Godspeed, Phil Read MBE

Admin · October 7, 2022

Seven-time world champion in three classes, Phil Read, MBE, was one of motorcycling’s greatest. (Cycle World Archives/)

The great roadracing champion Phil Read, MBE has died at age 83. When I was a dreary college student, I would brighten my evenings by walking to the magazine kiosk nearby (now gone, along with so many magazines). There I could read about the exploits of young men with names like P. Read, S.M.B. Hailwood, and J. Redman.

Yamaha was out to prove the two-stroke principle could accomplish as much or more than Honda’s ultra-high-revving four-strokes, and Phil Read was chosen to lead their efforts. Read arrived on the Yamaha team just as Honda engineers were deciding there was no more to come from their 14,500-rpm four-cylinder 250s, and that an even higher-revving six must take their place.

The Two-Stroke Breakthrough

Read’s weapon in these battles was to be a developed version of the air-cooled RD56 two-stroke twin that had, in the hands of Japanese riders Fumio Ito and Yoshikazu Sunako, motored away from the Honda fours on Belgium’s fast Spa circuit, finishing first and second in 1963.

Read made hay while Honda struggled to bring its prototype inline-six to reliable, fast maturity, winning two consecutive 250 world championships in 1964 and 1965. In 1966 it was Yamaha’s turn to struggle, developing its liquid-cooled twin-crankshaft RD05, and the 250 championship went to Mike Hailwood on the superb Honda six.

Related: MotoGP: Yamaha Celebrates 50th Anniversary of First World Title

Aboard Yamaha’s RD56, Read was at the very vanguard of the two-stroke revolution. (Yamaha/)

This was a heady time of breathtaking technical progress, but in business terms Japanese participation in Grand Prix roadracing had only one purpose: to make Honda, Yamaha, and Suzuki into household names worldwide.

After Hailwood’s second 250 title on the six in 1967′s close-run championship against Read on the Yamaha, Honda and Suzuki withdrew from the GPs, with Yamaha following in 1968.

By 1975 every Grand Prix class, 50, 125, 250, 350, 500, and sidecar, would be won by two-strokes. So it would remain until the creation of MotoGP in 2002. Phil Read was the spearhead of this change.

Read’s MV Years

More was to come. Read applied himself to getting a ride on factory MV four-strokes just as that company had become uncertain of its racing future; Count Agusta had died in 1971. The great champion Giacomo Agostini had grown to racing maturity on MV’s 500 triples, but the company was now determined to carry on with new-technology four-cylinder racebikes that Ago found less to his liking. Read not only embraced the new fours, but brought such things as disc brakes and cast-magnesium Morris wheels to MV in the bargain.

The master plying his craft. (B. R. Nicholls/)

As MV lost momentum and the Japanese factories contemplated a return to GP racing, Read won two 500 championships on those MV fours. But times were profoundly changing. In 1970, second place in the 500 class had gone to Ginger Molloy on an over-the-counter Kawasaki H1R two-stroke, and in 1973 Read and Ago were split in the championship by Kim Newcombe on the König, a two-stroke cobbled together from an outboard motor powerhead and a Norton gearbox. In 1975 Agostini was 500 champion on a Yamaha two-stroke and Read was second on the MV.

Since that time Read has been a familiar presence in vintage roadracing. His was a life lived in times of turmoil: born in 1939 as the world came apart in World War II, acquiring his riding skills in Britain’s traditional short-circuit racing scene, then being suddenly yanked upward from that to the intense competition between Japan’s mightiest teams, Yamaha and Honda, made all the sharper by its other nature as a contest between two-stroke and four-stroke.

Phil Read was ambitious, and he possessed the skills on and off the track to move himself forward. Godspeed.

Read gave Yamaha their first world championship, winning the 250 GP title in 1964. (Yamaha/)