Sarron’s 1984 world title winning TZ250 restored
Words by Mallory Park. Images by Tony Smith & superbike.co.uk
Tony Smith, the ex-125cc GP rider now based in France, had just finished restoring Christian Sarron’s 1984 250cc World Championship-winning Yamaha and, to celebrate the 40th anniversary of Sarron’s success, put it on display for the first time at the Mallory Park Bike Bonanza.
Tony came by the bike quite by chance. “I wasn’t actually planning to buy anymore bikes,” he admitted. “A friend asked me to find him an 18” Marvic front wheel so I advertised online for one. A seller came forward saying he had a pair and would only sell if I took both. When I bought them, I asked the seller if he had anything else for sale. He said the wheels came with a Yamaha racing bike he’d bought off Serge Rosset years earlier and would probably sell it. I asked him to send pictures of the bike and got quite a shock to see it was one of the factory 250cc Yamahas Christian Sarron used in his successful 1984 world championship campaign.”
The Yamaha was run by the French Yamaha importer Sonauto with backing from the tobacco brand Gauloises and Sarron had finished runner-up to Venemotos Yamaha rider Carlos Lavado in the 1983 250cc world championship.
For 1984, the team had downsized, parking it’s 500GP programme with Marc Fontan to focus on the 250 campaign and employed a new team manager in Serge Rosset, who previously had masterminded Kawasaki’s success in the World Endurance championship.
Sarron’s 1984 TZ250-based factory bike featured uprated engine components, re-worked powerjet carbs and new aero-efficient bodywork with ducting that channelled cool air to the carbs and shield radiator heat away from them. Motocourse, the road racing annual, quoted Sarron after the first GP in South Africa saying: “It is so good to have a machine on which I can pass people down the straight.”
The team also had the option to use Yamaha’s latest powervalve cylinders early in the season, but Rosset preferred instead to use Hummel cylinders since other Yamaha-backed runners were having issues with the new power-valve seizing.
“A lot written about the HH powervalve cylinders is not correct,” Tony revealed. “Sonauto did use them for some time because the factory Yamaha cylinders gave trouble – as most teams who had them found out quite early. So, for some of the year they (Sonauto) used Hans Hummel cylinders but Yamaha did an improved version of the (powervalve) cylinder and Sarron and Jean Michael Matteoli used Yamaha cylinders for the latter.
Sarron was able to build an early championship lead and then later switched to powervalve cylinders, once all the issues were ironed out. He won three GP race that year and was on the podium in a total eight of the 12 races, to beat German Manfred Herweh and his rotary-valve Rotax-powered Real to the title by nine-points.