In the 1970s and 1980s (and before, but that's before my time) you could get on the grid as a proper privateer with a bored out TZ350 or an RG500 and race the 500c GPs. I remember riders who turned up at almost every GP and qualified at the back of the grid, but kept going for many years. In many ways these were the guys that kept GP racing going and filled out the grids. Racers like Gerhard Vogt, Wolfgang Von Muralt, Borje Nielsen, Dick Albas, Gianni Rolando, Max Weiner, Seppo Rossi and Gustav Reiner. You don't see much information about them on the Internet aside from inclusion in the results.
I have always wondered what kept them going, how did they manage to get to almost every GP ( basically how did they finance themselves) and how good were they on their domestic scene. From the uk you had riders such as Chris Guy, who is the subject of this thread https://forums.autos...torcycle-racer/ and he could cut it on the domestic scene, were these guys like him, mainly lacking in funding or were they different. I expect there is quite a wide variety of skills and motivations in the list above, but can anyone shed some light on any of these racers and once they finished racing what happened to them?
