22nd International Gold Cup Road Races

9th & 10th September 1972

The 1972 Gold Cup has arguably been proclaimed Scarborough’s greatest ever meeting, and was advertised in the motorcycling press at the time as ‘Yorkshire’s own Motorcycle Grand Prix’. Not only did Italian multi-world champion Giacomo Agostini visit the unique Oliver’s Mount circuit for the first time, but new lap records were established in every single category. Also making his debut at the Scarborough road races, was Jarno Saarinen the ‘Flying Finn’ who had earlier in the year given Finland its first road race World Champion, when he clinched the 250cc title in front of his fanatical home crowd at Imatra.

A former Finnish Ice Racing Champion, he had the distinct advantage of rarely being worried by his drifts or slides. He said: “I have grown used to the feeling, it makes wet weather racing no problem to me at all.”

Saarinen, from the port of Torku, had arrived at the Scarborough seaside resort the week prior to the International event and had spent day after day riding around the Oliver’s Mount circuit on a borrowed 380cc Suzuki-3 road bike. By the time racing started he knew every bump, every twist and every trick of the narrow, tree-lined Mount, one of the most demanding short circuits in the world.

He proved it in the heats when he took his 250cc Yamaha round at an average speed of 67.70mph, clipping three-fifths-of-a-second off Derek Chatterton’s old record and setting a new speed of 69.18mph, a record which he was to break again in the final. In his four-lap 350cc heat he hung back behind Yorkshire-man Mick Grant, for half the race and then stormed through on lap three upping the pace to take the win. His fastest lap was an incredible 71.93mph, a new lap record for the event and a new absolute circuit lap record.

Mick Grant and Derby-rider John Cooper were both lucky to be taking part in the event after escaping with minor scratches after a 100 mph crash during Saturday’s qualifying session. Practising on a 354cc Padgett Yamaha, Grant lost control after landing badly on the bottom straight ‘Jump’, Cooper, trailing 30 yards behind, was unable to take avoiding action and rode right over the Yamaha which had spun into his path. Grant’s bike was a total write-off and Padgett’s had to provide him with another machine for Sunday’s race.

International Lightweight 250cc Final
Both Phil Read and Jarno Saarinen had broken the class lap record in winning their respective heats on Saturday and lined up on the front row of the grid for the start of the 250cc ten-lapper. Read led the sprint from the line towards Mere Hairpin, with only a machine’s length separating them on the steep climb up Quarry Hill. He held on to the lead for a lap and then Saarinen attacked, at least four times in the next two laps, as they passed and re-passed each other.

The titanic battle for the lead ended when Read clouted his brake pedal on a rock, hidden in the trackside grass as he leaned his Yamaha over on a left-hander at Memorial. With his pedal bent under the footrest, he slowed, allowing Saarinen to pull clear also letting Mick Grant through into second.

Saarinen banged in a lap of 70.30 mph, the first time a two-fifty machine had ever lapped at more than 70 mph, smashing the old 250cc lap record by 1.45mph and was never headed, taking his first win of the meeting by a clear 5.6 seconds ahead of Grant, with a further 7.2 seconds back to Read in third. After taking four laps to pass Derek Chatterton, Barry Sheene finished fourth, clear of Chatterton and Saarinen’s Finnish friend Teuro Lansivouri.

International Senior Gold Trophy 500cc
Giacomo Agostini, from Bergamo, Italy, who had the good looks and charm of a film star, rode his magnificent three-cylinder MV Agusta to first place in the prestigious 500cc Gold Trophy final, an event not contested by Saarinen, breaking John Cooper’s seven-year-old class lap record, to set a new best of 71.69 mph and become the first foreign rider to win the Gold Cup Trophy.

Ago passed early leader Barry Sheene leaving Mount Hairpin on the first lap and extended his lead to a winning margin of 21.8 seconds. His race average of 70.68 mph was faster than the previous outright circuit lap record. Sheene, who had his crash helmet painted with the distinctive Donald Duck Walt Disney cartoon character, finished runner-up 9.2 seconds ahead of the 354 Yamaha of Paul Cott.

Mick Grant was so sore and stiff from his Saturday practice crash that he needed a pusher, but came home a very respectable fourth ahead of Derek Chatterton, while in sixth place was the Cowles Seeley of Brian Adams, coming home the best of the riders on a British single. Despite an excursion at Mere Hairpin that left him just stopping inches from a bramble bush, Geoff Barry was seventh, ahead of Kevin Cowley.

Agostini’s appearance at Scarborough Gold Cup meeting may have been a big hit with the crowd, but was not as popular with the race management at MV Agusta. After the Gold Cup meeting, the news was broken officially by MV race boss Pino Allievi Magni, that Agostini had been withdrawn from Mallory Park’s “Race of the Year” meeting. Magni was annoyed that Agostini had raced at Scarborough saying that the circuit was too dangerous and not suitable for the MVs.

The race chief also claimed that Agostini rode at the narrow and bumpy Yorkshire circuit without official permission. So he cancelled Ago’s plans to race at the forthcoming Mallory Park meeting.

International Junior 350cc
The scene was all set for the big event of the day when the Italian and the Finn came together for the first time in this country, for the 350cc final. Saarinen, a Finnish university student, had provided a real challenge to Agostini in the World 350cc Championship class and had defeated the Italian World Champion on several occasions during the 1970 season. This was the first time anyone had really done so in world championship racing since 1967. But the expected battle for first place between the two motor-cycling giants never materialised. While Saarinen took up his almost inevitable position at the front of the field, Agostini got off to a poor start and was lying in seventh position as they came round at the end of the first lap. He never got higher than fourth and on the last lap stopped at Mountside Hairpin after he ran down the slip road, he later said: “The front brake was sticking.”

Saarinen’s new 350cc Yamaha had been provided by Arwidson, the Finnish Yamaha importers, which followed the lines of the earlier air-cooled models except that the cylinder and heads were water-cooled. This kept the engine temperature down and helped to keep power constant throughout the race. The air-cooled models performance was prone to falling off slightly after ten minutes or so, when the engines tended to overheat and lose the fine ‘edge’ of their tune.

Using his new TZ350 Yamaha to full effect, Saarinen smashed through the two-minute barrier on his third lap with a fantastic speed of 72.53, in the process knocking no less than three-and-a-half seconds off the existing outright lap record. He was the first, and only rider, to lap Scarborough in under two minutes. His new overall lap record was 3.6 seconds better than Steve Machin’s outright record set the previous year.

Mick Grant, continued his long run of success when he finished second, on a fully developed Padgett supplied Yamaha 350 TR2, which was the first air-cooled Japanese twin with a dry clutch. Grant had also taken two third places in the 1972 Junior and Senior TTs and the 1972 350cc British Championship. Barry Sheene completed the top three, with Paul Cott fourth after passing Tepi Lansivouri on the brakes at the Memorial Café.

Motor Cycle News Superbike (501-750cc)
On the day that Emmerson Fittipaldi clinched the World Motor Race Championship in a John Player Lotus, Mick Grant gave the John Player Norton team its first win, in two years of the Motor Cycle News 750cc Superbike competition. In front of thousands of wildly cheering and emotional fans, Grant who had only joined the John Player Special Norton team halfway through the season took the win from another established star Dave Croxford.

Ruislip-rider, Croxford, a toolmaker by trade, whose racing philosophy was: “If it rained I’d have a couple of pints of Guinness, let the tyres down by 2psi and off I’d go”, finished ahead of Ray Pickrell’s 750 Triumph Triple, the same machine which he had used to lap the TT course at a strong 105.68mph on his way to winning the 1972 Formula 750cc race.

New Norton recruit Grant took the lead in the race from Superbike Championship leader Pickrell, at Mere’s tight left-handed hairpin on the second of the ten laps. From then, he led the Norton onslaught into the territory previously occupied by Triumphs.

For the next three laps, Grant led team-mates Peter Williams and Phil Read in a Norton 1-2-3. But Read applied the brakes too hard on the approach to Mere Hairpin and slid off uninjured out of the race, grinding to a halt right in front of a John Player trackside banner !, Read said: “I must have just squeezed the front brake too hard and down I went.”

Grant led Williams in a Norton 1-2, for the following four laps, until Williams struck gearbox trouble on the eighth lap. This left Grant as the lone survivor of the Norton trio and he stayed there to the end.

As Williams retired, Croxford hoisted himself into second spot and despite clutch trouble on his private Seeley-framed BSA-3, which almost caused him to overshoot Mere Hairpin on the last lap, “Crockett” finished second. This was the best ever placing by a genuine privateer in Superbike races. One of the main reasons for the rapid improvement claimed Dave, was that he has fitted his machine with modified Commando forks. “I have retained the Seeley forks ends but fitted Norton internals which have improved the handling” said Dave who reckoned he could win the MCN Superbike Championship if the points were doubled or trebled for the remaining two rounds.

Hot on Croxford’s heels, Pickrell took third place and increased his lead in the series over John Cooper by 12 points. Cooper had held third place behind Grant and Williams, but dropped back to fifth place, after having to hold on to his battered fuel tank with his arms after it had slipped out of the tank-strap, a result of his previous day’s practice crash

At one stage, Tony Jefferies on another 750 Triumph Triple, shot past Cooper, Croxford and Pickrell, but an excursion down the slip road at Mountside Hairpin dropped him to fourth place. Though disappointed with his fourth place, it was good enough to lift Jefferies into third place in the championship table 17 points down on Cooper and nine ahead of Williams, the best Norton scorer.

Williams and Jefferies added another entry in the record books, when they both lifted the 750cc lap record to 71.57 mph.

With £10 being awarded to the leader at the end of each lap, Grant led every lap except the first and pocketed £90 in leader awards, plus £60 for the winning the race, taking his wining total to £150. Twenty-eight-year-old Grant said: “The bike never missed a beat.”

John Cooper went on to be crowned 1972 MCN Superbike Champion.

International Lightweight 125cc
Charles Mortimer another of the stars making his Scarborough debut, the son of a pre- war Brooklands star, who had in 1972 finished third in the 125cc World Championship behind Angel Nieto and Sweden’s Kent Anderson, sliced 1.2 seconds off Steve Machin’s old record to set a new individual 125cc class lap best of 64.94mph.

Mortimer easily won his 125cc eight lapper, with twenty-seconds in hand he gave wheelie demonstrations to the fans and photographers at Quarry Hill. Andy Morris, riding one of Steve Machin’s water-cooled Yamaha conversions, took second place ahead of Bill Rae and Dave Bedlington on Maicos.

International Sidecar
To round off a record breaking day in which every lap record was broken, although he failed to finish the race, West German Klaus Enders, the little camera mechanic from Wetzlar and his passenger Rolf Englehardt absolutely hammered the sidecar record, lowering Siggi Schauzu’s previous best by a colossal 8.4 seconds, setting a new best of 69.18mph.

After making a bad start, Enders trailed the field at Mere Hairpin on the opening lap, with Mac Hobson/John Hartridge leading but coming under intense pressure from Mick Horspole/ John Horspole. Next time around Enders was up to fourth, behind the leading trio of Hobson, Horspole and Bill Currie/Keith Scott.

Enders surged through into the lead, but then dramatically retired after the shock absorber on the drive shaft of his 560cc BMW broke. This promoted Hobson back into the lead with Currie second and Horspole third. After taking to the slip road at Mountside Hairpin, Horspole was forced to retired at Mere Hairpin with a collapsed sidecar wheel.

Hobson continued to lead but the performance of his 750cc BSA dipped when its engine started to tighten, whilst the pursuing Currie was also suffering with a bad misfire due to a faulty ignition unit.

It all came down to the last lap, when Currie powered his way past on the top straight and held onto to take the win by a slender one second from Hobson. Scarborough newcomer George O’Dell finished third with Bill Boldison in the chair of his 750cc Arbuckle BSA outfit.

Although not taking the win on this occasion, Enders went on to win the 1972 World Sidecar Championship for a fourth time, despite having come out of retirement after a year’s absence.

Invitation Race (175-750cc)
Jarno Saarinen, was proclaimed undisputed “King of the Mount”, when he clinched the 175-750cc Invitation race with an eleven second advantage over the 500cc Yamaha of Barry Sheene. MCN ‘Man of the Year’ Ray Pickrell finished third ahead of Dave Croxford, having another fine ride on his privately entered BSA-3.

Saarinen’s winning treble on his track debut and outright lap record had made him a hero with the Scarborough crowd, sadly his incredible feat would never be repeated in view of the flying Finn’s tragic death at Monza the following year, when the world lost one of the greatest motor cycle racers of all time.

Lap records were broken in every single category at the 1972 Gold Cup meeting, below is a table of the course lap record holders :