was the scene of utter carnage that confronted me as I turned out of the lane onto the main road. Instead of leaving a gap and trying to keep a bit of momentum going everyone was nose to tail, so when one mallet-headed driver decided the best way of getting a

’s an engineer and, long ago, endurance racing hero, but our Sheffield lad found neither every really knew what the other was talking about. (This is not a unique experience, when dealing with the very French.) So behind the scenes he engineered a swap for next

for displacementSuzuki's GSX-R1000 is still whipping its rivals in magazine group tests, but it doesn't rule the performance scene in the way that its GSX-R1100 forebear did in 1986. Back then there was no open-class superbike as focused as the 125bhp, 197kg Suzuki

How tough were the last three years for Ducati?Well it's been interesting for sure! Last year, looking from the outside you would have said it wasn't a good year for Ducati at all, but behind the scenes we were restructuring the company internally

on with some pain and throughout the night my dresser was discretely cutting slits in my costume to fit my ever-increasingly swollen thumb into my Dickensian coat. In the end I did a fair amount of acting with one arm behind my back, but thankfully no one

. Still, as you fly down the front straight at over 200 miles an hour, there is no room for error. Brake too early, and the raging pack behind you will slam past, pushing you well down the field. Brake too late, and you run wide, and see that same

racer Ben Broadway tipped off behind me. Hearing a bike go down is a nasty sound but seeing it coming after you is even worse!Mr Broadway's 848 tried to mate with me in the gravel trap. Result? A white Arai plastered with half a Pirelli and a knackered

. As a result, the name of the hospital passed into common usage to represent any scene of uncontrolled madness, where noise, smell and spectacle do battle to subdue your senses.Modern fun seekers can no longer turn to the mental hospitals to provide our

to cheer Rossi on, and watch him enter the history books. They had even gone so far as to hold a town council meeting at the track, with one of the items of business the appointment of Valentino Rossi as honorary mayor for a day.The scene was set

and fjiords was taken. Whilst alongside a vehicle crawling up hill behind a tractor, the driver swerved left to pass the tractor. The first known of a collision was the right hand mirror cowling disintegrating. Eventually the vehicle was stopped