Masochism. That’s the only way I can explain why anyone would want to race a Lambretta around a full-on Motocross circuit for 6-hours. Or perhaps Schadenfreude – joy in the suffering of others – for those who came to spectate. If you didn’t see some pain and misery then you’d at least expect a refund.
Let’s be clear, a Lambretta is no better a Motocross machine than a British red phone box is a submarine. You can use it that way, but don’t expect to come back in one piece. All the core elements of an off-road racer – long-travel suspension, centralised weight distribution, large wheels, and wide handlebars to improve control – are all conspicuous by their absence on a Lambretta.
The Belgian rider is really well camouflaged, but there are actually three scooters in this shot…
Vespa riding cynics from the German Scooter Forum gave the Lambrettas a life expectancy of no more than one hour. Oh, ye of little faith.
The idea for this idiocy was born of Jürgen from the Lambretta Club of Deutschland. He proposed an event that brought riders from different countries together, like the annual EuroLambretta, but offered something different. He managed to get the LCD (LSD?) committee on board. They in turn approached the other European Lambretta clubs and launched the event officially in June at EuroLambretta in Magny Cours. That didn’t offer a whole heap of time for teams to prepare scooters for 6-hours on a Motocross track, so the Germans were very happy when 12 machines showed up to race.
Lambrettas fly well: it’s landing they aren’t so great at. Many cheesy bolt-on front damper brackets died in the name of entertainment
What could you ride?
From inception, the idea was to make this a budget event. Limitations included a ban on fancy suspension, expansion chambers or aluminium kits. Instead, you could only run smallblock (125/150/175) engines with modified cast iron barrels and box-type exhausts. Chassis and handlebars were supposed to remain standard, though the Spanish team bent that particular rule a little by raising the seat arch of their scooter.
Who entered?
As intended, the race was a truly international affair. First on site were the Irish boys with their ‘Reprobates’ team made up from Celtic Soul SC and Must’Hafa Beer SC members, campaigning a tricolour-painted Series 2.
The Spanish team – Canibal Racing – sent their scooter and spare parts across from Spain in a box in advance and the ever-helpful German organisers brought it to the track for them.
From Austria came Team Ländle; all in matching red overalls.
Belgium fielded ‘Team Yellow Dance Lemonade’ on a largely standard LI Series 2; bought in pieces for 250 Euros. The 3-man French team from Casa Lambretta France included a 14-year-old lad who looked fast even when standing still.
Representing Great Britain were three teams: Rushden Lambretta Club – who I know from the BSEC endurance meetings – riding a tuned Vega and two teams who’d never troubled my radar before in any sport: Norton Commandos from Teesside and Yorkshire Dirt Dogs, made up largely of Baildon SC members.
On top of this were four teams from the host nation: Flatliners SC, A Special Madness, Muddybrettas (mostly female riders) and finally the Ssssnake Team from Harald Bertacco; who I was guest riding for.
I got the job by dint of being quite a handy Scootercross rider back in the day. That day being a Sunday in the mid-1990s when I was almost 30 years younger. I couldn’t play the age card because both Hansi and Harald from our team were beyond the 60th birthday barrier, and still don’t have the sense to realise that racing a Lambretta off-road is only mildly safer than pogoing through a minefield.
When the flag drops, sanity stops.
Where was it held?
The venue was a club-owned motocross circuit outside the town of Frankenthal near Frankfurt; squeezed between a main road and a railway line. The event ended up here because the Frankenthal club were the first people not to hang up the phone when asked if they would be prepared to host a 6-hour endurance race for vintage scooters.
To all intents and purposes this is a full national-specification MX track; complete with all the jumps you’d expect, but with some of the bumpy parts smoothed the day before with a digger. Previously there were ruts deep enough that a Lambretta would sink up to the floorboards.
For this first edition, the LCD had booked a full weekend of sunshine. That was handy because if the event was held under heavy rain then I seriously doubt the Lambrettas would even make it around the track at all. There simply isn’t enough clearance between knobbly tyres and the engine casing to cope with claggy, muddy conditions.
Sssssign of the Ssssnake…
What’s the format?
After the most lenient of clothing checks (anything better than a Dainese Racing Tutu was accepted), teams were allowed to practice from 4 pm on Friday. Lots of people simply turned up with road riding kit, including the Yorkshire Dirt Dogs – who arrived on their street scooters. With no idea what to expect, a few came away with bumps and bruises from practice.
The female riders from Muddybrettas were all quite handy
The Spanish Canibals managed to rip an engine mount lug off their engine casing in practice, but luckily had a No.2 engine to fit.
The only concession to safety imposed by the circuit was removal of the kickstart lever. This in itself proved to be crucial, because if you stalled an engine at the far side of the circuit in a dusty bomb-hole, then your chances of bump-starting the engine rank slightly lower than getting a massage and happy ending from the Princess of Wales.
The event started in Le Mans style with riders sprinting to machines being held running (mostly) by team-mates. Through the dust and chaos, Lambrettas eventually appeared at high points around the circuit.
The circuit had been damped with sprinklers to keep the surface soft and reduce dust. This meant that the first few laps were a mess of mud bogs and flailing Lambretta riders looking like upturned turtles. The volunteer marshals really had their work cut out pushing scooters that were stalled in the mud.
You can’t park that there mate
Bear in mind that a typical MX race at this circuit would be 15 minutes plus 2 laps, by which time any rider would be knackered. Now try it for 6 hours on a scooter with 2-inch suspension travel and 10-inch wheels and you can appreciate why it was useful to have a large team of riders and swap them regularly. Most teams opted for letting the rider signal (with a raised hand) when they’d had enough rather than following a strict schedule.
Refuelling pit-stops were more McLaren push-chairs than McLaren F1. Most teams were still using fuel cans and funnels rather than endurance dump tanks.
Strategy
Harald’s suggestion was that rather than trying to get ‘big air’ on the Ssssnake, we tried to keep the scooter on the ground as much as possible. This proved to be quite a wise suggestion after the Special Madness team came off the circuit with the back end of their Lambretta transported in a wheelbarrow. It turns out that if you land hard enough, the aluminium part of the rear hub will rip away from the centre leaving you with a star-shaped steel part that the aluminium hub is cast around. It’s quite a clever production method and strong enough for pretty much everything except huge jumps.
Not much of that rear hub left…
Pretty soon it was time for my first stint. By this stage, most of the muddy sections were drying out and it was simply a question of making as much progress as possible without too much physical effort or scooter abuse. The piston-ported iron cylinder with 185 conversion performed perfectly for the conditions and I managed to overtake a few slower riders, while faster teams blasted past me
After 20 minutes I was cooked and it was time to hand over to Mirko, who proceeded to put in some decent laps. After an hour I went to check the standings, our team was in the lead; which was a surprise given the pace of many other teams. All that remained was to do this same thing for another five hours…
Drama
In my second session, I made a slip-up – literally and dropped the Ssssnake hard on the handlebars. Thankfully they didn’t snap but now the steering was too stiff to continue. It turned out to be a relatively common scooter race problem, the welded-on steering stop on the fork stem had been whacked so hard that it started to come away from the fork and rubbed on the frame.
Forks out, big hammer deployed and we were back up and running again. This cost us almost 20 minutes and we dropped back to 8th out of 12. Sorry guys, mea culpa. Sadly it wasn’t our only failure, with the air filter and then the carb falling off and also the piston-ported engine struggling to clear once the air filter hose was full of fuel. These events rather than our riding ensured we finished back in 7th place.
At the sharp end, the rapid Austrian team took the lead, only for them to suffer a mechanical and struggle to restart the scooter. They kept smiling despite their lead dissolving like an Alka Seltzer.
Dirty Dogs
The dark horses of the event were the Yorkshire Dirt Dogs: mostly road riders in street helmets with visors, riding a well-prepared scooter quickly but without fuss. They only stopped to change riders, or add fuel and 6-hours later finished 2 laps clear of the fast-charging, high-flying Flatliners.
Hats-off to the Yorkshire mob: they showed everyone how it was done. More than that, arriving at the event by Lambretta from England was a real touch of class. No other teams did that.
All winners
In the end, we were all winners (as said by many great losers). Quite astoundingly EVERY Lambretta that started this 6-hour marathon of masochism was still running at the end; and there were no serious injuries. In all the endurance races I’ve entered I’ve never experienced an event where every scooter is still running at the end. Absolutely astounding!
Team Ssssnake!
Video
Beyond that, the hospitality of the LCD was top-notch. Lambretta riders it seems, know how to party, even after a 6-hour off-road endurance race. You get a flavour of this in the accompanying video from the Flatliners.
The future of the event
Even before we finished the race, the LCD had booked the circuit to do it all again in 2025. After that, they hope to hand over the subsequent annual ‘festival of self-flagellation’ to another country to run. In the future, the International Lambretta Offroad Cup may take place in Belgium, Spain or Ireland, but the most important thing is to stick to the same low-budget, low-tech format to keep it affordable and fun to take part in.
For my part, I feel very fortunate not only to have been able to ride in the first one, but also to see it won by a British team. Next time I’d be amazed if there aren’t an additional six teams on the track because this was honestly something new and unique and just as much fun as it looked.
Well done LCD: take a bow.
Words and photos: Sticky
Video: Flatliners SC
More sporting action
If you enjoy scooter sport we’ve got more coming up. Firstly we’ll have the BSEC endurance event and that will be followed up by Cadwell BSSO.
it was a weekend well spend, endlich normale leute !