STAR LETTER
Does racing improve the breed?
It’s a statement often made and with self-evident truth in the case of some manufacturers.
There’s ample evidence that what Velocette learnt from racing found its way into the engines of ordinary road bikes. A good example would be the adoption of steel flywheels in KTTs and then using the same quality items in MOV and MACs. The same holds true for the connecting rods.
Rudge engines clearly benefited from racing variants of their road-going engines, while other manufacturers developed quite different engines for racing to the ones installed in their road bikes.
With Norton, it seems to be more the case that what was learnt in the race shop, stayed in the race shop.
Other manufacturers had little to no involvement
