Eric Thompson: Good old days thankfully gone

Wrestling a Kawasaki Z1R around the Bathurst corners wasn't the easiest thing to do. Photo / Supplied

Welcome to a brand new feature in the glorious Superwheels - a weekly motorsport column that won't be pulling any punches as it takes a look at all things motor racing. Whether it's two-wheel, four-wheel, off-road, on-road or on the track, if it needs a stick poked at it, it will be done.

I've touched on it before and I'm going to put my marker out straight away, you'll not be reading anything from me about the bloody "good old days" when it comes to motorsport.

There's no such thing as the good old days, they were crap, because nothing worked properly, especially in motor racing. These days are great, at least things go faster, stop faster, go around corners faster, don't leak oil all over the place, last longer and you don't have to be built like Arnold Schwarzenegger to race things anymore.

I know, because I raced motorcycles back in the 70s and 80s. They were evil-handling things back then, so God knows what it must have been like to race a BSA Goldstar around a ploughed field in the 1930s.

While hanging on for dear life down Conrod Straight at Bathurst on a modified Z1R Kawasaki, before they put the chicane in I might add, may sound nostalgic and great these days, it wasn't much fun, I can tell you.

Trying to keep your feet on the pegs while the frame is trying to tie itself into knots is difficult enough at the best of times. Couple this with having to sit on the seat rails because the fibreglass seat broke and fell off due to the frame flexing so much, and it really made you appreciate the chequered flag.

I won't even go into what went through your mind at the end of - pick a circuit, any circuit - a long straight when you grabbed a fist-full of brakes only to find the lever went all the way to the handlebars. The smell of boiled brake fluid is not pleasant.

And it's these memories, and others, which make me think I must have been, at the very least, mad, or the drugs were working particularly well, to have raced on such archaic machinery.

What I would have give to be able to chuck a modern-day superbike around Pukekohe, Donnington Park or even Bathurst these days. Now that would be good.

Would I do it all again? Too right. But they weren't the good old days, they were just different, and we should remember them for the memories they've given us and not as a measuring stick.

It's like the numpties who try and work out the greatest Formula One driver of all time. Well, for a start, time is still marching on so there can't ever be an answer. Secondly, comparing, say, a Fangio with a Schumacher, is a fool's folly.

Fangio couldn't drive a 2009 F1 car at race speed just as Schumacher couldn't drive a 1951 Alfa Romeo 159B at race speed. For a start, it doesn't have a computer.