 A race-prepared successor to the previous Victor model, a BSA B50 Gold Star 500 ridden by Nigel Rollason and Clive Brown, won the 500 cc class in the 1971 Thruxton 500-miler, a long-distance event for production road machines, completing 201 laps beating the second place Suzuki T500 with 194 laps.Other 1971 successes were the Barcelona 24 hours (at the Montjuïc circuit), and the Zolder 24 hour race outright.In 1973 Michael Tomkinson, having striven for an outright win at Barcelona since 1967 against larger-engine machines, had intended to enter two 500 cc BSA 'Gold Star' machines in the 'prototype' (track-based class) but a full entry list meant his bikes had to be de-tuned to road-type specification, running against larger race-bikes.