Bill Ivy

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Bill Ivy, 1969

William David "Bill" Ivy (born August 27, 1942 in Maidstone , England ; † July 12, 1969 in Hohenstein-Ernstthal , GDR ) was a British motorcycle and automobile racer .

In 1967 he won the world championship in the 125 cc class of the motorcycle world championship on a Yamaha .

Bill Ivy was one of the superstars of the motorcycle world championship in the 1960s. He was only about 1.60 m tall, was considered extremely talented and was known as an indomitable fighter. He died on July 12, 1969 after an accident while training for the GDR Grand Prix at the Sachsenring .

Motorsport career

Ivy on a 1969 Yemen postage stamp
Ivy's 125cc Yamaha

Motorcycle racing

The beginnings

Bill Ivy learned to ride a motorcycle on the property of a friend whose parents were farmers. He later worked for a motorcycle dealer in his hometown of Maidstone. This discovered Ivy's talent for racing and provided him with his first racing motorcycle. The Briton contested his first motorcycle race in 1959 at Brands Hatch . At the beginning of the 1960s, he became the uncrowned king of this route and was finally promoted by Frank Sheene, the father of the later 500 cc double world champion Barry Sheene .

1965 season

In the motorcycle world championship he made his debut in 1965 at the Dutch TT in Assen in the 125 cc class on a Yamaha. As the season progressed, Ivy was able to celebrate his first podium finish with third place at the Japanese Grand Prix in the 250cc class.

1966 season

From the 1966 season , Bill Ivy started permanently as a Yamaha works driver and competed in the classes up to 125, 250 and 350 cm³. He was most successful with the 125s; with four wins and a total of seven podium places in seven races, he was six points behind the Swiss Luigi Taveri vice world champion.

1967 season

In the 1967 season Ivy then dominated the 125 cc World Championship on his Yamaha. He competed in ten races and celebrated eight wins and two second places. With 56 points, he finally won the title with a 16-point lead over his compatriot and brand colleague Phil Read . In the 250cc class, he was third in the overall standings with two wins and nine podium finishes from nine races.

1968 season

In the 1968 season, too , the Yamaha works riders Ivy and Read dominated the 125cc and 250cc classes. The manufacturer stipulated that each of the two should win a title, Phil Read the 125cc class and Bill Ivy the 250cc title. But after Read had retracted the 125cc World Championship and Yamaha announced his retirement as a works team for the end of the season, the latter ignored the stable orders and landed in the overall standings of the 250cc cc, tied with Ivy on first place. The title was finally decided in favor of Read based on the total racing times and Ivy only got two runner-up titles. Thereupon Bill Ivy announced his retirement from motorcycle racing and wanted to contest Formula 2 races instead from the next season .

1969 season

Despite his initially announced resignation, Bill Ivy continued to take part in the motorcycle world championship in the 1969 season , allegedly for financial reasons . He started in the 350 cm³ class for the Czechoslovak manufacturer Jawa , who, with Ivy's help, planned to take on the battle against the powerful MV Agusta machines with their newly developed four-cylinder two-stroke machines. Ivy started the season very promising. At the German Grand Prix and the Dutch TT he was able to take second place behind Giacomo Agostini .

Automobile racing

In parallel to his participation in the 1969 motorcycle world championship, Ivy made his debut in motor racing in the spring of 1969. Ivy contested six Formula 2 races, two of which were part of the European Championship. In preparation, Ivy had bought an older Lotus a few months earlier and used it to practice on the Thruxton Circuit .

In the Formula 2 European Championship , Ivy used a used Brabham BT23C - Cosworth FVA that had been driven by Alan Rees the year before . Ivy competed for the privately organized team Paul Watson Racing Organization ; technically, the car was mostly looked after by the mechanics of the Williams team.

Bill Ivy's first automobile race was the BARC 200 , which was held in Thruxton on April 7, 1969 . In qualification training he posted the second best time and started the race behind Jochen Rindt. In the first semi-final of his first Formula 2 race on April 7, 1969 in over 15 laps, he finished fourth, but was canceled in the final over 50 laps with engine failure on lap 34. Three weeks later Ivy entered the ADAC Eifel race on the Nordschleife of the Nürburgring and had a serious accident. In the section “Schwalbenschwanz” he got off the road and flew into the forest with his car. The Brabham was badly damaged. Six weeks later, Ivy competed in the Limburg Grand Prix , a race in Zolder , Belgium that was not part of the championship. Ivy finished the race in fifth place; that was his best placing in an automobile race. In the subsequent Rhein-Pokal race at the Hockenheimring , which also had no championship status, Ivy started alongside Peter Westbury from the front row. Ivy led the race for a few laps before retiring early due to a technical problem. A week later, Ivy signed up for Lotteria di Monza . After the first qualifying session, Ivy, his mechanic, and a steward of the stewards had a fight over certain team documents. Ivy was subsequently tested for drug effects but found negative. He then decided not to participate in the race. He was also registered for the 4th Tulln-Langenlebarn airfield race near Vienna on July 13, 1969, part of the European Formula 2 Championship. The day before the race, Ivy died as a result of an accident while training for a motorcycle race.

The scene of the accident
Investigation report

Deadly accident

On July 12, 1969, during training for the fifth round of the season in the 350 cm³ class, the GDR Grand Prix at the Sachsenring , Bill Ivy had a fatal accident in the section before the Badberg curve. The cause of the fall was found to be a piston seizure as a result of a destroyed connecting rod bearing of the lower left cylinder on his Jawa 350 V4 (type 673A). Bill Ivy, who may have been straightening his helmet and therefore had his left hand off the clutch lever, was thrown from his motorcycle against the pillar of a fence. He suffered serious injuries to his head and thorax, from which he died a little later in the hospital.

In his short career, Ivy competed in 46 Grand Prix races, of which he won 21 and achieved a total of 42 podiums.

Quotes

"I have to live life this way because it looks like this life won't last long."

- Bill Ivy

“I admired Bill Ivy. He had more natural talent than anyone else I saw when I started out in motorsport. "

“Billy Ivy was that sort of driver that was driving over his ability and over his experience. Consequently he would come off or be so near the limit that he could come off ”

“Bill Ivy was a driver who drove faster than his skills and experience allowed. That's why he often got off the track or was about to get lost. "

statistics

title

Isle of Man TT victories

year class machine Average speed
1966 Lightweight 125 (125 cm³) Yamaha 97.66  mph (157.17  km / h )
1968 Lightweight 250 (250 cm³) Yamaha 99.58 mph (160.26 km / h)

In the motorcycle world championship

season class Result machine Victories
1965 125 cc 13. Yamaha 0
250 cc 16. Yamaha 0
1966 125 cc 2. Yamaha 4th
250 cc 13. Yamaha 0
350 cc 11. Yamaha 0
1967 125 cc World Champion Yamaha 8th
250 cc 3. Yamaha 2
1968 125 cc 2. Yamaha 2
250 cc 2. Yamaha 5
1969 350 cc 10. Jawa 0

References

literature

  • Phil Read: Faster than the others . Translated from the English by Hildegard Seyler-Rauch. Motorbuch Verlag, Stuttgart 1972, ISBN 3-87943-236-8 , pp. 111-115 = Chapter 7 Bill Ivy . (Original English edition 1970 under the title: Prince of Speed ​​- Phil Read. Arthur Barker, London).
  • Alan Peck: No time to lose; the fast-moving world of Bill Ivy . Vine House Distribution, 1997, ISBN 1-899870-21-0 . (first time 1972)
  • Mick Walker: Bill Ivy: the will to win . Db Publishing, 2009, ISBN 978-1-85983-680-4 .
  • Eberhard Reuß, Ferdi Kräling: Formula 2. The story from 1964 to 1984 , Delius Klasing, Bielefeld 2014, ISBN 978-3-7688-3865-8 .

Web links

Commons : Bill Ivy  - collection of pictures, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. a b c Eberhard Reuß, Ferdi Kräling: Formula 2. The story from 1964 to 1984 , Delius Klasing, Bielefeld 2014, ISBN 978-3-7688-3865-8 , p. 84 f.
  2. Simon Stiel: "Pocket Rocket Man". 8w.forix.com, March 14, 2012, accessed May 4, 2015 .