Epic battles: Hailwood vs. Agostini, 1966 & '67 GP seasons

Honda desperately wanted to wrest the 500cc Grand Prix championship from MV Agusta. The Japanese company already had a powerful motor but couldn’t seem to make a suitable chassis for it. Moreover, its first foray into Formula One car racing was stretching the engineering department thin. Rather than attempt to build an all-new bike, Honda poached MV’s star rider: Mike Hailwood. MV let Hailwood go and promoted their “junior” rider, Giacomo Agostini, who had spent 1965 as Mike’s understudy.

Mike’s smooth style allowed him to ride bikes that bucked and slid underneath him. He wasn’t a complainer, either. He’d ride the wheels off anything he was given. He managed to win three races on the Honda 500 in ’66 and five races in ’67. (Including the Senior TT, as shown in this video; a win that was made easier by Ago's DNF.) But for the first time, even 'Mike the Bike' couldn’t make winning look easy. He used to climb off the Honda with his hands blistered and bleeding.

By contrast, Ago lacked Mike’s raw talent but was a master of bike set-up. Mike won a few battles but Ago won the wars, taking the 500cc title in both years before Honda withdrew from Grands Prix in frustration.

Epic Battles: Spencer vs. Roberts, 1983 GP season

Between them, Fast Freddie and King Kenny won every race that year. In the penultimate round, in Sweden, Roberts led going into the second-to-final turn. He left his braking to the absolute last moment but Spencer still dove up the inside to pass. Spencer had intentionally carried too much speed into the turn and the two riders bumped as Spencer pushed them both onto the grass at high speed. Spencer won and Roberts is still angry about it to this day.



Watching this video clip (which sadly didn't have a camera angle on 'the pass') you can't blame Roberts for being angry. The Armco barriers were never far away at the gritty Anderstorp circuit. All Spencer had to do win Honda’s first 500cc world championship was finish right behind Roberts in the final race. Roberts won that one but Spencer took the title. Roberts then retired from competition and became a team manager.

Epic battles: Roberts vs. his own bike, 1975 Indy Mile

Kenny Roberts had been frustrated that his YamahaXS650-based flat tracker was nowhere near as fast on mile tracks as the Harleys. Then Kel Carruthers stuffed a four-cylinder TZ750 road racing motor in a flat track frame. The bike had far too much power even for Roberts. Carruthers had to rig it with a “kill switch” that shut off one of the cylinders, or it would spin the rear tire all the way down the straightaways. Still, the one time Roberts rode it, he won on it.


That was at the 1975 Indy Mile. After wrestling with it the entire race, Roberts somehow found traction coming off the very last turn. The bike shot down the track and Roberts passed a shocked Jay Springsteen a few feet before the finish line. After the race, he blurted, “They don’t pay me enough to ride that thing!” He needn’t have worried, the AMA soon banned it.

Epic battles: Roberts vs. Sheene, 1979 500GP season

Kenny Roberts took the 500cc world championship from Barry Sheene in his first season in Grand Prix racing. He was the favorite to repeat as winner the next year but was badly injured in a preseason testing crash and missed the first round.

Sheene won that first race and felt confident of the season ahead but against all odds, Roberts came back to win the second round. For the rest of the season, Roberts battled the lingering effect of his injury while Sheene suffered from a few mechanical problems. With two races to go, the championship battle moved to Silverstone. That British Grand Prix was one of the best races ever. Once Roberts and Sheene had got past early leader Will Hartog, they traded the lead almost every lap. Roberts won by a fraction of a second and won the overall championship that year, thoroughly demoralizing Sheene.



Watching this marvelous YouTube clip (was it pulled from a BBC broadcast?) I'm struck by the presence of two other interesting footnotes to this race. Note the presence on the grid of a bike that's actually part of the film 'Silver Dream Racer' and of two Honda NR500 oval-piston four-strokes. None of them had much luck in the race. Roger Marshall, riding the Silver Dream for actor/pop star David Essex had a problem with his fuel cap. Mick Grant crashed his NR500 when it leaked oil onto his rear tire in the first lap. Katayama pulled off the course when the second Honda started missing, then lost its front brake.

Epic battles: Edwards vs Bayliss – Imola, 2002

Troy Bayliss had opened up an early-season lead but Colin Edwards battled back with several straight wins to lead the series by a single point before the final races at Imola. Fittingly, it is said the Imola track is built on the site of an ancient Roman chariot track.

Bayliss, especially, arrived in San Marino in “win or crash” mode, since a win could mean the championship while even if he crashed, he could finish no lower than second overall. Edwards won the first race, which will go down in history as one of the closest and hardest fought races of all time. That meant that he could win the championship by safely staying behind Bayliss in the second race. He earned the respect of racing fans around the world by risking everything to win that race, too.

Trivia: Epic battles - Lawson, Schwantz, and Rainey - 1989 500GP season

The 1989 season featured the most talent-laden 500cc grids of the two-stroke era -- and the pre-'big bang' 500 motors were too much for tires and chassis to handle, setting the stage for some truly epic battles. In an era when men were men, Wayne Rainey, Eddie Lawson and Kevin Schwantz were all at the height of their powers. Mick Doohan was an impressive rookie and even though Wayne Gardner was thinking of retiring, he could still win on his day. Randy Mamola was in the mix – perhaps the most talented rider who never won a world championship. Even Freddie Spencer made a comeback attempt that year.

This video clip of the Suzuka (opening) round of the '89 season really captures the feel of that season. Schwantz and Rainey immediately reprised their fierce battles from the AMA Superbike series. Early in this clip, Kevin slams the door on Wayne and I swear that in spite of being swathed in helmet and leathers, even on this low-res video, you can still see Wayne get mad!
Schwantz won the most races that year but Lawson once again proved that his “Steady Eddie” nickname was well-chosen. His consistency earned him his fourth and final world championship.

Trivia: Great rivalries and epic battles

The history of motorcycle racing is the history of great rivals. For the next week or so, I'll post notes on memorable battles between worthy opponents, either in a single race or over a season. But I'll begin with a battle between a lone rider, a race course, and his own fate...

David Jefferies’ fastest lap of the Isle of Man 

After the death of Joey Dunlop in 2000, David Jefferies assumed the mantle of “greatest living TT rider.” Where Dunlop had always been fast, he hadn’t always looked fast since he rode with a very tidy and economical style. Jefferies was... different. The big man put so much physical effort into riding that his mechanics had to replace his bikes’ footrest hangers after each practice session – he bent them that badly when he was weighting the pegs! That made watching “DJ” memorable – and frightening. He set the outright lap record for the TT course during the 2002 Senior TT, at an average speed of 127.29 miles an hour.

I was on the course myself, in practice, when this 2002 on-board video was shot...

Eerily, at about the 1:50 mark of this video shot during a 2002 practice session, DJ describes one corner as really scary. The next spring, he was killed at that spot.