Anstey for Britten TT demo
Kiwi Bruce Anstey will demo a Britten V1000 at this August's inaugural Classic TTIsle of Man TT legend Bruce Anstey will be flushed with patriotic pride this August when he demonstrates one his country’s finest motorsport exports at the inaugural Classic TT, due to be staged at the hallowed Mountain circuit later this year over August 23-26.
The Kiwi and nine-time TT race winner will ride the historic Britten V1000 in the Classic TT Lap of Honour on Monday, August 26, giving spectators a very rare glimpse of the giant-slaying superbike that was designed and built by the late Kiwi mechanical engineer, John Britten, in the early ’90s.
Produced with limited resources in a home workshop, the light and aerodynamic racing Brittens featured a high level of technological sophistication and they achieved numerous race wins, also famously finishing second and third in the Battle of the Twins event at Daytona, Florida, despite the best efforts of several big-budget factory teams.
Anstey said he was honoured to be riding the Britten, which is one of just three remaining in New Zealand (the Britten family holds another one while the third is on permanent display at Wellington’s Te Papa museum – the remaining seven are based in other countries).
“It’s going to be a real pleasure to ride a Kiwi-built bike on the Isle of Man,” he said. “The Britten is one of the country’s greatest achievements. I’m really looking forward to taking it around the Mountain course and I’m sure fans will really enjoy the spectacle and the sound of the machine,” he added.
While the Britten has made demonstration laps of the TT course before (the bike pictured made its run in 2005), it was last campaigned in anger by Nick Jefferies who raced it in the 1994 Senior TT, recording a standing-start lap of 118mph.
The owner of the bike Anstey will ride, Kevin Grant, said the choice of rider for the Lap of Honour was easy. “Once I’d decided to bring the bike over for the parade there was only one rider I wanted to ride the bike,” he said. “It’s entirely fitting that a bike so closely linked to New Zealand and the Isle of Man TT should have the country’s most successful TT rider, Bruce Anstey, parading on the Mountain Course.
Visit www.iomtt.com for more information on the 2013 Classic TT.
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