On my arrival I was handed with a “carnet” containing the detailed programme on the racing week. When I came back to Italy, I had a bitter surprise: Gilera withdrew its offer to supply the motorbikes for the Six Days. I immediately started looking for another producer and after a thorough search, guess who I found, Ducati who was able to supply me with its big bikes, strictly mass-produced, but with the right power to deal with such a demanding effort.
I paid a lira for the six bikes needed (and I would sell them again to Ducati for the same amount) and I prepared a team with five very experienced bikers and a very young one. I made this choice because the oldest would use a strictly mass produced bike very well while the youngster would show me how the young eagerness could influence a race which depends on the calculation of endurance and mechanical force.
The result achieved was not bad, even though I lost a man due to a burn of the ignition on the third day. The producer would use the image of a biker racing in the Six Days on the Isle of Man as advertisement for a very long time.”

The big team was made up by the five experienced bikers, Romualdo Consonni, Edoardo Dossena, Fausto Vergani, Franco Dall’Ara and Augusto Taiocchi and the the “very young” Carlo Rinaldi, the team was led by the famous Team Manager from Bergamo, Gianni Perini.
Consonni, Vergani and Rinaldi raced riding the 350cc bikes while Dossena, Dall’Ara and Taiocchi rode the very powerful 450cc bikes.
A seventh bike was given to Pierluigi Laureati.
The seven bikes were identical except for a detail. While the exhaust of the six bikes racing for the Trophy ended with two separate silencers, aligned vertically on the right side, the seventh bike, Laureati’s number 280, had the same separate exhaust but with a silencer on each side.
As a matter of fact, the seventh bike was Franco Dall’Ara’s private one, the only one equipped with this unusual solution which was made available for this special occasion.
The trip turned out to be particularly unlucky; in fact three bikers were forced to leave already during the first three days, for failures, which could be considered quite trite.