(first posted 6/10/2012) There is no more intimate connection between machine and man than racing a bike. And no one made it look more like an act of love than Stanley Michael Bailey Hailwood, MBE, GM. Born on April 2, 1940 with two tiny wheels between his legs, he died, ironically, at the hands of a truck driver in an automobile accident on March 23, 1981. He became known as “Mike the Bike” because of his supernatural riding ability. He is also one of the few men to compete at the Grand Prix level in both cars and bikes. He won the motorcycle Grand Prix championship nine times. He was the first man to win four consecutive 500cc world championships (1962-1965) with MV Agusta. He then returned to Honda and won the 250-350cc championships in 1966 and 1967. The people he trounced on the way to those championships reads like a Who’s Who in motorcycle racing. Catch me if you can.
Mike the Bike dropped out of school at sixteen and his father got him a job as an assembler at the Triumph factory at Meriden. He began club racing at sixteen (about nineteen in this picture), raced for a spell in South Africa and became a world champion at 21 on a 250 Honda. That Honda was not a factory bike and he beat out those that were. Then he joined MV Agusta.
His dad, Stan Hailwood was a bike dealer and ex racer who was a millionaire. Daddy’s money may have gotten Hailwood started racing but he paid it all back according to his mechanic. Talent, especially in motorcycle racing, is generally more important than money.
SuperBikePlanet.com said that if you were to list the most naturally talented riders ever the list would have to include Roberts, Read, Hailwood, and Spencer in whatever order. I would also include Rayborn and can cite reasons to do so, but I agree with the above statement.
According to a mechanic who worked for both Hailwood and Roberts, they were just about equal but Roberts needed luck and Hailwood
Born on April 2, 1940 with American-built streamliner designed again 
60 years of speed: 10 top land speed records
Freelance motorcycle journalist, former editor of Bike & What Bike?, ex-Road Test Editor MCN, author of six books and now in need of a holiday.
Guy Martin and Triumph are bidding to set a new motorcycle world land speed record with their twin Rocket III-engined streamliner later this week. But what’s the record they have to beat and how did it get that high? Here are the 10 preceding land speed record bikes starting, appropriately enough, with the Triumph Bonneville-inspiring 1956 ‘Texas Cee-gar’
1956 Johnny Allen/Triumph ‘Texas Cee-gar’ – 214.4mph
The bike that famously inspired Triumph to name its new, 1959 twin-carb sportster the ‘Bonneville’. An all-enclosed streamliner developed out of Pete Dalio’s Triumph shop in Dallas, Texas (hence the name) from their earlier record-holder called the Devil’s Arrow. Changes included the 650 Thunderbird engine now breathing through twin carbs (which was also the key feature of the later Bonneville roadster). Running on 60% nitro, it was enough to produce 100bhp and power the rider, flat track racer Johnny Allen, to 214.4mph at Bonneville Salt Flats in September 1956, wresting the speed record from Germany’s NSU. The bike itself is at Coventry’s National Motorcycle Museum having been rebuilt after being virtually destroyed in the 2003 museum fire.
1962 Bill Johnson/Triumph streamliner – 224.6mph
Allen’s record may have been the first and most famous but it certainly wasn’t the only Triumph world land speed record holder. In 1962 aircraft mechanic Joe Dudek brought his own streamliner to the Utah salt. Inspired by an X-15 rocket- plane and powered, appropriately enough, by a bored out T120 Bonneville engine, rider Bill Johnson first piloted Dudek's machine to a (petrol-powered) record of 205 mph. The team then drained the gas from the bike, changed the jets, and refueled it with nitro methane and proceeded to set a new outright speed record o