7 replies to this topic

[Steve53]

Hello All,

I have taken up Phillippes advice and decided to write a book on my decade with the continental circus. I need about 65,000 words, at about 23,000 now...it goes from my humble gypsy beginnings in the privateer world to the works teams of Suzuki and Honda HRC...

One chapter is devoted to the rebel World Series of 1979....info on this is very sparse..I have some notes I made in those days, but if anyone can direct me to a source of information on this I would be most grateful..apart from interviewing the main protagonists themselves, which is probably outside my budget! I am quite restricted. I will be meeting up with one of my old riders Wil Hartog later in the month and perhaps he has some recollections, but coroboration of tales is always good....

thanks

Steve

[Paul Collins]

Hello All,

I have taken up Phillippes advice and decided to write a book on my decade with the continental circus. I need about 65,000 words, at about 23,000 now...it goes from my humble gypsy beginnings in the privateer world to the works teams of Suzuki and Honda HRC...

One chapter is devoted to the rebel World Series of 1979....info on this is very sparse..I have some notes I made in those days, but if anyone can direct me to a source of information on this I would be most grateful..apart from interviewing the main protagonists themselves, which is probably outside my budget! I am quite restricted. I will be meeting up with one of my old riders Wil Hartog later in the month and perhaps he has some recollections, but coroboration of tales is always good....

thanks

Steve

I think there is some info on the Champion Sheene DVD, I remember watching Nick Harris talking about being at a meeting in someones motorhome when it was becoming clear that the solidarity of the world series group was starting to slip, i'm sure he said that Wil Hartog got up to leave having decided that he wasnt going to continue his support for the plan, Barry reputedly said as he was leaving, 'hey Wil how can you walk so well with no backbone?'

I think there are a few other references to the world series on that DVD

[fil2.8]

Hello All,

I have taken up Phillippes advice and decided to write a book on my decade with the continental circus. I need about 65,000 words, at about 23,000 now...it goes from my humble gypsy beginnings in the privateer world to the works teams of Suzuki and Honda HRC...

One chapter is devoted to the rebel World Series of 1979....info on this is very sparse..I have some notes I made in those days, but if anyone can direct me to a source of information on this I would be most grateful..apart from interviewing the main protagonists themselves, which is probably outside my budget! I am quite restricted. I will be meeting up with one of my old riders Wil Hartog later in the month and perhaps he has some recollections, but coroboration of tales is always good....

thanks

Steve

Hi , Steve , where are you based ?? , I think I have a few articles from the time , relating to the series , which I could hopefully find , and lend you if you want , you can pm me if you want ............................

[kz71]

I think there is some info on the Champion Sheene DVD, I remember watching Nick Harris talking about being at a meeting in someones motorhome when it was becoming clear that the solidarity of the world series group was starting to slip, i'm sure he said that Wil Hartog got up to leave having decided that he wasnt going to continue his support for the plan, Barry reputedly said as he was leaving, 'hey Wil how can you walk so well with no backbone?'

I think there are a few other references to the world series on that DVD

I remember that meeting.
Wil was enough of a realist to know that this wasn't the way to work around the problems with the FIM of the day.What also turned him off was the fact that the riders were all pledging to forfeit a large amount of money if they backed out of the deal and Wil reckoned most of them didn't even have that much money. He said that he didn't so he wasn't agreeing to anything like that.
Wil really did get up Barry's nose and BS was always on with comments like that.
One thing they all forgot was that Wil never was a professional racer.Unlike all the others, he worked through the week, went racing on the weekend, then back to the factory on monday so he had a very different view of racing/money/danger to the average GP pro.
As such he never was the right man to be riders rep which he was for a while and this also got up the noses of the others.
He was a classy guy and could deal with the blazer brigade well, which I guess was why he got these positions.
For an amateur he was bloody fast....and that also got up some noses.
Cheers,
Mike S

[Steve53]

I remember that meeting.
Wil was enough of a realist to know that this wasn't the way to work around the problems with the FIM of the day.What also turned him off was the fact that the riders were all pledging to forfeit a large amount of money if they backed out of the deal and Wil reckoned most of them didn't even have that much money. He said that he didn't so he wasn't agreeing to anything like that.
Wil really did get up Barry's nose and BS was always on with comments like that.
One thing they all forgot was that Wil never was a professional racer.Unlike all the others, he worked through the week, went racing on the weekend, then back to the factory on monday so he had a very different view of racing/money/danger to the average GP pro.
As such he never was the right man to be riders rep which he was for a while and this also got up the noses of the others.
He was a classy guy and could deal with the blazer brigade well, which I guess was why he got these positions.
For an amateur he was bloody fast....and that also got up some noses.
Cheers,
Mike S

Hi Mike,

Good to hear from you. As I may have mentioned I still have the letter Wil wrote to us that Xmas after returning from testing in Hamamatsu. He mentions the phone call he got in his hotel from KR ranting and raving like a demon. he also alludes to a meeting in Brussels where they all were, and it was at that point he raised his bat and pulled up stumps, said the last three years in the paddock were the most beautiful in my life, that also I feel me clean, I am riding FIM and good bye.
He knew this was a game of brinkmanship from the outset but was prepared to go along with the rebels in order to up the ante with the FIM. I don't think there was anyone else in the group of riders of the day with the brains and business nous to work it out. As for Barry Coleman, well I think he was certainly an educated and articulate journalist, double degrees from Manchester Uni in philosophy and law, but he was in totally over his head and intimidated by KR. He had taken the World Series down a path that he couldn't turn back from after the first press conference in London.
Wil told me quite a lot later ( about 20 years later in fact) that Jaap Timmers, he was the Dutch guy who was the FIM road racing committee chairman at the time, was quietly lobbying amongst other FIM board members behind Radil's back for a threefold increase in the prize money purse. He didn't let on to the others that he knew this at the time in case it all crashed down. He knew the WS would never go because of the stranglehold the FIM have over all the circuit owners. None of them would break their ties with the FIM because that would mean no motorcycle racing at all at their circuit and that loss of revenue would not be sustainable.
KR said this was bullshit and he had proof that Donnington and Monza would go ahead, however in Wil's letter he told us that Sheene and Rossi both confirmed with him that neither the ACU or the Italian Federation would support these circuits if they hosted a WS event.
KR's motivation in all of this wasn't entirely noble. he had a personal vendetta with Radil der Valle the Spanish FIM president since 1965 ( he wasn't the Don for nothing) after Radil tried to suspend him for the Spa boycott earlier in the year. That you may remembered stemmed from the royal incident in Spain at the GP where Wils forearm internal fixation plate started to back the screws out when he was leading. KR probably could never work out why Wil handed him the lead and the win.
One who probably regrets it is old Radil when KR on the podium gave him the two fingered salute and a bluntly worded description of where to shove his winners trophy. All in front of the King of Spain.
I'm half way through my book chapter on the World Series, might e mail it to you and get you to proof read it....I'll also see if Wil's got any more to add to it when I see him later this month..
Regards
Steve

[bella]

Sheene seemed to have it in for Hartog, making him the catalyst for the breakdown of world series solidarity and blaming him for poor development input on the 79 Suzukis.
Wil was my original favourite racer when i started visiting the races in 78, and was chuffed to bits when he took over the Hennen suzukis and went on a late season title charge on those road circuits then came to Mallory, Donington, and Olivers mount and won races on his his visits there .
A class act as a man and racer .

[Steve53]

Sheene seemed to have it in for Hartog, making him the catalyst for the breakdown of world series solidarity and blaming him for poor development input on the 79 Suzukis.
Wil was my original favourite racer when i started visiting the races in 78, and was chuffed to bits when he took over the Hennen suzukis and went on a late season title charge on those road circuits then came to Mallory, Donington, and Olivers mount and won races on his his visits there .
A class act as a man and racer .

I've got a lot more to say about Sheenes ability , or lack thereof, to develope the XR prototytpe Suzukis of the day in my book that is in the making. In a nutshell . He generally would look at what others were setting their bikes when his lap times didn't match and go from there. He was a quick rider but so we many others of that time and motorcycling was enetering the era where the differences were down to very small setting changes. Gone was his supreme advantage of the power of the last XR14 and the following XR22, and the Americans hadn't at that point, 76 and 77 started to spoil his domination. When they did arrive he was intensely fustrated at not being able to make progress and keep ahead of the game and it was up to the rest of the Suzuki riders to try and make some sense of development of the 500. the yamahas of KR couln'td hold a candle to the Suzuki at first and it was only KR's remarkable skills that kept it in front. If Suzuki had been able to develope the chassis, because that is the part you can't do in a lab with a dyno then in all likelihood they would have stayed out in front.the story I am putting together reads more like the adventures of the keystone cops rather than a well oiled R&D department of a manufacturing titan.

Thanks

Steve

Edited by Steve53, 07 July 2011 - 20:15.

[timbo]

Sheene seemed to have it in for Hartog, making him the catalyst for the breakdown of world series solidarity and blaming him for poor development input on the 79 Suzukis.
Wil was my original favourite racer when i started visiting the races in 78, and was chuffed to bits when he took over the Hennen suzukis and went on a late season title charge on those road circuits then came to Mallory, Donington, and Olivers mount and won races on his his visits there .
A class act as a man and racer .

I remember when Barry Sheene was commentating on the G.P.'s a fair few years ago, and he always mentioned how he used to call Will Hartog, "Hertz Van Rental".