TORQUE the TORQUE BARTOL’S 1983 250
Jocular and modest, but also focused and determined, Austrian Harald Bartol was one of the top two-stroke tuners in the GP paddock up until the demise of the 125GP class in 2011. But he was also one of the rare breed of rider engineers, equally skilled in carving lines and winning races on a bike, as in developing its engine. And that extended to building his own bike, the short-lived Bartol rotary-valve twin.
After retiring from racing in 1980 and sinking all of his savings accrued during a 15-year riding career into the construction of the 250cc Bartol parallel-twin Grand Prix racers, the first such bike appeared late in 1981. “The original idea was to build something for me to race myself in the 250GP class,” recalls Harald, 72, today. “The 125 riders were getting smaller and lighter, and I was just too big physically to be competitive like I used to be. I started out with a TZ Yamaha, but in 1979, I got a good sponsorship contract with an Italian company called Amaretto di Saronno, so I thought - okay, now I can build my own engine. But I started this project without having received any money from this company, and in the end it never came – so that was the reason that I had to stop racing. I’d already spent more than DM100,000 on this project (€250,000 today), which was all the money I had. So there was no
