The British motorcycle racer Phil Read, who has died aged 83, was a successor to Geoff Duke and John Surtees and a friend and rival to Mike Hailwood and Barry Sheene. Winning eight world championships and 52 grand prix victories during a career that lasted from 1961 to 1975, he became the first rider to take world titles in the 125cc, 250cc and 500cc categories, a feat since matched only by Valentino Rossi and Marc Márquez.
Perhaps surprisingly, since he lived a colourful life and raced at a time when the sport was highly dangerous, he was never as well known to the general public as some of those other figures. Many within the sport, however, were in no doubt of the talent of a man nicknamed “the Prince of Speed”.
The King was Giacomo Agostini, the great Italian rider who won 15 world titles and was Read’s teammate in 1973, riding the works MV Agusta four-stroke machines, with their sleek red and silver fairings. That year the Englishman brought off a feat of lèse-majesté when he took the 500cc title; he repeated his victory the following season, by which time “Ago” had departed to join Yamaha.
Born in Luton, Bedfordshire, Read left Moreton End school in Harpenden, Hertfordshire, to take an apprenticeship at a local company, Brown and Green, a manufacturer of industrial machinery. Encouraged by his mother, herself a keen motorcyclist, at 16 he was given a 350cc Velocette KSS, followed by a BSA Gold Star of similar capacity. It was on a modified Gold Star that he began competing in 1958, but it was on a Norton Manx that he won his first major victory, the 1960 Junior Manx Grand Prix.
A year later he and the Norton returned to the Isle of Man to follow it up with a win in the Junior TT. In the following two years he took 650cc Norton Dominators to back-to-back wins in the 500-mile race for road bikes at Thruxton, Hampshire, sharing the ride in the endurance event with Brian Setchell.
In 1963 he was invited by Geoff Duke, retired from racing but running his own team, to ride a 500cc Gilera after one of the Scuderia Duke’s riders, Derek Minter, had been badly injured. In that year’s Senior TT he and his teammate John Hartle came third and second respectively behind the winner, Hailwood, who was on an MV. There were second places on the Gilera behind Hartle at Assen in the Netherlands and Hailwood at Spa-Francorchamps in Belgium. For the following year he joined Yamaha, with whom he won the 250cc two years in a row before finishing runner-up to Hailwood in 1966 and 1967.
Yamaha’s campaign for 1968 envisioned Bill Ivy competing for the 250cc title while Read concentrated on the 125cc category. Disobeying orders, Read pushed equally hard on the larger bike and finished the season level with Ivy on points, taking the title on elapsed time. But he had displeased the management, and there would be no more rides on works Yamahas.
Collaborating with the designer Harry Weslake, in 1969 he attempted to launch a four-stroke twin-cylinder 500cc racing bike, the Read Weslake, but the project fell apart before the end of the year. He returned to grand prix racing in 1971 with a privately entered Yamaha, heavily modified to take disc brakes and a six-speed gearbox, on which he took the 250cc world championship.
The invitation to join MV Agusta, initially alongside Agostini, came in 1972. Over four seasons with the team Read won the 500cc championship in 1973 and 1974, the last world titles for the legendary outfit founded by Count Domenico Agusta. Agostini took the 1975 title on a Yamaha, with Read and his MV second in the standings. But the Italian team had lost momentum following the death of Agusta, and in 1976 Read rode only the first three races of the season on a private Suzuki before retiring from grand prix racing and watching Sheene, a works Suzuki rider, scoop up the title.
Like Agostini and other riders, Read had been critical of safety standards on the Isle of Man, leading the governing body to exclude the TT races from the world championship calendar and provoking ill-will among those who resented the loss of the leading competitors from a much cherished event. But in 1977, after the organisers substantially increased the prize money, Read returned to the Isle of Man to win the Senior TT on a 500cc Suzuki and the F1 race on an 810cc Honda; a world title, his eighth, was awarded for the latter race, prompting Honda to commemorate his success by creating a limited-edition model bearing his name.
A year later his Honda failed while he was duelling in the F1 race with Hailwood, whose own TT comeback was crowned by a win on a 900cc Ducati. In 1982 the Isle of Man provided the setting for Read’s last race at the age of 43.
A ferocious and uncompromising competitor on the track, away from racing he lived an equally fast life, one of champagne, women and private jets. His autobiography, published in 2014, was called Rebel Read. Outside racing his fortunes fluctuated wildly, his interests including businesses selling boats, helmets and Hondas. In 1979 he was appointed MBE for services to motorcycle racing. His last years were spent in Canterbury, from where he travelled to race meetings at which he often gave demonstration runs on historic machinery.
Several times married and divorced, he is survived by his daughter, Esme, and sons Michael, Graham, Phil Jr and Roki.
• Phillip William Read, motorcycle racer, born 1 January 1939; died 6 October 2022
