[sportrider - latest stories] - Yamaha honors 15-time World Grand Prix champion Agost

[Ninjette Newsbot]

Yamaha honors 15-time World Grand Prix champion Agostini

“Ago� reflects on career, Stoner’s coming retirement during party at SilverstoneThe rider many consider the greatest of all time turned 70 recently, and Yamaha took the opportunity to honor him.

Giacomo Agostini, whose 15 world championships and 122 wins will never be topped, was feted at Silverstone on a Saturday night by the company for whom he won his final two championships, the 1974 350cc crown and the 1975 500cc title.

"Ago" said he saw in 1973 that Yamaha was “coming strong and two-stroke coming very strong and four-stroke is very difficult to have the power every year. People work, but power not coming.�

So Agostini made the decision to switch from MV Agusta, the company for which he’d won 13 world championships, to Yamaha. His immediate impression was that Yamaha was like a “big family and so I have two years with Yamaha and is a fantastic time and the Japanese work very hard and we win two world championships.� Long after he retired he returned to the paddock as a team manager, taking Yamaha and Eddie Lawson to three 500cc World Championships in the ‘80s.

Forgotten in the retelling of his greatness is that his first ride for Yamaha wasn’t in a grand prix but at Daytona, in 1974. That was in the days when the 200, shortened to 180 miles by the global oil crisis, meant something. Kenny Roberts, Barry Sheene, Gary Nixon, and Mark Brelsford were among the 78 riders on the two-wave grid that day. Agostini emerged victorious in his first visit to the high banks and that victory is one of his enduring memories.




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