On October 6, 2022, Phil Read, MBE, died in his sleep at his home in Canterbury, England. Regarded by many as the greatest British motorcycle racer of all time, he won a total of seven world championship titles across multiple classes, as well as eight Isle of Man TTs over the course of his career. He was 83 years old.
Read won both his and Yamaha’s first world championship title in 1964, and went on to win an additional three other world titles with the Yamaha factory team before adding a fourth Yamaha victory as a privateer. He was also the first privateer to win a world championship title, as well. While he wasn’t the only rider to ever do it, it’s certainly unlikely to ever happen again in the MotoGP championship of the 2020s.
