Throwback Thursday: Desert Racing Legend Mike Patrick on the Norton P11

Larry Lawrence | November 17, 2022

Patrick Tested the Pre-Production Norton and Gave It His Seal of Approval

In this week’s Throwback Thursday, we wind back the calendar to the late 1960s and visit the Mojave Desert where Mike Patrick is putting his legendary Norton P11 through its paces in a Hare Scrambles race. Patrick was one of the kings of the desert, having won multiple AMA District 37 desert racing championships in the late 1960s and early ‘70s. Mike started racing in late 1950s and became of the top guns of the desert sleds in the ‘60s. In the late 1960s Norton gave Mike a P11 prototype to go out and flog in the desert. He tested the bike for a week and was so delighted with the P11 that he told Norton not to change a thing. Norton’s P11, a lightweight, 750cc air-cooled vertical twin, was perhaps the pinnacle of the desert-sled era. Of all the big four-strokes desert bikes, the P11 had maybe the highest power-to-weight ratio of its time and went down in history as one of Norton’s best-known racing machines. Mike made the transition into the two-stroke era of desert racing when Yamaha hired him in 1970 and he would go one to win a championship on the smaller and nimbler two-stroke as well.

You can read about Michael’s exploits in the desert and much more by subscribing to the Cycle News Archives at: https://www.cyclenews.com/cycle-news-archives/