Mike Hailwood 1964

Mike Hailwood describing his life on the road, racing the GP's in the mid 60's.  This clip is most notable for the extraordinary onboard shots of Hailwood at the Spa Francorchamps circuit in Belgium.  Of course, this was pre safety, and these boys were riding the full 8 mile public road circuit.  It may not be apparent from the footage, but this was the fastest, most brutal circuit on the calender.  8 miles & only one corner taken lower than third gear......

Also fun to hear Hailwood bitching about cars.  He'd been doing a bit of F2 racing I presume, but he seemed to be out of his comfort zone compared to bikes.  Those were the days of garage built racing cars that maybe did things you wish they didn't at 150mph.  The irony in all of this is that in the 60's cars drifted & bikes didn't.  Now bikes drift & F1 cars drive like Scalextric.

Hailwood went on to forge a reasonable F1/F5000 career for himself, so it couldn't have been that bad.......