I was born in 1967, so wasn’t around at the time, but I‘ve been reading about motor sports all my life so I can usually lecture with confidence 
about racing in the past. When it comes to motorcycle racing, however, I still wear my L-plates, and sometimes it’s hard to find answers to those niggling questions that, though maybe not of paramount importance, still quite often contribute (big) parts of the fabric that makes up the history of this sport.
I suppose it’s common knowledge how bike racing stumbled from one crisis into another in the postwar years, with the mass retreat of the British industry followed by those of the German and Italian manufacturers, a perverse product of the improving economical conditions in the leading industrial nations which made the motorcycle surplus to requirements in everyday life for the ordinary citizen. A shift to the East was evidently on the cards, with a number of companies from less developed countries behind the Iron Curtain ready to step into the breach: MZ, ČZ, Jawa, Tomos, even the Soviet Union itself was beginning to take an interest when, with "a twist of the wrist“, the focus sped right past the whole of the Warsaw Pact and landed even further in the (Far) East, the Land of the Rising Sun! That certainly helped to bridge the gap to the era of recreational motorcycling, heralded by the cultural impact of movies like Easy Rider or On Any Sunday, and when the seventies came rolling around the sport was economically safe and sound – it hade made it, if only just!
1968 was probably the nadir of the Mondiale, the Motorcycle World Championships – with Honda and Suzuki now also gone, the sport was basically left with only six competitive bikes in the four main categories: a 500cc and 350cc MV Agusta each for Giacomo Agostini, and a couple of 250cc and 125cc Yamahas each for Phil Read and Bill Ivy. Those six bikes competed very much in a league of their own, and no one else had even the faintest of hopes of having a look in. In fact, even the 125cc Yamaha was faster than anything a 500cc (!) privateer could hope to race in his vain attempts to dethrone Ago Nazionale – it really was a farce, prompting one magazine to suggest (in jest?) to let the six compete against each other in one race, and the rest in another to give everyone a fair bite at the cherry! To make matters even worse, and owing to reliability issues with the highly developed two-stroke Yamahas, the Japanese factory had also issued team orders to give each of their two riders priority in one of the two categories the company competed in, respectively, although luckily Phil Read saw to it that those were eventually disregarded.
Now, here comes the crux: as I was having a look at the traditional spring internationals in Italy of 1968, the picture didn’t look all that bad at the start of the year, in fact it looked quite promising! Mike Hailwood and Ralph Bryans were racing ex-works Hondas as privateers, on the understanding though that they wouldn’t be allowed to compete in the world championships. After winning six races between them, Hailwood was quoted as saying that he hoped Honda would "reconsider“, and that those wins would surely help to this end. Regrettably, we know now that Honda stood fast, and both riders effectively ended their careers as a result. More to the point, however, even Renzo Pasolini on the Benelli four won three races out of eight, the same as each one of the Honda boys and, in fact, the same as Agostini, who was really trounced in the rains at Imola, as were the Yamaha twins who won only the last two races they competed in (both by Ivy, Read didn’t win at all)! What the heck happened, where did all that promise go?
Truth to be told, Pasolini hardly looked like a world beater, with his glasses and thirty years of age (he was older than all of his main rivals: Hailwood, Ago, Bryans, Read and Ivy) - even his name alone must have rankled within the conservative world of racing, conjuring images of anarchy, intellectualism and nonconformism! Also, he hadn’t yet won a single (world championship) Grand Prix, just one runner-up finish so far. But we all know he came good in the end, so it wasn’t for want of desire or dedication, courage or ability. Still, his 1968 results look underwhelming in the light of Benelli’s form in spring. And it gets even "worse“: in 1969 Pasolini beat Agostini in five out of six 350cc spring races (besides winning all six 250cc races as well), and in the one race Ago won Pasolini had broken Hailwood’s lap record by three seconds and only dropped behind because of failing brakes. Yet Benelli didn’t even score a single point in the 350cc world championship events!! Yes, the 250cc finally came good after Yamaha threw in the towel, but Pasolini couldn’t reap the laurels he deserved because of injury, tough luck.
Of course, the Benelli was already into its fifth season by 1968, and had had a patchy reputation even in the hands of a renowned master like Provini. But it wasn’t all about reliability, and those internationals in Italy were proper races, not like the short sprints they used to do in Britain. No, the bike had speed AND stamina, no doubt. I guess what I’m trying to find out is, what caused the turnaround in performance for MV? Agostini was quoted as saying that his bike didn’t have the 1968 modifications yet; was the pace of development still that hot to make that much of a difference? I thought they basically raced the same bike for years on end – the four before 1966, and the three after that!? Or, was it more a case of Benelli being too much of a garagiste, and fighting "above weight"?? Then again, I never really considered MV to be a proper volume producer, either. No, in fact I think Benelli should have had more economical clout at the time – if this was David v Goliath, then Benelli could hardly be expected to play David convincingly! For those around at the time (or, more well-read than me), what was the general impression in period? Was MV just doing an exceptionally good job, or did they have another Ace up their sleeve that I’m not really aware of? Was Benelli just being half-hearted?
Edited by Michael Ferner, 24 May 2023 - 08:24.
