Cycle News is a weekly magazine that covers all aspects of motorcycling including Supercross, Motocross and MotoGP as well as new motorcycles
Issue link: https://magazine.cyclenews.com/i/126056
After an exciting battle between the sidecars of Sch illing (11). Steinhausen (1) and Sc:hw. zel. the number one hack put it away on the last lap. Williams tops teammate'Sheene in fastest GP ever By Chris Carte r SPA-FRANCORCHAMPS BELGIUM,JULY 4 Barry Sheene IS still j ust one,step away fr om winning th e 500cc Wo r l d C hamp ionsh ip despite having been beaten home by his , Suzuki Williams Williams o v e r PhilipPe Coulon leads Jack Find lay (101 and Michel Rougerie (20). (Inset) John Williams chugs bubbly. (Below) Angel Nieto (261 came from mid-grid to win 125 GP. . 14 GB teammate John in the fastest GP ever. turned in the fastest lap . t-h e 8 . 7 mil e Spa-Francorchamps circuit at a b listering 135.52 mph and averaged 133 .41 m ph in the ten lap 500cc race. Sheene an d Williams had carried on a virtual war up until the last lap, but Sh e e n e , suffering from fuel va pourization on his four-cylinder Suzuki ' limped home in seond place, while Williams, having proven a point, was left looking over his shoulder in vain as he dawdled over the line! "I waited for Barry to catch up, but he'losta Iot more ground on the last lap than I expected," said 29 year old Wl!liams after the race. This win, John's first GP victory, comes just a few weeks after breaking down 600 yards from the finish of the Isle of Man Senior TT. If he had won that race, instead of pushing home in seventh place, the gap a t the top would be much less. Now ,all Sheene needs is a third place to clinch the title, even if Williams won the remaining four rounds. Sheene's other rivals were in trouble, too . Phil Read , after practicing on Friday, returned dramatically to England, in an attempt to sort out a family crisis. Later he announced that he had retired from Grands Prix and European events, but would continue to com pete in, England._ ' Behin d Williams and Sheene at the checkered flag was a Dutchman, Marcel Ankone, filling third place just as fellow countryman Wil Hartog had do ne the previous weekend in Holland. T he '500cc race might have been a big surprise, but earlier in the day little Angel Nieto had pulled an even bigger shock victory when he and the new Bultaco beat reigning World Champion Paolo Pileri andthcsuperfast Morbiedelli home in the 125cc race. The 50cc battle was won convincingly by Herbert Rittberger, after a sluggish start, ahead of Angel Nieto, whose Bultaco suffered from a misfire for second half of the six lap race. Ulrich Graf, from Switzerland, was third and the championship battle is still wide. wide open. I Walter Villa's domination of the , 250cc race took some of the sparkle off, an incredible scrap behind him for . the remaining leaderboard places. At one stage it involved ten riders, but at the end of the race it had dwindled to just seven , men. Fastest of this group was Paolo Pileri with his Morbidelli handling much better now, thanks to an Italian made Bimoto frame . He pulled open almost nine seconds from a titantic scrap between Takazumi Katayama, John Dodds, Franco Bonera, on the other works Harley-Davidson, Victor Palomo, Dieter Braun and Penti Korhonen. • There was a lot of needle in the run in between Katayama and ' Dodds as they weaved their bikes across the track in an attempt to make the other ease off a little in the sprint to the flag. This modem day Roman gladiator's game ended with the Japanese rider just a fraction f a second ahead of the Australian. Two of the practice pace makers were quickly out of the running in this superb race. Bruno Kneubuhler, second fastest to Villa, managed just a couple of laps before ignition failure on his disc valve Yamaha forced his retirement, while the Swede Leif Gustaffson had a much more unusual reason to quit. At the Cocos, a really quick double ' "S" bend on the circuit, his fairing screen literally exploded. He thought he had been struck by a part from a crashed -machine, but he hadn't. There seems no reason for the screen to break up , but Leif''s swift reactions saw him p ull in the clutch and apply the brake. With more than half the field storming past him , he decided to pull out, a shaken and sad man! Nothing could live with the Harley of Walter Villa, though, and he was pulling away at the rate of five seconds a lap in the early stages, during which time he broke the lap record. Bonera's H·D was quick, too . At one s