Steve Baker headlines TZ750 Anniversary celebration at Mallory Bike Bonanza
One of the many highlights planned for the 2024 Mallory Bike Bonanza at Mallory Park, Leicestershire on July 6-7, will be a celebration of the Yamaha TZ750 launched in 1974 – a motorcycle that 50 years ago changed the face of motorcycle sport worldwide. And the legendary American star Steve Baker – 1977 World Formula 750 champion and World 500cc championship runner-up – will be the personality heading the celebrations.
Until 1974 750cc racing had been dominated by four-strokes in a production-based class called Formula 750. But the two-stroke tide was turning with smaller capacity 350cc Yamahas and 500cc road-based machines from Kawasaki and Suzuki capable of competing on level terms with the 750cc Triumph, BSA, and Norton four-strokes that had rules the roost since the class had been introduced.
Yamaha changed all that when they homologated their four-cylinder two-stroke racer for the Formula 750 class and virtually wiped out the four-stroke challenge overnight – and had the beating of new 750cc Suzuki and Kawasaki two-strokes too.
Yamahas first TZ featured a 700cc engine in a conventional twin-shock frame but as the bike developed it grew to a full 750cc engine in a monoshock frame and dominated the class.
The Mallory Bike Bonanza organisers, Real Motorsport Limited, are aiming to bring a strong field of TZ700 and TZ750 race bikes to show the fans just how powerful and competitive these machines were.
Mallory Park boss Stuart Hicken said: “Yamaha’s TZ750 was a game changer. In 1974, when it was launched, the 700cc engine produced 90bhp, almost 20bhp more than the British triples. The TZ750 featured in many of the thrilling Mallory Park Race of the Year feature events back in the day. They accelerated like nothing else on the circuit with the kind of raw horsepower that was too much for the chassis and the tyres of the era. But my goodness were they exciting to watch.”
In addition to the TZ750s on parade, the Mallory Bike Bonanza will also host a celebration of the Yamaha TZ250 and TZ350. Both models were launched in 1973 and would also change the face of racing worldwide with the bikes dominating the grids from club level to MotoGP – truly bikes for everyman. The 350 class was phased out of GP racing in 1981 but the TZ250 remained in production until 2004.
Stuart Hicken added: The 250 and 350 TZs were the mainstay of racing for so long at every level of the sport and still have a good turn of speed compared to the modern racing machines. You could win GP races with TZs or race them at your local club meeting and we’re delighted to showcase all the TZ models at the 2024 Mallory Bike Bonanza.”
Steve Baker, a huge favourite with the British fans since his successful exploits on factory Yamahas in the mid-to-late 1970s, will be one of the leading personalities in a celebration of the Yamaha TZ750 launched in 1974 – a motorcycle that 50 years ago changed the face of motorcycle sport worldwide.
“I’m really looking forward to coming back to Mallory. I’ve so many great memories of the circuit from my time in the Match Races and in the Race of the Year,” said Baker.
Hailing from Bellingham, Washington state, near the Canadian border, Baker first came to race in England in 1975, as a member of the American team in the Transatlantic Match races. Bad weather and a crash curbed Baker’s performances at Mallory that Easter, though he bounced back at the Oulton round to finish fifth in the final race.
But a year later, he really made his mark on 750cc racing with his Yamaha Motor Canada TZ750 OW31 factory bike, fettled by Bob Work, the man who ran the Canadian-based race ‘team’.
Baker won both Brands Hatch races, despite not having raced on the Kentish track the previous year as snow cancelled the meeting. He finished fourth and second at Mallory (he had crashed early in the 1975 debut there so had little experience of the circuit too) but then won both the final two races at Oulton Park to become the top scorer in the series by some distance.
Baker returned to Mallory later in the year and dominated the 1976 Race of the Year, becoming the first American to win the prestigious race – and he did it in style, beating a class field that included Barry Sheene (a winner of the race in 1974 and ‘75), fellow American Pat Hennen and muti-world champion, Giacomo Agostini.
Baker said: “I really liked Mallory. It was very similar to Westwood, a track near Vancouver that I raced on a lot in my early career – tight, twisty, a ‘scrapper’s kind of track. I loved Gerrards. The long super-fast sweeper was somewhere you could make up a heap of time if you got through their right.”
That year Baker’s factory bike broke in the Daytona 200 but he won two of the other AMA Championship races at Laconia and Laguna Seca – and took the highly-prized Imola 200 too. At that time, he was the one road racer who appeared to have the measure of Kenny Roberts who raced a similar Yamaha OW31.
If ‘76 was a great season, 1977 was a stellar one with Baker dominating the Formula 750 World Championship, including a win at the Daytona 200 on an updated OW31 TZ750, and finishing runner up to Barry Sheene in the 500cc World Championship, even though his debut GP season was hampered by push starts compared to the clutch start F750 and American races.
In 1978, Yamaha wanted Baker to focus on American and Canadian racing but he opted to stay in Europe. He rode an Olio Nava Fiat Suzuki 500 run by Roberto Gallina (a deal Baker’s friend Barry Sheene helped broker) to seventh place in the 500cc World Championship and finished sixth overall on Gallina’s stock TZ750 in the Formula 750 World series. Sadly, at the end of the year, he sustained serious arm and leg injuries in a crash at Mosport Park, Canada.
Although he raced again in 1979, his career as a top flight championship contender was over – “after the Mosport crash I had fear for the first time,” he admitted – and he retired to establish his own motorcycle dealership in 1980 which he sold in 2001 but continues to work on as a salesman.
Stuart Hicken said: “I’m over the moon that Steve Baker has agreed to come to the 2024 Mallory Bike Bonanza. He was such a talent and so exciting to watch on that OW31 Yamaha. A little bloke with a big heart. We’re aiming to fix him up with a similar machine to the factory bike he raced here in the late Seventies. I’m sure he’ll love that and it’ll be such an exciting prospect for the fans to see him on the Mallory track once again.”
*The 2024 Mallory Bike Bonanza also includes: two days of EMRA club racing with eight sprint races each day, a full British dirt track racing programme, two days of classic trials action, motocross and speedway displays, track sessions for owners of classic and vintage bikes, plus some 50 motorcycle owners’ clubs, featuring a huge array of classic and vintage bikes. And, of course, the Mallory Bike Bonanza would not be complete without the Plop Enduro action – upwards of 40 Honda C90 Cubs battling it out over almost hour-long sprint races. Throw in trade stands, an autojumble, live music, and militaria there really will be something for everyone, making the Mallory Bike Bonanza a motorcycling festival to remember.