Feature that was in the speedway Star a few weeks back, many thanks to them and Jon Batham who wrote it, i’ve added the pictures and will hopefully get round to having a proper family race history on here.

  OF ALL the families with four generations of grasstrack riders the Carvills go back longer than most – almost as far as the birth of the sport in this country. Little did Ronald Carvill suspect when he first raced at a meeting way back in 1937, he would be starting a tradition which would still be being carried on by his grandsons and great-grandson some 74 years later.

  Carvill senior from Coventry rode a Norton 500cc that day, but it didn’t start out life that way. A plumber by trade in his father’s business, but with no vans in those days a motorbike with sidecar fitted were standard tools of the trade. Business was good and according to son Roger Carvill, who would later take up the grasstrack mantle himself, his dad cut his racing teeth on a
job down on a housing estate in Oxford. “Dad and the brickie on the job used to race each other – they used to do it in about an hour and that’s how it all started, said Roger. That first grasstrack bike was made from a completely dismantled machine which had lain in the garage for eight years at his father’s business premises. Ronald lovingly rebuilt it – a skill which would pass through his genes to his son in the course of time – and he was ready to go grasstrack racing. “It was heavier than his rivals’ machines but dad used to say ‘she’s a real goer and full of power,’ continued Roger. “A lot of the meetings in those days were mountain grasstrack and hill climbs, so the order was to go up turn left and come back down again.” Carvill continued racing through the 30s winning an unlimited final on a Charter-Lea in 1939 before his racing career was interrupted by the outbreak of war. He took a reservist occupation as a chemical plumber lead lining vats
for sulphuric acid used in chrome plating for Spitfires and other machinery. During this period he used his bike as a despatch rider, and his machines were put to good use in his role in the Home Guard. “When there was an air raid on the Home Guard boys used to lead the
fire engines in on their bikes.”While he was out on one such air raid his house was bombed, but
fortunately his mother and sister were in the house next door and therefore escaped unhurt.
  The family was relocated to of all places Mallory Park and Roger suspects his dad had a spin around the circuit on more than one occasion. “He was a bit of a mad head by all accounts,” he says. He wasn’t frightened of opening the throttle.” Carvill was back racing again almost as soon as the war ended in July 1944, a time when according to Roger riders used to take their bikes to
meetings by train and ran their engines off Methylated spirits (he asked if any of the sport’s older fans remember this?) But his love of an open throttle was to have serious consequences at a meeting two years later when the linkages on his girder forks broke when he was flat out on the strait locking the front wheel, sending him head first down the track. He was admitted unconscious to Redditch Hospital where he spent several weeks recovering from a skull fracture- Roger still has the broken linkages as a reminder of his father’s narrow escape.
   Carvill returned to racing the following year mainly racing his 250cc Triumph Tiger, a machine he would often talk about and one on which he claimed the scalps of many a rider aboard higher powered machinery in Unlimited races.
  Apparently the notes on his tuning suggest the valve timing was similar to the racing engines of today. In a detour from grasstrack racing, Ronald turned his attention to the Isle of Man TT in 1948 on the T70. He suffered a spill but still managed to finish third after achieving an average speed of 63.49mph.Speedway was the next thing on the radar as early in 1949 Ronald phoned
the then Birmingham Speedway promoter Les Marshall to ask for a ride. The immediate response was not too encouraging as Marshall advised: “I’ve pretty well got my team sorted so there’s no place for you, but I’m having a pre-season individual meeting, you can come and ride in that” Undeterred by such slim picking Ronald rode and on the strength of his performance he was offered a place in the team for that year as reserve. Things began well as in May he put up a strong performance away to Belle Vue Aces, beating his opposite number in the home side who was none too happy at the turn of events.The aggravation between the two was to spill over in the return fixture later in the season when the Belle Vue man appeared to put Carvill into the safety fence. He had fractured his skull for a second time and was again admitted to hospital unconscious. The incident was to mark the beginning of the end of his racing days, as although he recovered and signed for Oxford the following year it soon became evident the injuries he had sustained had dulled his reflexes. “He still knew what to do, but he was half a second late all the time doing it,” said Roger.
  Ronald maintained an interest in bikes through trials riding and it was left to Roger to pick up the mantle of riding, though his first experience with a bike certainly didn’t help the process. My first memory of a bike was from when I was pretty small and my dad starting the bike up in the shed/garage,” he recalled.“I remember it frightened the life out of me and I ran back to the
house crying.”
  Fortunately, there were no lasting scars and Roger first took to the grass at a meeting in Coventry in 1960, aged 16 and riding a 250cc Cotton. He was to race for only that season as a teenager –money was tight back then too it seems – but six years later he returned to racing after turning his hand to building his own bikes. He put it together using a BSA and a C15 engine which he tuned for Methanol.
“I read an article about a bloke who made his own grasstrack bike and so I just copied him,” says Roger. “Everyone did the same in those days because no-one could afford to buy the proper stuff.”
He would never buy a frame again as he built all his own frames throughout his 22 years of racing, a service he has since performed for sons Steve and David and grandson Sam.

Roger is modest about his achievements in the sport saying: “I had a bit of success and I could be the odd one or then. Every dog has its day I suppose. He enjoyed some success as a sand racer for a few seasons in places like Port Talbot, Redcar, Southport, Jersey and Guernsey. He was fourth in the British Championship one year despite only racing three of the seven rounds. And among his finest hours was to be crowned Antelope Club Champion in 1970, a club of which his father was a founder member back in 1950.

  It was a moment which was to prove important to the next generation of Carvill racers as his oldest son Steve recalled. He said: “My dad winning the 250cc Antelope Championship is my earliest grasstrack memory. “I accompanied him on his lap of honour in an open top Land Rover.” It wasn’t long before he built a sidecar from a little Honda C90 which both Steve and soon younger brother David (born 1972) endlessly raced in the field at the back of their house. In fact according to Dave it wasn’t just in the field at the back of the house the sidecar was taken for a spin. I remember my mates coming around and when mum wasn’t looking we would sneak through the fence to the football pitches at the bike and go a bit faster” – (well David if mum didn’t know before she does now.) David was first to the track, having a year of motocross in his last year as a junior before turning his attention to grasstrack at 18 after hitching a ride on Jim Hide’s machine after a meeting at Brinklow. Typically he remembers doing a couple of laps before asking: “Does it go any faster?” 

  It was the cue for Roger to spend winter in the workshop building a sidecar and David had one season of racing before setting off for university. I fell off in the first meeting,” he said. Someone came off in front of us and they were cartwheeling, but you can’t worry about it – you just have to get back on.” Steve took the track for the first time in 1991 on a 250cc solo and raced for two seasons with granddad Ronald watching in the pits. However, a crash in 1993 in which he broke his collarbone saw him lose his enthusiasm for racing for a while and he didn’t return to the track until 2001 when he joined the Formula Grasstrack Association and began racing in their championship.

  David was soon to join him on his return to racing, winning the Manchester club Championship one year, while Steve was the overall FGA Senior Champion in 2007. However, by this point both sons had added further strings to their bows and in Steve’s case he’d won a British title. He takes up the story: In 2004, my dad built me a 350 BSA and I began to race in the pre-75 class. The frame and engine were the ones my dad had in the 60s. In 2006 he also built me a 250 BSA and, with luck on my side again, I won the ACU pre-75 250cc British Championship.

  Meanwhile, in 2007 David realised a long-standing dream to return to the 500 sidecar ranks and went on in 2010 to represent Britain in the European semi-final. “The three wheels were still calling me,” he said. I just felt I could go much faster on three wheels than I ever had on two.”

By this time the four generations had been completed with Steve’s son Sam having caught the racing bug. Aged 10 he rode a KX60 around the same field where his father and uncle had begun their grasstrack adventures years before, and by the following year granddad Roger was in the workshop again building a Honda 125 so Sam could join his dad and uncle on the Formula Grasstrack scene.  He had five podium finishes in British Youth Championships and in his second year as an adult racer last year he hoped on his dad’s 250cc BSA and raced to third spot in the British Pre-75 Championship. Little has been seen of him so far in 2011, but Uncle David feels his nephew has the potential to do well in the sport.
He said: “Sam loves it on his 350cc. I saw him at Worcester when it was a bit slick broadsiding it around the bends and I was a bit worried. “But he’s got the speedway riding style – he’s just not doing enough meetings at the moment to take it to the next level, which I think is a purely financial thing, but I’m sure he’ll be back on the track soon.”

So there we have another family with four generations behind them on the grass.

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1. Ma and Pa says:

   July 12, 2011 at 10:41 am

   Great write up and such a lot of memories. (glad I got a mention!) Will we see anymore “little Carvills” to carry on the tradition? Ha Ha!
2. Cuz Deb in Oz says:

   July 13, 2011 at 3:31 pm

   OH WOW, what a fantastic write up – and I didn’t know all that about Ronald, guess this is going straight into the family tree book
   x
3. sis says:

   July 14, 2011 at 9:44 am

   Nice family history bit (But were was my mention!) i remember going on the sidecar as a child lol…. x