Giacomo Agostini – a legend and all-time most successful rider in Grand Prix history. Eight 500cc championships and seven 350cc championships: perhaps his astonishing record will never be surpassed?
Photographs: Nick Nicholls collection at Mortons Archive
Critics will say that a number of his titles were against little in the way of opposition when on the dominant MV Agusta machines in both classes, but you can only beat the racers and machines that are there. Fifty years ago he made a brave move, from the Italian four-stroke race machines at MV Agusta to the new two-stroke 500cc machines from Yamaha.
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Perhaps the move was more about serving notice to MV. In 1973 Ago dutifully gave them another 350cc world title but lost out to team-mate Phil Read in the 500cc class, who was armed with the newer four-cylinder four-stroke which out-gunned Ago’s three-cylinder. To be fair to MV, Giacomo’s start to his 1973 500cc campaign had been difficult: he’d crashed chasing Jarno Saarinen’s Yamaha in France and he’d broken down in Austria and Germany. He hadn’t scored a single point in the class until round seven at Spa, by which time Read had two wins and – tragically – Saarinen was dead.
For 1974, Ago would be with the factory Yamaha squad, riding the latest works 500cc two-stroke inline-four – complete with monoshock rear-end. He would lead the opening race in France only to retire with gearbox failure. He’d run out of fuel at Imola, but also take wins in Austria and The Netherlands but bad luck would strike in Sweden when the Italian collided with Barry Sheene’s RG500 which had seized. A broken shoulder would end his attempt to regain his 500cc crown.
Of course history shows that Agostini’s 500cc world title the following year – 1975 – would be his last and Yamaha (and Japan’s) first as well as the first time a two-stroke would take the title. Ago that year would be unstoppable, winning races in France, West Germany, Italy and Finland on his way to beating Read to the title by eight points.
