Sorry to hear of the death of the great Chris Vincent. I was born in Sparkhill,Birmingham only a stones throw away from the B.S.A. factory and when we were kids we used to go down there and see if we could get up the wooden hill which was part of the test track on our bikes or go down it the wrong way on our soap box carts,of course this was only when the place was shut after work hours when the bike testers weren't going round,as I got older and more interested in bikes I'd sometimes wag off school and spend hours watching them testing the latest models and was always disappointed if it was a day of bantam testing or C15's when I wanted to see the rockets and goldies etc,of course I wouldn't have known what the models were at the time but soon got to know them and sometimes Chris Vincent would be there with his outfit,to be fair he never took any notice of me and would often tell us to bugger off and stop gawking and hanging about. I'd just mooch off somewhere where he couldn't see me and wait till he went round and I found a great place by the cricket pavilion to watch him and I remember actually being frightened by the sound and speed with which he came passed,but I would always watch him from there after that.The strangest thing was he never had a passenger in with him when he was there,just himself.I think he's still the only person to have won a sidecar TT race on a british bike in 1962 a B.S.A. of course ! When I started to go to Mallory with my older brother I would go into the paddock and hope he recognised me from those early days but he never did,I always wanted him to win though I felt like I knew him,silly ay? R.I.P. Chris
