Careers in the "lower" formulae

I'm intrigued by the career of Angel Nieto. He won bucketloads of
championships in the 50cc and 125cc classes. I know that he raced 250s
a bit at the end of his career. But from what I read he specialised in
the smaller capacity formulae. Other riders of the time seemed to be
"coming through the ranks" as they do now. What were Neito's reasons
for staying on smaller bikes?

 

Things were different back then, and the 125cc (and, incredibly, the 50cc
category while it existed) at the time ranked higher in prestige. There were
European countries where all you could really buy were 50cc and 125cc, and
only dream about the bigger bikes. Because of the commercial focus on 50cc
and 125cc of several brands (Derbi, Morbidelli, Minarelli, Kreidler and a
bunch of others) it was very hard for those specialists to get rides in
higher displacement categories. Those guys promoted critical sales in a very
important market segment. Nieto tried to move to 250cc for as long as I
remember, and despite great off season performances where he won against the
top 250cc riders (and once did fantastic on a 500cc, leading in Jarama in an
off-season race for several laps), he still got the best offers at 125cc.
And raced some fanastic races against equally experienced opposition there,
it is not accurate to thing he was just brutalizing newcomers that would
then move on. The 50 ands 125 back then housed a lot of experienced
specialists that always did well racing other categories when they got a
chance - the factories weren't always interested in weakinging the 125 teams
that actually promoted most of their sales. And Nieto rode some crappy bikes
to victory.

Angel Nieto is a national hero in Spain, and about the most unassuming guy
one could ever meet. He is one of the greatest racers of all time - Barry
Sheene, who raced against him, thought so.

 

http://www.motocra.com/museoangelnieto.htm

For a couple of pics. There's an Angel Nieto Museum in Madrid. Wonder if
he's the only motorcycle racer to have a museum dedicated to him...

My fav is the Bultaco with the "monocoque" chassis - supposedly it was an
utter b*tch to ride. That's according the the 12+1 movie, a documentary on
Angel Nieto put together by a good Spamish movie director. Pretty good
movie.

....pablo

 

Suspicious similarities in those wheels to what followed in production a few
years later:
http://www.motocra.com/bultaco/images/streaker.JPG

Ah, the Streaker. I got the later model in '80, as a 16 year old
http://www.bultacoeast.com/images/models/am204.jpg

It was a sweet handling bike, it really got me into street riding. And they
had the Streaker Cup, which ran on fun small circuits like Calafat, and
which brought up guys like Pons and Cardus and others. In my cases, it aided
a quick decision making process eliminating any consideration of
professional motorcycling racng as a possible career path.

Next followed my emotional favorite of all time:
http://www.micapeak.com/DPG/laverda/montjuic.jpg

I still mourn its loss. God that was a fun bike.

It's still a miracle I didn't kill myself on either of those 2 bikes,
though...

....pablo