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to concentrate on the next round of the World Championship, to which he travelled in a bit more style – in his newly purchased caravan. To the modern GP follower this will sound more like a club racer’s accommodation, but in 1971 it was the last word in luxury. For some, this was the start of Sheene the poser. Upstart relative newcomers to the GP scene were expected to sleep on the floors of their oily vans rather than tow a caravan around like a wealthy American tourist, but to Sheene it just made practical sense. With a more comfortable bed and an area for cooking some decent food, he would be in better shape for the racing. And if it added to his glamour-boy image and helped to improve standards in the paddock, then so much the better. One thing Sheene certainly wasn’t slow to notice was that having a caravan greatly increased his pulling power with the ladies, and for Barry that fact alone was worth the extra expenditure.

      Motorcycle racing on the Continent was huge in the seventies despite the utter dearth of professionalism involved in its organization and the lack of money available to its star performers. More than 150,000 people turned up to watch Sheene being narrowly beaten by Angel Nieto at the Dutch TT in Assen, one of the best-attended rounds on the GP calendar. The next meeting in Belgium got off to a bad start when Sheene was fined for spilling fuel on the track. He had been returning from a night out and was driving down the circuit to get to the paddock when his van ran out of diesel. He managed to bleed the fuel system and top the van back up, but not before sloshing some diesel onto the course. A vigilant Belgian policeman witnessed the incident and Barry was fined the now comedic-sounding sum of £6.60. He also incurred the wrath of his fellow riders who had to negotiate the slippery section of the track. But if the weekend got off to a bad start, it ended in the best possible way with Sheene taking his first-ever Grand Prix victory in the 125cc race. It was made a little hollow by the fact that Nieto had retired on the third lap, but Barry didn’t care; a first win is always a watershed, and he couldn’t have been more delighted. As he recalled, ‘Once I had crossed the finishing line, I could hardly contain myself. I wanted to get drunk, kiss as many girls as I could lay my hands on and just dance with joy. That was the proudest moment of my life up to then.’

      A second in the 125 and a sixth place in the 250 race on his Yamaha in the East German Grand Prix were followed by a second GP win, this time in the 50cc class in Czechoslovakia. Kreidler had approached Sheene at the Belgian GP about riding one of their factory bikes to help out their full-time rider, Jan de Vries. For Sheene it was a chance to add to his start and prize money with minimum hassle as the factory team would take care of the bike. Race day didn’t start too well: Barry overslept and was ‘peacefully dreaming about two blondes’ when he was rudely awakened by members of the Kreidler team hammering on his caravan door. Pulling on his leathers and wandering bleary-eyed to the starting grid, Sheene was in no mood to go racing. He’d much rather have been left with his imaginary girlfriends. ‘When [I] set off,’ he recalled, ‘I think I gave a huge yawn; I was still half asleep. But I buzzed round as quick as I could in the wet with my head thumping and my teeth chattering with cold.’ In fact he buzzed round quickly enough to win the race from Nieto, who was by now firmly established as his arch rival no matter what class he seemed to race in.

      He was certainly the man Sheene needed to beat in the 125cc class if he was to become the youngest ever Grand Prix world champion, and when Nieto’s bike expired during the Swedish round it began to look likely that Barry might just pull off a shock title win from the Spaniard. When Nieto also retired from the Finnish Grand Prix, Sheene held a 19-point lead with just two rounds to go and was being touted as the champion elect. Unfortunately for Sheene, a non-championship event in Hengello, Holland, then all but ruined his chances: he crashed, breaking his wrist and chipping an ankle. It was Barry’s first bad accident, the first time he had broken a bone while racing, and it’s easy to see now why top Grand Prix riders no longer take part in non-championship events, with the exception of the Suzuka 8-Hour race in Japan which remains massively important to the Japanese manufacturers who call all the shots.

      Strapped up and in considerable discomfort, Sheene rode to a highly creditable third place in Italy behind Gilberto Parlotti and Angel Nieto and refused to blame his injuries for his failure to win, saying instead that his bike was simply not fast enough on the day. He remained in the hunt for the title, but it was to be yet another non-title event, the prestigious Mallory Park Race of the Year, that really did put an end to his hopes. It seems incredible that Sheene, having had a warning with his crash in Holland, would contest another race and risk further injury so near to the final round of the World Championship, but it was the norm for the time as well as being the only way riders could make enough money to survive a season. This time Sheene was thrown into a banking when his rear tyre lost traction. He was taken to Leicester Royal Infirmary for a check-up but, despite being in great pain, was discharged after being told he hadn’t broken anything. It was an extremely poor diagnosis: Sheene had in fact broken five ribs and suffered compression fractures to three vertebrae.

      Oblivious to the fact, he travelled to Spain to take on Nieto for the final showdown in the world title chase. After again racing the 50cc Kreidler, which broke down on the last lap, Barry stooped over a fountain in the paddock to have a drink of water. That’s when he heard the disconcerting and agonizing ‘ping’ as one of his broken ribs popped out of place and threatened to burst through his skin. Never one to shirk from pain, Barry forced the rib back into place and taped up his torso to hold the offending bone in place long enough to last the race. Just making it to the Jarama start grid was the first of many superhuman efforts shown by Barry Sheene in his pursuit of racing glory. He and Nieto had a fantastic scrap all race long and were heading into the final stages when Barry hit some oil and slid off the Suzuki, his race and World Championship hopes over. After all his painful efforts, he had lost his grip on a title which had been so close because of a patch of oil that should have been cleaned up anyway. The only consolation for Sheene was that he didn’t further aggravate his injuries in the crash.

      It might have been a disappointing way to end what had been a great year, one that had delivered 38 race wins, but Sheene didn’t dwell on it for long. Having so nearly taken a world crown at his first attempt, he was confident he could definitely lift one the following year. For the 1972 season, he signed for Yamaha to ride its 250cc and 350cc machines in what was his first season with a factory team. At last he was being paid to go racing. The year started off well, and Sheene picked up his first-ever 500cc class win at the King of Brands meeting over Easter. But that only fuelled his confidence and added to the complacency with which he faced the Grands Prix. Things went wrong from the very first round when both Yamahas suffered mechanical breakdowns. The bikes were both slow and unreliable, and Barry didn’t help matters when he badly broke a collarbone during the Italian Grand Prix. The only highlights of the GP season were a third place in Spain and a fourth place in Austria, both in the 250cc class, and that was hardly a step up from the year before when he’d won four Grand Prix races. Sheene was acutely aware of the fact, too.

      Such a disastrous season led to bad feelings between Sheene and his Yamaha team and he was desperate to leave by the end of the year to prove that it had been the bikes and not his riding at fault. These bad feelings would come back to haunt Barry years later when he once again rode a Yamaha. Those same lowly mechanics from the 1972 season had risen up the ranks to become senior personnel by 1980, and whenever he asked for a favour Sheene discovered that they had long memories. Had he kept his views on the 250 Yamaha to himself, or at least confined his criticism of the bike to behind closed doors, there would have been no problem. As it was, he made no secret of what he thought of the bike, and there is no surer way to offend the Japanese corporate psyche. Still, Sheene was prepared to shoulder some of the blame for his worst year to date: ‘That poor year in 1972 taught me a salutary lesson about the dangers of becoming big-headed. Over-confidence was the root of my problems.’

      With Sheene’s reputation having taken a bit of a battering, he was really out to prove himself in 1973. He had a new contract with Suzuki and a new championship challenge beckoned: the FIM Formula 750 European Championship, in many ways the predecessor of the current World Superbike Championship. The Formula 750 Championship was, to all intents and purposes, a world championship even though it didn’t enjoy the prestige of being conferred with official world-class status. The calendar of dates was just as gruelling as the Grands Prix, and the calibre of riders almost as impressive.

      The

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