MITSUO ITOH
The first and only Japanese rider to win a TT to date, Itoh went on to win a 50cc Grand Prix, manage Suzuki’s race effort and mentor Kevin Schwantz
Obituary of the only Japanese racer ever to win an IOM TT
MITSUO ITOH, who has died at the age of 82, was the man behind some of Suzuki’s greatest racing successes. He was at the vanguard of the company’s push into world championship racing, when he was part of the team that travelled to the Isle of Man in 1960.
Suzuki’s first efforts at following Honda’s TT lead with its two-strokes were an embarrassment. Itoh rode an RT60 in the 1960 125cc Ultra-lightweight TT. The bike had a top speed of 86mph, against the Honda twin’s 110mph. It was also notoriously unreliable and prone to seizing. To add injury to insult, that year Itoh crashed during practice at Bungalow, damaging his right knee and suffering facial injuries. Only after Suzuki gained MZ’S two-stroke knowhow in late 1961 did Suzuki and therefore Itoh make progress.
In 1962 he made it to the finish of a TT race for the first time and the following year he won the 50cc race, riding an RM62 single to beat team-mate Hugh Anderson to become the first (and so far only) Japanese to win a TT. Itoh stood on a world championship podium on four further occasions. He finished third in the 1962 125cc Buenos Aires GP behind winner Anderson, second to the New Zealander at Daytona in 1964 and third behind Bill Ivy’s winning Yamaha at Suzuka in 1966. His second victory and final podium appearance came at Fuji Speedway in 1966, when he won the 50cc GP on Suzuki’s RK67 twin.
After hanging up his leathers Itoh raced cars for several years, nearly always Suzukis. Most famously in 1968 he ‘raced’ Stirling Moss in a high-profile publicity stunt, the pair driving two Suzuki 360SS cars along Italy’s Autostrada del Sol, from Milan to Napoli.
Later, Itoh took charge of Suzuki’s racing activities, most importantly its 500cc Grand Prix team. He was an avuncular presence in the paddock for many years, famously guiding Kevin Schwantz to the 1993 500cc world championship aboard an RGV500, the latest embodiment of the two-stroke technology that Suzuki first employed in the early 1960s.