CHARLIE WILLIAMS
Nine-time TT winner, F2 world champ, GP and endurance rider. Talk about busy…
‘Ago came out from under the bale like Worzel Gummidge’
‘You could race in everything, the whole shebang…’
Charlie Williams won nine TTs from 1973 to 1980 and, like many top riders of that era, rode in whatever races he fancied on a huge variety of bikes – he competed in 125, 250, 350 and 500cc GPs, won the F2 world championship, and was a works Honda endurance rider. But it was the foreign trips he remembers most fondly.
In 1972 he decided to race at Rungis, a curious French circuit centred on a massive meat and veg market near Paris. “The start money was good and Agostini, Sheene, Read and Findlay were racing,” he says. “I was racing an Eddie Crooks 500 Suzuki along with Stan Woods while Bill Smith and John Williams were on Hondas.” In scenes reminiscent of a Carry On film, all four decided they’d travel down in one van to save money, cramming the bikes into Bill’s Ford Transit. “It was a bit of a squeeze, and I didn’t have a carnet for my Suzuki so we were held up in Calais, then we crashed into a car while we were trying to reverse off an exit ramp on the Peripherique (we were lost). The driver was an off-duty gendarme but eventually Bill managed to bribe him and he directed us to the circuit.”
The Carry On shenanigans continued. The organisers had failed to tell the veg stall holders about the race, so they insisted on walking across the track, meaning practice was limited. “Mick Grant was riding a John Player Norton and because it was playing up, he’d only done a couple of laps. So he asked us what the sequence of crests and hollows was down the main straight. I told him that as soon as you hit the third dip you needed to get hard on the brakes for the righthander following the next crest. “Now, either he wasn’t listening, or he misunderstood, or he wasn’t counting… He ended up coming over the crest flat on the tank, with both wheels off the ground, and crashed into Ago. They both went down and Mick told me later that he saw Ago’s feet poking out from under a straw bale. He gave them a tug and Ago appeared looking like Worzel Gummidge. Mick retrieved the MV, put Ago on it and gave him a push start.”
None of Transit Four finished a race, so the event was a failure from that point of view, but the friendships Charlie made on the trip proved useful later on. “In 1973 I’d won my first TT and beaten my pal John Williams into second [in the Lightweight 250 race, then a full GP]. John was a very good road rider, so being able to beat him was no mean feat. Shortly after the TT
was the Spa 24-hour race, and John was due to ride with Bill Smith on a factory Honda.
“But Bill was injured, so Honda asked for a recommendation and John suggested me. So I did my first 24-hour race in 1973. It was fantastic because we won the bloody thing. It was brilliant – we won virtually from start to finish.” Charlie’s success spawned a hectic schedule: “In 1976 I had to go out to Mugello and do an 8-hour race so I left the Isle of Man [where he was racing] on Thursday to go down to Milan via Manchester, then flew back on Sunday night from Pisa to Heathrow. Then on Monday morning I flew from Heathrow to Liverpool, then to the Isle of Man. “But I was riding in an era when you could race in everything, the whole shebang. It was good for riders, and better from a spectator’s point of view too. If you’re a Rossi fan where’d you go? You have to go to a GP to see him and you’ve got one chance in the UK. Yet back then, Agostini, Reed, Sheene and Roberts would be at Donington Park [for a non-GP race] and then next week they were off to whatever Grand Prix it was. I think my era was a fantastic time to be a racer. I’m sure a lot of people look back on their careers and say they were the golden years, but for me, I really think it’s true.”