Ian Garbutt, owner of the ambitious Ripley Land team, hopes that his rider Mike "Spike" Edwards and his 1962-spec 500cc Matchless G50 can establish an unassailable lead in the defence of their 2014 title in the prestige Lansdowne Bonhams championship at the Donington Classic Festival this weekend.

Edwards, a talented journeyman racer who can handle historic or modern machinery with equal flair, started the weekend with a 66-point advantage in the series, over Alex Sinclair, on the GB Access Manx Norton. With four Lansdowne races in the three-day programme, it's a moment when Edwards' pursuers know that they must cut the gap if they are to have any hope of challenging for the title.

"Mike is absolutely brilliant on the bike," Garbutt said. "The first time he went out on it you would think that he'd been riding it for years. There are riders that have been brought up on modern machinery, and they find it particularly difficult to control themselves on a classic bike. If they get into a corner too fast they tend to go bang-bang-bang down through the gearbox, but these bikes don't have a slipper clutch."

Edwards has just 54bhp to play with in his sohc, two-valve, single-cylinder engine, which is prepared by top G50 builder Fred Walmsley. "For the Lansdowne series this bike must be as it was wheeled out of the factory in 1962," Garbutt said. "That's why it doesn't have a fairing - because it didn't come out of the factory that way."