At the Goodwood Festival of Speed, Rizla Suzuki Team Manager Jack Valentine was reunited with David Jeffries 1999 TT winning Yamaha that made history after breaking Honda's 17 year winning domination of the TT Formula one race.
Jack had not seen the machine since 2001 when he sold to its current owner following a disastrous season due the cancellation of the TT because of the Foot and Mouth epidemic. This was the first time the actual machine certified by the team as the race winner had been exhibited in the UK, since being sold. Many replicas of this machine that exist have been since masqueraded as the TT winner at numerous shows and exhibitions.
In 1982 Jack Valentine set out with Steve Mellor as V&M racing to go drag racing. He won ten national and three European motorcycle drag racing titles. In 1990 Jack gave up racing to concentrate on running V&M Racing, and after being sacked by Honda at the end of the 1998 season, the team set about to do some giant killing. With just a little help from Yamaha and a very limited budget set about to change the face of racing forever.
The team took the new Yamaha R1 road-bike and for only around £14,000 retaining many standard parts including front forks, modified the road bike into a highly competitive package with 172 bhp at the rear wheel. At that time, Honda’s works RC45 were rumoured to cost £500,000 each
The bike was only finished in time for the Northwest 200. Ridden for the first time at practice for the event Jack Valentine was relieved to hear Davis Jefferies tell his father on the telephone that the machine was so stable at speeds approaching 180 mph, “you could eat your dinner off the tank”.
On this chassis, David Jeffries won both North West200 superbike races and set a new lap record of 122.26 mph. He then went on to win both premier races at that years Isle of Man TT, the TT Formula One race, and also the Senior TT.
At the Dundrod Circuit, in the 1999 Ulster Grand Prix, in practice David Jeffries put the machine on pole position wearing an orange newcomers bib. He then won the first Superbike race after much leg pulling by the team over the orange bib. In the second Superbike race Joey Dunlop rode the wheels off the to narrowly beat David Jeffries, In what many people regard as one of Joey’s greatest ever road-racing victories. This was the only time this chassis was ever beaten. David Jeffries then won the final major roadrace of the season, the 1999 Macau Grand Prix.
This machine is believed to be the only chassis to have ever won every major roadrace in a season and was the very first machine to start the current trend of racing modified road bikes as against specialised racing machines.
After being comprehensively beaten by this machine Honda withdrew the
RC45 from racing and returned in 2000 to race a modified version of their road-bike the SP1.
The Machine was exhibited at the Goodwood Festival of Speed, alongside another giant killing bike, Mike Hailwoods 1978 Ducati in one of the greatest assembly of historical racing bikes and cars ever seen.
