Craig Shambaugh was a perennial front runner in the AMA Pro Twins GP2 class in the late 1980s and early 1990s. Shambaugh won races on his Ducati, but never quite nabbed the title. In 1989 he was runner up to Kevin Erion and again to Fabian Cortez III in 1990. Here Shambaugh leads en route to winning the Daytona Pro Twins GP2 race in 1991. You can also see the legendary Roger Reiman (9) behind Shambaugh.
Craig Shambaugh leading the AMA Pro Twins GP2 race at Daytona in 1991. Shambaugh went on to win the race. (Larry Lawrence photo)
Rider Files 
Myself and Ducati c.1975. The front of the horrible little Yamaha 125 twin is visible in the background. It has ‘L’ plates because I was trying to persuade Jan that riding is even more fun than sitting on a pillion.
The strange object above the rev counter is my leg resting on the kickstart. A kickstart was an intermediate step in motorcycle design which came between energetic pushing and electric starters. In the case of the Ducati, the slightest problem with ignition timing would break your leg (the spark goes off, the piston hasn’t enough inertia to pass TDC, the crank rotates in the wrong direction, the kickstart rachet is going the wrong way, and your leg can’t move upwards fast enough. A well-reported occupational hazard.)
Apart from the handling, the Ducati’s reputation comes from the engine. In the 50’s and 60’s when mediocre build quality and poor production line tolerances were routine in British bikes, each moving shaft in a Ducati engine is individually shimmed to an exact fit. This makes assembly and disassembly something of a Chinese puzzle for the ham-fisted – the shims have to go back in exactly as they came out – but it produces a tight engine. The overhead cam is bevel-gear driven. The weight is 128 kgs. In the early ’60s Ducati issued a simple tuning kit which could be fitted to the standard bike which lifted its top speed to over 100 mph – a Ducati 250 was independently tested at 104.1 mph. These little bikes could out-handle and out-perform most large capacity bikes on the market at that time. Mick Walker records turning up at the 1970 Thruxton 500 on his standard road-going Mark 3 250 and coming seventh against factory-prepared 1/4-litre Japanese machines. The later Ducati V-twins were two 450 cc single engines bolted onto a single crankcase.
I rode the Ducati a lot. In 1976 I moved from Cambridge to London but I continued to ride back on a Friday night and sp
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