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I remember the first time I realised just how important a trusted teammate can be on two wheels. It probably comes as no great surprise that Phil Read, seven times World Champion and without a doubt the most underestimated rider in the history of Grand Prix racing, sparked the interest. There is absolutely no doubt Phil was not your ideal teammate as both Bill Ivy and Giacomo Agostini found out.

At the TT in 1968 I watched Read win the 125cc race despite Ivy setting the first 100mph lap riding the beautiful 125cc four cylinder two-stroke. Ivy admitted later he slowed to let teammate Read win because the plan at the beginning of the season was for Read to win his first 125cc title and Ivy his first 250. Everything appeared to be going to plan for the Yamaha team. Read won the penultimate round of the 125cc Championship in Brno to clinch the title. Ivy assumed he would return the compliment and finish second in the 250 but Read had different ideas. He won the race and out of the blue declared he was chasing the title because he wanted Yamaha to continue racing the next year and that he’d done all the work to develop the 250 bringing Yamaha their first world title.

In a toxic atmosphere at the final 250cc round in Monza Read stuck to his guns. He won the 22-lap race from Ivy in which the Yamaha pair lapped the rest of the field. The drama did not end there. Incredibly the teammates found themselves level on points at the head of the 250cc Championship. Read was crowned World Champion after the times from the races they had both completed were added together. Read continued to win more World titles for Yamaha and MV Agusta where his relationship with teammate Agostini was strained, to say the least. A disillusioned Ivy retired to go car racing. To fund his new career, he returned to two wheels riding the 350cc four-cylinder Jawa. He lost his life when the Jawa seized in practice for the 1969 East German Grand Prix at the Sachsenring.

Thirty-eight years later Repsol Honda teammates fell out big time but for a very different reason. You rarely saw Nicky Hayden get angry in public but what he screamed to teammate Dani Pedrosa in the Estoril gravel trap was not difficult to understand. It was the penultimate round of the 2006 MotoGP™ World Championship in Portugal and Hayden arrived with a 12-point advantage over his former teammate and World Champion Valentino Rossi. On the fifth lap of the race Pedrosa, the current 250cc World Champion, was fourth behind Hayden but the situation both in the race and the Championship changed in the blink of an eye. With 23 laps remaining Pedrosa took out the Championship leader at the tight left-hand bend at the end of the slightly kinked back straight. Running onto the kerb he locked the front wheel and skittled Hayden into the Portuguese gravel.

All was forgotten two weeks later when Hayden clinched the World title after finishing third behind the Ducatis of Troy Bayliss and Loris Capirossi. Rossi crashed defending an eight-point lead and a remorseful Pedrosa protected Hayden’s back throughout at a very safe distance in fourth place.

In the next three weeks those six Championship contenders are going to discover who is a true teammate or even just a true mate.

Petrucci’s second ever Grand Prix win in what had been such a wretched season for the former policeman. The first MotoGP™ podium finish for former Moto3™ and current Moto2™ World Champion Alex Marquez. Only four sets of brothers have secured premier class podium finishes in the history of the sport. Argentinian brothers Eduardo and Juan Salatino in the early sixties took podium finishes in their home Grand Prix. Eduardo was third in 1962 while Juan grabbed two second places in 1961 and 1962.

The most famous trio of Grand Prix siblings were the Japanese Aoki brothers. Both Nobuatsu, a former 250cc Grand Prix winner, and Takuma grabbed second places in the premier class. Younger brother Haruchika also rode in the premier class but is better known for his two 125 cc World titles. Older brother Aleix Espargaro took his only premier class podium with a second place in Aragon six years ago while younger brother Pol grabbed his first for KTM in Valencia 2018 and of course finished third in Le Mans. Despite those two World titles Alex Marquez has always lived in the shadow of his older brother Mark. Ninety-five premier class podiums for the older brother including 56 wins says it all but Alex is off the mark. Perhaps the biggest surprise of them all on Sunday – Honda secured their first premier class podium of the season. It is the longest period they had gone without a podium since they returned to World Championship racing in 1982.

Le Mans and the Bugatti circuit has always been capable of producing surprise results. My first visit was no exception. I learnt so much. It can be very cold and do not travel round the Peripherique, the Paris Ring Road, on a Good Friday. It took me over six hours to drive to the legendary venue in 1983 from Charles Le Gaulle Airport but it was well worth it. On a freezing cold afternoon in early April British rider Alan Carter won the 250cc race to become at the time the youngest ever Grand Prix winner. He had started from 31st position on the grid. A year later his team-mate in the Yamaha 250cc team was a certain Wayne Rainey who went on to win three 500cc world titles. Sadly, for Alan Le Mans was his only ever Grand Prix win.

Back to my friend from Yorkshire. We sat in the press room at Le Mans in 2007, he looked out of the window at the gathering clouds and declared that Australian Chris Vermeulen could win his first Grand Prix and bring Suzuki their first victory for six years. When somebody checked the odds of 36/1 on such a prediction, we persuaded him to open his first internet betting account and put his money where his mouth was. When Vermeulen romped home with a comfortable win in the difficult conditions we prepared ourselves for a big Sunday night out on his winnings before driving to Paris the next day. We just about managed one round of drinks from those winnings. He had placed the princely sum of £1 for a Vermeulen victory but do not forget he is from Yorkshire.

It was June 7, 1957 when McIntyre produced the magic Roger Bannister moment of Grand Prix motorcycle racing in the Isle of Man. Who will forget that moment in my home City of Oxford three years earlier when the athletic track announcer read out Bannister’s time for the one-mile race he had just won. Three minutes and the rest was drowned out by the cheers of the crowd. The very first man to run a mile in under four minutes and that announcement was soon relayed round the World.

Three years on and The Isle of Man was buzzing in anticipation at the start of the eight lap Senior TT race round the 60.721 kms TT Mountain circuit on the Island that had staged that very first World Championship race eight years earlier. Fourteen thousand extra fans arrived by ferry that very morning on the already packed Island to witness the Scotsman riding the four-cylinder Gilera in action. They knew history was about to be made. Nobody had lapped the most demanding and dangerous racetrack in the World at over 100 mph (160.934 kph). It was the Golden Jubilee of the TT races and McIntyre celebrated in true style.

At the end of the second lap the announcement boomed out round the circuit.’ Bob McIntyre leads the Senior TT after a second lap at an average of 101… The rest was drowned out by the cheers. The first rider to lap the Mountain circuit at over 100 mph in a time of 22m23.2s.

Typically, he completed three more 100 mph laps to win the race in three hours 2.57s. The modest Scotsman had already won the 350cc TT race that week and won the 350cc race for Gilera at Monza later in the year. He finished runner-up to team-mate Libero Liberati in the 500cc World Championship. McIntyre went on to win two more Grands Prix bringing Honda 250cc success in the 1961 Ulster and a year later at Spa Francorchamps. Tragically he was killed that same year in a crash at Oulton Park in England.

Twelve years before the World Championship started on August 8, 1937, 40-year-old Jimmy Guthrie was leading the German Grand Prix on the Sachsenring road circuit. The Norton rider was chasing his third successive victory in Germany, where the rumble of war was looming fast. He had already won 19 Grands Prix, but he crashed in the woods on that fateful last lap and died in hospital. Four years after the Second World War ended in 1949 the locals built a memorial to Guthrie where he had crashed. They had never forgotten that Scottish gentleman and a fresh bunch of flowers have been placed on the memorial every week for the last 71 years. Back in the Isle of Man a kiln of stones on the mountain climb out of Ramsey on the TT course is lovingly preserved in memorial of the 19 times Grand Prix and six times TT winner.

Scotland’s only Grand Prix World Championship came on three wheels. My dear friend Jock Taylor with Swedish passenger Benga Johannson captured the 1980 Sidecar World Championship at the British Grand Prix at Silverstone. On a truly awful August day in 1982 Jock lost his life in the pouring rain racing over the railway lines at Imatra in Finland when he crashed striving to win back the title that meant so much to him and his country.

Other Scotsman have come close to Grand Prix wins. The nearest was Niall Mackenzie with seven third places and a pole position in the 500cc Championship. His partner in the Silverstone/Armstrong team Donnie McLeod was a top class 250 and 350cc rider while Steve Hislop was a superb Superbike and TT rider.

Can John McPhee go one better than any of them and win a World title on two wheels? It is a mighty big ask but they would certainly approve of his efforts on behalf of their proud and patriotic country.

So, what about the opposite end of the age scale. Turkish rider Con Oncu was just 15 years 115 days old when we won the Moto3™ race in Valencia in 2018. At that age, I was still trying to understand girls while sneaking away for a sly cigarette and certainly not thinking about winning Grand Prix races. He is the youngest ever Grand Prix winner with 31 years separating him and the oldest Arthur Wheeler.

So, hang in there Vale you have got bags of time before you can buy me a pint on the A20 on the way home from Brands.

Japanese factories also have good memories. Australian Tom Phillis brought Honda their first-ever Grand Prix win with victory in the 1961 125cc race. Eleven years late Chas Mortimer gave Yamaha their first-ever 500cc premier class win on the 352cc Yamaha (Well Chas said it was 352 cc).

My second visit to Barcelona came seven years after that trip to Montjuic Park. It was a completely different City totally swamped by Olympic fever. New roads, new airport, and most importantly a spanking new Grand Prix circuit on the northern outskirts near Granollers. The showpiece to the World was the magnificent Olympic stadium built on the site of the Montjuic Park circuit. How times had changed in the comparatively short seven years.

If you think the weekend was unique, there was a time when they would run car races and a motorcycle Grands Prix on the same day at the same circuit. It was a recipe for disaster and controversy which came to a head in the 1974 West German Grand Prix at the Nürburgring. Car racers wanted unprotected Armco barriers to stop them from crashing off the track. The motorcycle riders rightly wanted those barriers protected by straw bales. The organisers would not supply enough and so the Grand Prix riders, led by MV Agusta team-mates Phil Read and Giacomo Agostini, refused to race.

As so often happened in those dangerous and uncaring times, the organisers insisted the Grand Prix went ahead. They persuaded just seven local German riders to compete while the World Championship stars looked on or went home. There were just four finishers in the 159.845km race around the 22.835km Nürburgring circuit. Yamaha rider Edmund Czihak won with nearly two minutes to spare to secure his only ever World Championship points with a win.

What a day of racing at Misano. A British win in Moto3™, Valentino Rossi’s half-brother’s victory in Moto2™ and then Franco Morbidelli’s maiden MotoGP™ win. It was the first time since the Sachsenring in 2002 that Italian riders finished first and second in both the premier and intermediate class races on the same day.  Five separate MotoGP™ winners and four for the very first time. Dovizioso leading the Championship despite only finishing seventh and it all starts again on Friday morning

The small town of Tavullia is situated just over the hill from Misano and has turned into a shrine for the number 46. When he was voted Mayor of the town, the population walked to the circuit where the new Lord Mayor held the Annual General meeting in the grandstand at the Tramonto corner during a Grand Prix weekend. The celebrations when Rossi won the MotoGP™ races in 2008, 2009 and 2014 lasted for days and even longer than when Casey Stoner brought Ducati a patriotic win in 2007 en route to his World title. Grand Prix racing returned to Misano after a 14-year absence that year on the circuit running the opposite direction to the original. Rossi is determined that the heritage will continue and his racing ranch near Tavullia is already feeding the production line with Italian World Champions.

Pier Francesco Chili was another local hero running a bar and restaurant on the Misano beach. He won his only 500cc Grand Prix at his home circuit in 1989. I remember more about the antics of World Champion Eddie Lawson than the ever-popular ‘Frankie’. The original race had been stopped because of rain on the fifth lap and the top riders refused to return to the track. Chili was contracted to race and duly won. Every lap he passed pit lane Lawson was sat on the wall with one finger in the air that was not indicting to the Italian who was in first place.

Every time I fly into Bologna and drive down the Autostrada to Misano there are two people I always think about. I will never forget the silence of utter despair that descended like a black cloud engulfing the paddock when the news broke of Wayne Rainey’s terrible injuries sustained in his crash at turn one in 1993.  Seventeen years later that black cloud fell again on the paddock when that delightful and so talented Japanese rider Shoya Tomizawa lost his life in the Moto2™ race.

Misano has seen it all. It is such a special place with so many memories.