T
o defeat the Japanese factory teams by
winning GPs with bikes you built yourself in
a workshop attached to your house, fueled
by your wife's home cooking and cups of cof-
fee freshly brewed in the kitchen next door, is a
quixotic achievement that'd be impossible today.
But in the early 1980s, that's exactly what French
engineer Alain Chevallier succeeded in doing,
and his death from cancer in October 2016 at 68
years old saw us lose one of the great chassis
designers of modern-day GP history.
When as influential a figure as HRC boss
Youichi Oguma lent factory engines to Alain
Chevallier's small team, it was a mark of re-
spect for what his bikes had achieved against
all the odds, on a limited budget. While the
VOLUME 56 ISSUE 44 NOVEMBER 5, 2019 P77
Taking the best with yr n
design is sething simply not
possible n. It's lucky men like
Alain Chevalli that did
BY ALAN CATHCART
PHOTOGRAPHY BY KEL EDGE
AGAINST ALL
ODDS
