Larry Lawrence | October 6, 2022
Phil Read, the seven-time Motorcycle Grand Prix World Champion, died in his sleep Thursday according to reports from his family.
He was 83.
Read earned a forever record as the first rider in GP history to win the 125, 250 and 500cc World Championships. The feat was not matched again until 2001 with Valentino Rossi. Read was also the last rider to win the premier class on a four-stroke machine in the 500cc Grand Prix era when he won the 1974 championship with MV Agusta.
Phil Read at the Sachsenring in 2014 on the 50th anniversary of his first world championship with Yamaha. (Courtesy MotoGP)
Read earned 52 Grand Prix wins en route to one 125, four 250 and two 500cc World titles.
In addition to his GP World Championships, Read is also known as one of the true icons of the Isle of Man TT, having won on the island eight times. He was also a top-notch endurance racer winning the Thruxton 500 endurance race in 1962 and 1963.
Read began road racing at 16 and worked his way through various British road racing classes and made his GP debut in 1961. He won his first world championship in the 250cc Grand Prix class with Yamaha in 1964. It marked the first 250cc GP championship for Yamaha. In 1968 he won both the 125cc and 250cc world titles. He won the first of his pair of premier class titles in the 500cc class in 1973. His final Grand Prix season was 1976.
Read raced in the Daytona 200 three times. His best result at Daytona International Speedway came in 1972 aboard a Norton.
After his retirement from the world championships Read opened a Honda dealership in Hersham, England. He continued to race classic events into the 2000s.
When he was honored in 2014 by Yamaha marking the 50th anniversary of Read and Yamaha’s 250cc Grand Prix World Championship, Read talked about the stark contrast comparing the GP racing scene in the 1960s to what it would become in the modern era.
“I drove my Citroen Safari estate car from England with the two bikes in the back,” Read remembered. “The next day we went to the track a day early and heard this incredible sound of the Honda Six. Our rivals were testing. My heart sank. I thought, ‘I’m finished! I’ll never win the title!’ But with my one mechanic from Japan, we produced a really reliable Yamaha bike. There was a bit of hard riding and slipstreaming, plus over-enthusiasm from Honda who had not tested their machine properly, because over one or two laps it started to overheat and forced Jim Redman to close the throttle in order to keep it running on six. My team-mate Mike Duff was using my spare bike and passed Redman before breaking the lap record, so it was a brilliant one-two for Yamaha. I then went back to the hotel, returned the mechanic to the airport, left with no press conference and no television commitments, and drove back to England. I then went to Japan for the last Grand Prix at Suzuka and Yamaha Motor Company gave the whole factory a day’s holiday and a party in the town center, which was incredible. I was very happy! Since then I’ve been happy to belong and be closely associated with the happy team, which I think Yamaha is.”
