor and one went to the Italian distributor, but I don’t know where the other ones went.

On both of Ted’s prototypes you can see at the base of the cylinders on the engine casings there is a lot of extra material welded in that area. When Guzzi made their prototype engines at the factory they welded up the bottom around the cylinders to make them thicker so they could put heavier cylinder studs in it. There was only a handful made like that, so that’s how you can tell the pre-production engines apart from the production bikes. That’s just a little interesting sideline.

Anyway, Ted continues, “Yeah I’ve got another engine and Magni made me another frame! Arturo Magni was also very happy with the results he’d heard back from our American and New Zealand racing so I asked him to send us another frame. Arturo said that they’ve built a new frame taking into account the feedback from our riders”. The riders had asked for a frame that had slightly steeper steering and better suspension. That’s how the second bike turned out with an uprated frame and different running gear from the first.

P2 had a slightly steeper steering head angle to make it turn a bit better, a shorter wheelbase and the WP suspension. At the time that WP suspension was factory spec, it was the same spec that the World Super Bikes were using. It also came with the bigger brakes and the better Brembo callipers. They were the same Brembos used on the YZR500 GP bike, very top of the line, everything was top of the line. They sent him rather classic style bodywork, I think you’ve got pictures of it with its original bubble type seat unit and a fully enclosed fairing. The actual Magni Australia bodywork didn’t come out in time for us to use it so Ted just kept on using what we had, but he didn’t like to change it anyway.

So Ted had all the new bits sitting there and said, “I need someone to put it together, because I’ve just got ten boxes of parts”. I said, “Well, it’s fortunate you say that, cos I haven’t got a job, I’ve got nothing to do, I’ll quite happily come and build it for you” and he said, “Would You?”. I replied, “Yeah, I’d love to be involved again!”. So that’s how I got involved with the actual assembly of P2, I basically assembled the whole thing from ten boxes of parts and then I painted it.

Matt
Wow!

Russell
This was back when Stolarski’s was in East Victoria Park. They set aside a space for me downstairs. They had a spray booth and a dyno in one of the engine bays as well. I had the engine bay and all of the underground area to work; that was my race shop, I worked out of there for about a year at no cost. I was on the dole, and in between looking for work I filled in my time playing with racebikes.

While I finished assembling the second prototype the original bike came back from Victoria. They put Mark Purdy on it and I helped out by being Mark’s mechanic. Then Ted said, “Well we need someone to race the new bike, I’d like you to race it. With all the work you’ve put in, it would be a shame to see someone else riding it”. I said, “Oh wow! Cool, excellent! That’s fantastic!”. That’s how I came to ride the second bike.

Matt
That’s great, I must agree with Ted, I’m glad you got the ride mate!

Russell
Yeah, so I got into racing the second Magni-Guzzi for a couple of years. I did the rounds at Wanneroo and helped Mark at the same time. I raced in South Australia at Mallala Motor Sport Park. I rode it at Oren Park in NSW but didn’t race there, we did a tuning day there before that track closed, and we also did Bathurst in 1993.

Matt
Was that when Mark crashed?

Russell
Yeah, Mark was given P2 to ride and Ted put Wayne Gow on P1. There was a Moto Guzzi dealer in Sydney and I spent some time in their workshop fixing up P1. I did a few repairs on the clutch amongst other things as it was starting to show its age. This was around the time the Daytona was released, and the Guzzi factory sent Ted the very first production Daytona in Australia. Ted got Graeme Morris to ride it, he was a very famous Supersport rider here in Australia. Graeme was the one that got me onto Oran Park, we went there to have a ride day and get used to the Daytona.

After we got the Daytona, Mark flew over to Bathurst and I went over on the bus and met up with them there. But the Daytona sh*t itself, it did the big-end bearings on a couple of occasions. Graeme Morris did a couple of laps of Bathurst and he said that the oil pressure light came on. So we stripped it down twice, pulled the sump and changed the big-end bearings; cos you can do that on those engines. We didn’t notice that the pressure relief valve had come loose, cos it’s not something that normally happens.

Matt
Ahhh, what a pain.

Russell
It wasn’t until we finally stripped the bike back down in Perth we found that the oil pressure relief valve was missing; it had unscrewed and fallen into the bottom of the sump. It hadn’t unscrewed and fallen into the sump the first two times it broke down, so we didn’t even think to f***ing look at it! It was so unfortunate as the Daytona never got its press release, it never got to finish its inaugural race!

It was this event when Mark crashed the second prototype on the cool down lap of the last practice session. It was a slow crash, he was in a low gear on the cool down lap, down through the dipper. The bike slid into an air-fence and into Mark. His body went into the air-fence and the bike came in behind him and slammed into his back. He put a big dent in the tank, broke two of his ribs and put a rib into one of his lungs so he was taken to Bathurst hospital.

Matt
Whoa! Not good …

Russell
Absolutely! It wasn’t til the next day we had a look at the bike and I said to Ted, “There’s nothing major wrong with this, it’s only cosmetic damage”, this was because Mark cushioned most of the blow. So we taped up the bodywork, fixed a few of the broken parts and I said to Ted, “Well, I’ve got all my racing gear here, why can’t I ride it?”. We went and spoke to the people who ran the show and said we’d like to change the rider. So my first ever lap of Bathurst, other than watching it on TV a quadrillion times, was the warm-up lap for the Australian TT, one of the biggest races in Australia!

Matt
Wow! Talk about being thrown in the deep end!

Russell
Yeah! I started 28th or 29th, right at the back of the field but by the time I got to the first corner I was in 9th place cos as you know, P2 has got so much torque down low! Whenever we raced anywhere in the country, I was never beaten to the first corner; I got beaten on horsepower on some circuits with long straights, but never got passed off the start line. So yeah, I actually finished the Bathurst TT in 9th place.

Matt
That’s brilliant!

Russell
Yeah, so after only one lap experience, my first ever lap was the sighting lap! You know how they time different sectors; well, I was the fastest bike there had ever been over the top of the mountain, Ted said they announced it over the PA system. I lost out down the straight because of the shaft drive gearing, we just ran out of steam. It got to 240km/h and that was it, it was just hold on and wait. [Laughing] They all went sailing past me down the straight, but up and across the mountain I passed the whole lot of them, all of ‘em. Every superbike from the TT was in this race, it was an all-in race, it was a, ‘Run what you brung kind of thing!’.

Matt
Very interesting …

Russell
I also raced in the Pro-Twins races there and I finished 9th and 11th, which wasn’t too shabby. I finished second in class to the Brittens!

Matt
Well done, that’s awesome!

Russell
Yeah, so that was a memorable time, I really enjoyed that. Then we came back to Western Australia and Ted put Nick Phillips on the Daytona and he did very well. Shortly afterwards the factory sent a C-kit over, which was basically cams, pistons, crankshaft, and an ECU unit. We fitted the C-kit to the Daytona and I asked if I could have all the same gear for the Magni but Ted said “No”. After Nick joined us, the next memorable thing we did was a trip over to Queensland to race at Lakeside Raceway which is an unbelievable racetrack. We were invited over by the Ducati Owners Club of Queensland for a two-day meet and we cleaned up! We completely wiped the floor with their Ducatis and they didn’t like it, they got really upset about it.

Matt
Did they?

Russell
Yeah, after the meeting had finished and all the presentations were given, someone came over to us and said, “You need to come and talk to the event organisers, cos they want to talk to you”. So we wandered over there and said, “What’s up?”. They said, “We’re going to take your trophies off you, you’ve been disqualified” and we said, “What for?”. They replied, “Your bikes don’t meet the requirements for the class, you’ve got 4V engines and fuel injection, that’s not allowed in the Pro-Twins”. We explained, “Well, hang on a minute, we’ve been here for four days and our bikes have been scrutineered four times and no one said anything about it! On top of that, Moto Guzzi had fuel injection and 4-valve head engines back in the 1930’s, so it’s not new equipment! Essentially our 4V engine is a pushrod anyway, they’re not overhead cams and they’re air-cooled!”. They said, “No, no, no, it’s not in the spirit of the event!”. So we said, “Well you can shove your f***ing event … but you’re not getting your prize money back!”. We gave them our trophies back but we kept the prize money. We thought that was really low, it was just sour grapes. [Laughing]

Matt
Oh, wow. [Laughing] Impressive results you guys had though.

Russell
Oh look, we had giant killing results and it was simply because the bikes have got so much torque. We were able to use it on the short tracks in particular; jump a bunch of rows off the starting line and beat everyone out of the corners. You know, your Magni is an absolutely stunning bike to race! It really is so forgiving and so joyous to race! On a short flowing track nothing could touch it! Wanneroo was absolutely perfect for it. I led the ‘Prince of the West’ series there one year. It was the only time I ever had a DNF [Did Not Finish]; that was due to a clutch failure. I’d won three races and I was leading on the points. I only lost the Prince of the West title by about two points; had I finished with any placing I would’ve won the series. So unfortunately I never won any championships on it, although at one stage I did lead championships in West Australia, South Australia and Queensland, all at one time.

Matt
Really? That’s amazing Russell!

Russell
Yeah! Now let’s see, what happened then? That’s right, Ted put a guest rider on P1 and I beat him every time. Unfortunately that was my undoing, cos Ted said, “No, you’ve got to let the new guy win”. I told him, “I’m trying to go slow Ted, it’s just that the others are still slower than me!”. [Laughing] I was going over the hill [at Wanneroo] and looking back but there was no one behind me, so I was literally just cruising around the basin, waiting and waiting and waiting and waiting. I thought, “This is going to look ridiculous to any spectators, they’re going to know what’s going on”. So I gave it the beans going over the hill again and resumed normal speed. He never caught me up but then Ted said, “Right, I don’t want you to ride this last race, I’m taking the bike off you”.

Matt
Oh, no!

Russell
He wanted his invited rider to win a race; I think he got 2nd or something, someone else beat him. Then somewhere around 1994 Ted died of lead poisoning and Dulcie sold both the bikes. He’d actually gone over to Europe and spent several months in a salt mine underground, to try and leach it out of his body.

Matt
Yeah, I was so sad that it didn’t work.

Russell
Yeah, me too. I remember several times when we were running the bikes on the dyno and Ted was standing behind them copping a face-full of exhaust fumes; he was probably affected by that. We thought of it immediately when we heard about the lead poisoning; just being in that confined space with the racebikes all the time.

Matt
Yeah, very sad …

Russell
So then a few years later I reconnected with you with a plan to buy P2 and campaign it around America.

Matt
Yeah was that in 1998?

Russell
Well it was the year 2000 that I took it to Daytona, so it would’ve been 1999. I got it off you in enough time to do the bodywork, exhausts and paint, and I raced it twice at Wanneroo before I left. What I should’ve done before I left, was put in a new set of rings cos that was my downfall when I went to America. I got disqualified from the Pro-Twins race at Daytona for putting out too much smoke; that only happened because it was such a long track.

Also, I only had the short track gearing, I didn’t have a long diff, I just had the standard road diff in it and it had to work way too hard. On the straights it was tapped open all the way, wide open throttle for a long time. It built up crankcase pressure and forced oil passed the rings and into the combustion chamber. I got black flagged for the smoke, so I was disqualified from the two races I did. Had I known, I would have definitely replaced the rings, but the problem never made itself apparent on the short track [Wanneroo] as it didn’t have enough time at wide open throttle. So if you do want to race it again, I highly recommend you put a set of rings in it.

Matt
Yeah, I’ll remember that, thanks. So, when I was searching online I saw results for you in Cycle News 22nd March, 2000, it said ‘De Land Airport, De Land, Florida’.

Russell
Yeah I raced at DeLand Airport the week after Daytona and I got a 2nd place there. It’s about ten minutes out of Daytona Beach itself; it’s run on a little airport strip that they make into a track. It was quite … well I wouldn’t say greasy, it was more like sand and pebbles on the runways. I was a little bit frightened about falling off so I was riding quite gingerly. I had a couple of other races at Moroso Motorsports Park, they’re the guys that make V8 performance parts.

This is where things got complicated over there, cos I got ditched by the bloody US team. They actually left me in the motel where they’d put me up; they up and decamped early in the morning while I was still asleep. They had a big tent there and had about 10-12 bikes they were racing and I had your Magni-Guzzi prototype in their pit with all my tools and everything. So I woke up to find myself alone in the motel room and left with a motel bill of several thousand dollars.

Matt
You’re kidding!

Russell
Nope, they just up and left. I went and pled my case with the motel owners, cos I didn’t know anything about it and luckily I got out of the bill. Then I get out to the track and went over to where their tent had been to find they’d gone, it was all completely gone. They had packed up completely, their bikes, the tent, their trucks, their tools — everything had vanished! There was the Magni and my toolbox just sitting all by themselves in the middle of the infield, totally alone. People walking backwards and forwards, anyone could’ve pinched anything, taken the bike, whatever. They just ditched me, absolutely left me stranded. [Laughing]

Matt
Whoa, that’s shocking! I don’t know what to say …

Russell
They were going to buy the bike; they’d already agreed on a price and they were going to employ me in their company and allow me to race it for them around America, that was the deal. But they just opted out, they packed up and f***ed off.

Matt
Unbelievable …

Russell
Then one of the guys walking by came and had a look at the bike and started chatting to me and said, “I run a team, I’d like you to ride for me, come over here I’ll introduce you to my riders”. So I said, “Oh f***, great! That’s what I’m looking for!”.

He took me around to another pit and there was a couple of guys there and he introduced me to them. He had three riders in various classes and basically said to them, “Here’s your new team mate”, so that’s how that went down. I stayed with them for the next week or so until Daytona Bike Week was finished. He had a house where he set me up with another of his riders. I thought, well this is all looking rosy! So I went with them and stayed in his house and over a period of about a month we attended a couple of road race meetings at Moroso Motorsports Park.

I was looking after their bikes cos the Americans aren’t like us, the riders don’t do their own mechanical work. Their mechanics also specialise; you’re either an engine mechanic or you’re a chassis mechanic, or you’re a tyre fitter, or you’re a this, that, or the other. There’s so many of them in the country that when you go to a bike shop they have different mechanics for different facets of working on your bike. They don’t have all-round, I can do everything type mechanics. So to get someone like me over there, that did everything, they were blown away!

Matt
Huh, that’s really different hey.

Russell
Yeah. [Laughing] Anyway, cutting a really long and really sh*tty story short, we came back from a racetrack one afternoon and there was three brown paper lunch bags sitting on the doorstep of the house we were living in. I thought, oh, someone’s dropped something off for us, I wonder what it is? So we go inside and open up these three bags and inside each of the bags was a dead fish, a herring. Then masking tape was wrapped around each fish three to four times and written on the masking tape was, “Get out of my f***ing house now you c***!”. I don’t know what the hell that was all about.

Matt
Whoa! Was that referring to you or the other bloke?

Russell
Well, to both of us we assumed; we weren’t going to ring him up and ask him! He hadn’t attended that day’s racing with us, he’d been somewhere else … fishing apparently! [Laughing] He was a total nut-bag, an absolute psycho! I ended up going and living with another young guy from the team, he was living with his girlfriend and I stayed with them temporarily until I got things sorted.

So yeah, the sh*t really hit the fan and I thought, what the f*** am I going to do with the bike? What the hell do I do now? I’ve got no income, I’ve got nowhere to live, I’ve got nothing, I was screwed! [Laughing]

Matt
Ahhh … that’s terrible!

Russell
Yeah, so that’s what happened, I really wanted to buy that bike, I had full intentions of sending you a big fat cheque and carrying on my career riding the Magni but it didn’t happen. It all came to a screeching halt.

Matt
I felt very sorry for all the bad luck you had over there … But I’m glad to be able to reconnect with you and get your story for the website.

Russell
[Laughing] Yep, so that’s the nutty twists and turns of my tale, but I’d love to see something more come of the story with the bikes, so keep on with it.

Matt
Yes I will, I’ve got some good stuff so far. I’ve got some really great memories from Brook Henry, Owen Coles, Mark Purdy, Chris Cooke. I also ended up talking to Amedeo Castellani, do you know him?

Russell
Yeah, yeah; Ted flew Amedeo out from England to work on P1 at Daytona. I met him there, he’s a good bloke; he owned Raceco in England, he’s a top guy and a really smart cookie, knew his bikes that’s for sure!

Matt
Yes, agreed, totally! Not long after I set up the Magni-Guzzi facebook page someone named Amedeo Castellani sent a friend request and I thought, I know that name, could it be the same bloke? So I looked on his Facebook page and it was him! The photos on his page are amazing, cos he’s a professional photographer, then I saw someone had scanned and posted an old Alan Cathcart article. It mentioned Amedeo being in Daytona with Ted and the first prototype and I was like, Hey! I didn’t realise Amedeo had anything to do with Ted and his bikes! So I sent him a message saying, “Would you be willing to have a chat with me and share some stories and photos from your time with Ted for my webpage?”. So yeah, I spoke to him last Sunday and he told me how he’d come out to Australia for a few weeks. I just thought, “Wow, that’s an interesting connection that I didn’t know was there!”.

I remember reading about Amedeo and his Raceco Guzzis in the 90’s and being very impressed with the performance he was getting from his 1288cc Raceco Daytona. I contemplated bringing the Magni up to that spec at one stage.

Russell
I was thinking about doing the same thing. That’s all the Magni needed, a Raceco motor!

Matt
Ahh, it’d be unbeatable wouldn’t it! That would’ve been incredible!

Russell
It would be, that would’ve been an awesome racebike! Really could’ve shown those superbikes a clean pair of heals!

Frank Wright, who was the Australian importer and distributor for Raceco, set the Daytona racebike up and Amedeo sent him all the bits to install the big bore kit. When Frank ran it at Wanneroo with Watty [Mark Watt], I told him he should have bought the Magni instead of a Daytona cos that Daytona turned into a bit of a death trap; it hurt everyone that rode it.

Matt
Ahh, Mark Purdy said the same thing!

Russell
Yeah, yeah, it was an evil handling bike to start with, it was not nice at all hey! I rode it a couple of times and I didn’t like it.

Matt
Yeah, Jon Iles ended up riding that for us, in 1995 I think. Just going through the esses behind him I thought, “Whoa, he really has to man-handle that thing!“. But the Magni was, like you said, ”Just a joy to ride!”, it even made me look good! [Laughing]

Russell
[Laughing] Yeah, I could out-brake anything on that Magni, even 125GP bikes! I raced against a 125GP bike at Mallala [South Australia], it was an ex-Gary McCoy GP bike ridden by a guy called Glen Richards who went on to Superbike fame in England. We had a tremendous race at Mallala, I could out-brake him all the time. It was a piddly little 125 that weighed nothing and I managed to out-brake him! I could out-brake anything actually, it was a pleasure to ride, pleasure to do anything with. I’m so sad that I didn’t get to do more with it and develop it further; but even as it was that bike surprised a lot of people.

Matt
Yes, the Magni really surprised a lot of other teams cos a lot of people tend to under-estimate Moto Guzzis; that bike just seemed to have the package didn’t it? Shocked a hell of a lot of people.

Russell
It only had 90 odd horsepower, but it had 110 foot-pound of torque! That counted for a lot, a lot of acceleration in that! I actually proved the point of that one day by riding Wanneroo in 5th gear. I did an entire lap in 5th gear and I was half a second slower than riding it in the normal gears.

Matt
Whoa! That’s amazing! Yeah I know when Chris Cooke spoke to me he said that Ted had told him, “You only need three gear changes on this track, don’t dance on the gear lever like you do on your Suzuki!”. [Laughing]

Russell
[Laughing] Yeah, that’s right!

Matt
So who’s been your pit crew over the years at different places?

Russell
Just Leon Doyle, he’s the only one I ever had helping me. The Magnis never needed anything doing to them, just put petrol in and start it, that’s all we ever did! [Laughing] I never once played with the suspension, it was perfectly set up when I got it, I never touched it! It was just a dream, an absolute dream to ride.

The entire time I rode P2, it only scared me once. I was going up over the hill at Wanneroo, through the esses and at the last right-left the back tyre skipped out on me. It was so crossed-up and leaned over that it snapped the foot brake pedal on me. That was it, that was the only time it ever scared me. Other than that it was just a pure joy to ride! Absolute pure joy! I could put it anywhere I wanted to on the track, didn’t matter who was riding what next to me. You needed to be on a pretty fast f***ing bike to get near me, that’s for sure.

Matt
So do you know if there was any differences between the two prototype engines when Ted got them? Or were they both pretty much the same?

Russell
Oh, sh*t yeah! Ted’s second one has a Scola crank in it; it’s a highly polished mirror finish crank and that’s it, no lightened crank, no nothing, it was just highly polished! The big difference is that P2 had the properly tuned inlets; it had the Dell’Orto carburettors on it and it also had really long inlet manifolds. Somewhere along the line someone had shortened those manifolds from being really long to being really short and that’s what f***ed the power delivery. I was told from the factory that, “for peak performance it needed to have an 8-inch inlet tract from the centre of the valve to the centre of the carburettor”, so I reinstated the long inlet trumpets.

Matt
Interesting …

Russell
It looked out of place, it looked like it was wrong, but it f***ing worked! Back then, the first Magni couldn’t come near me, neither could the Daytona, even though the Daytona had the full C-kit, it still couldn’t keep up with me! So yes, it was a more powerful engine, but for no apparent reason other than that it was a well used dyno-mule before we got it. It was well broken in, but when they gave it to us it was fresh; fresh pistons and rings and everything, it was a very good engine!

Matt
Did you ever ride P1?

Russell
I rode it, but I never raced it. The steering head angle was steeper on the second one than on the first, so it steered a whole lot better. The front wheel was about an inch and a half closer to the frame than the first one, so it made a lot more flickable, a lot more usable.

Matt
So you’ve ridden P2 with many of its different bodywork styles.

Russell
Yeah, but in the beginning I was always complaining of having sore knees. My knees used to be really squashed with the relative positioning of the foot-pegs and the seat. Then after Mark Purdy crashed the bike at Bathurst, we didn’t have a replacement seat unit, so we took a mould from P1’s bodywork, cut the seat unit off and put it onto the second one. It was two inches taller but it handled better and was much easier on the knees. Then with the current bodywork the seat was raised another two inches and it just transformed it again, it was so much nicer to throw from side to side. Now it’s the ideal weapon.

Matt
Do you remember if it has always run the same ignition system?

Russell
Yes, it’s got a Moto Guzzi SP3 electronic ignition system fitted; set and forget. We never touched the ignition, once it was on it was on, and it’s still total loss. Also where the distributor normally goes in the back of the engine we put a breather box with a reed valve in it to vent the crankcase. I cut the arse-end off the distributor, shortening it. Then I made a mounting plate and we fitted it in the front of the engine where it drives off the lay shaft which takes the belt drives up to the cams.

Matt
So do you have any favourite memories of Ted to let people know what he was like?

Russell
[Laughing] Yeah, I can tell you right now, one of his favourite sayings was, “You don’t go to the toilet before you race the bike!”. We’d say, “Why’s that Ted?”, and he would reply, “Oh, cos it makes you go faster, you want to come home quicker!” [Laughing]

Matt
[Laughing]

Russell
Another memory is when I built their race trailer, made it from the ground up for them. I then went on a three and a half day road trip to Bathurst with Ted and Dulcie. Some of the corkers he’d come out with on that road trip! He had some real clangers, some real choice one-liners! He was funny as hell!

He used to be a pushbike racer when he was a teenager, that’s where his racing involvement started. Ted also told me a few stories from when he was in the war, fighting the Germans and things like that. I don’t know if you know, but he had some pretty horrendous scarring on his legs. He told me this story that he was driving a truck to get away from the Germans with his pet dog, an Alsatian. He crashed it, and he got pretty f***ed up and sadly his dog got killed. He wasn’t actually a soldier in the war, but he was involved in the resistance; like he was Polish and they were against the Germans. That truck accident curtailed his bicycle racing.

Matt
Really difficult times …

Russell
Yes, for sure.

Matt
So do you know Owen Coles very well?

Russell
Yeah, Owen’s a nice guy, I’ve got a lot of time for Owen. He raced for Brook Henry and he also raced in the German Superbike series for a couple of years.

Matt
And did you get to know Simon Turner when he raced P1?

Russell
Yeah, yeah. Another nice guy, good racer, very good racer! I think the bike was a bit underpowered for him.

Matt
Did you ever race against Mark Purdy, with him on the first prototype and you on the second?

Russell
Yeah, all the time, beat him every time. [Laughing]

Matt
[Laughing] Yeah, when I talked to Mark he said, “Russell’s a great guy … but I was a little bit dark about the situation. I thought I was going to get the newer bike, go faster and have better brakes and suspension and handling; but I got over it, cos Russell was a top bloke”.

Russell
Yeah, yeah, we get on like a house on fire.

Matt
That’s good to hear mate. So I have another question, how would you sum up Ted if you were trying to tell someone about who he was and what he was like?

Russell
Oh God! I wouldn’t know where to start. He was very passionate about his racing that’s for sure! Very passionate, very keen, 100% into it. He was very generous with his time, and with his equipment. He was also very generous with compliments.

A couple of times he’d come downstairs and he’d slip me a few bob, a hundred dollars here and there and he’d say, “Don’t tell Dulcie”. He was one of the very few people I’ve worked for who actually thanked me for doing what I did. I had a lot of time for Ted, I found him to be more of a father figure than my own father, he was so nice, very helpful, very considerate.

Another of his favourite sayings was, “It’s not a racebike, it’s a tourer, not a racebike, only a tourer!”. [Laughing] He used to get upset when I’d win races all the time. He’d say, “If you win one race, you’ve always got to win. Just have fun, ride to have fun!”. Well, I was riding to have fun, I had fun winning races on it! He could never get over the fact that we, as racers, wanted to win races. He’d get all these top racers to come over and ride his bike for him and then say to them, “You don’t have to win!”.

Matt
That’s so funny isn’t it? He was very unique, very unique!

Russell
He was! Bless his heart!

Matt
Some of my own write up actually says similar things.

Russell
Actually I just remembered, I had two crashes on P2. I had one crash at Mallala where I slid off the track but didn’t do any damage to me or the bike, just a low side.

The second crash was in 1999 when I was racing at Wanneroo; during the time that I was prepping the bike for Daytona. I’d sprinted to the lead and was going into the first corner and without warning I was gone. Some oil had come out the breather on the overflow tank and leaked onto the back wheel. The bike slid out and I did a sky-ground-sky-ground-sky-ground kind of thing. [Laughing] I ended up on the track and broke both my little fingers.

Matt
Did you? Was that the only injury, you were okay other than that?

Russell
Yeah. It was the only time I’ve ever hurt myself in 25 years of racing. Went out in style though, did it at the front of the field! [Laughing]

Well, I hope you like how the bike is looking?

Matt
Yeah it looks amazing and so many people have said, “Wow, that looks great!”. I've even had comments on Facebook saying that it looks better than an MGS01, so yeah, it's incredible!

Russell
Yeah, we got a really good reception in America, it looked pretty good! I think it looks the best it ever has and it ran really well too.

Matt
Yeah you did a great job with it mate. One of the photos of you racing at Wanneroo, where it was all red but didn’t have the complete new bodywork …

Russell
… That was just before I went to Daytona, and prior to fitting all the completed fairing pieces, it was half-and-half. It had the seat unit and tank that I’d laid-up [fibreglassed] before it was painted. The Daytona seat had been removed, the smaller one was in place with the pipes routed up through the back of the seat.

I’ll dig out all my photos, I’ve got a bunch with most of the different body styles. I’ve got a couple of pictures from when you still had it, with the Daytona seat on it. There’s also a group photo from Mount Gambier outside Ted’s motor home. It’s painted all red and its wheel-to-wheel with the Daytona racebike. Ted wanted to further promote Daytona sales so we put a Daytona seat on it and later you put the Daytona front fairing on. So all up, it’s had about five different guises.

Matt
Yeah, it has looked very different over the years. The current bodywork, is that carbon fibre or fibreglass?

Russell
Both, it’s carbon fibre reinforced with fibreglass and it’s solid! You can take the seat unit off, put it on the ground, and jump up and down on it, and it won’t bend or crack. I think it looks really neat the way it is at the moment; it’s very small, very compact, very light and very strong.

Matt
Yeah, it does look awesome! The mufflers were from Roo Racing, were the pipes as well?

Russell
Yeah, I made a 2-1-2 with a blend in the middle; it functions really well too. That’s one of the things that I used to do when I lived in Perth, make exhausts. I worked for Roo Racing for a while, doing all his mufflers. I welded up all the baffle tubes and everything, did all the internals for them.

Matt
That’s right, yes I remember now. So how’ve things been for you lately?

Russell
I’m in a good quiet place, enjoying what life brings to me. Everything seems to be nice at the moment.

Matt
Fantastic, I’m very glad to hear that! I’ll look forward to seeing the photos, thanks so much for your time mate.

Russell
You’re welcome, I’m glad to hear you’re doing something with it, that’s great! Ted and the bikes deserve the publicity.

Matt
Agreed! Thanks buddy.