Norton Rotary Racing Development- The End 1993-94
By the end of 1992, Imperial Tobaccos decided to end the sponsorship of the Norton works team, certainly because they realized there was no "works". They must have had similar experiences with the CEO David Macdonald, who was once described to the author as a "stranger to the truth"; certainly a man who made unrealistic promises, probably for want of better insight! By the end of 1993, the sad remains of Norton Group PLC, i.e. Norton Motors Ltd, were sold to Canadian wheeler-dealers, and if under the previous regime at least the illusion of an ongoing business was being maintained, as soon as Rosie Scandalia moved into a factory office there was no question of investment into the business any more- only the question how to get money out of it! 
Before this background Brian Crighton teamed up with Colin Seeley. Colin saw the potential of the Norton Rotary Racers, and brought a pool of sponsors together, headed by Duckhams Oils, to race on a national level. This they did for two seasons, with a string of sucesses that were impressive though not, strictly speaking, fair from a technical point of view- they did compete with what were after all purpose-built race prototypes in production-bike based racing classes.
As the situation deteriorated in the factory, Seeley became more and more nervous of the continuing availability of engine parts, even ringing the author in Germany once (this was in late summer 1994) to ask how far the plan to take over the rotary spares operation had advanced (it took us another nine years to succeed!). In the end, the Duckhams Norton Team switched to Hondas, but as soon as Crighton had to switch from the Norton Rotaries he loved to RC45s and the following year to Ducati, the days of glory were over and at the end of the 1996 season the Duckhams team under Colin Seeley called it a day.

Often, the Duckhams machines are described as "Works Nortons" but this they were not. They were motorcycles built by a private team using Norton engine components, but not only were they not "Works", they were not even, strictly speaking, "Norton"s- though, to be fair, based on Nortons racing development and racing technology, and the powers that were (i.e. the Canadians) tolerated the use of the "Norton" name, possibly hoping to get a sale of the Norton factory from the publicity!