TOP OF THE WORLD

Kel missed the opening three races of the 1969 season, racing in only eight of the 11 rounds. He was signed up as backup for Pasolini, to help him. Kel knew some of the circuits better than him and was as fast as him at the others. Then, at Imatra, Finland, Pasolini crashed again. There were now just three races left in the season. Kel had to win two of them and get second in the other. That’s exactly what he did, winning the title by five points from Kent Andersson. During the off-season Kel went home to Australia knowing that Benelli would not be running their four-cylinder 250s in 1970, but would race the 350s. Kel expected to race that 350, but there was a big strike in Italy around Christmas and the entire country closed down. Benelli wrote to him, saying they were sorry, but they would not be able to build bikes for anyone, but Pasolini. Undismayed, Kel arranged to buy a pair of Yamahas for the 1970 season. He travelled to the USA to pick them up. Don Vesco gave him Yamahas to race at Daytona. Kel won the 250 race, beating Britain’s Rod Gould and Kel was running with eventual winner Dick Mann in the Daytona 200 itself when the crank went. Annoyingly Kel had warned Vesco before the race. “When are we going to put the new crank in?” Kel asked. ‘Oh, it’ll be all right.’ was the reply. “No it won’t,” I said, “It might not even do two hundred miles. We’d better put in a new crank.” He kept saying, ‘No, it’ll be all right.’ It went about a hundred miles and it went out. Kel returned to Europe, where Pasolini had crashed early in the season and Benelli once again asked him to ride their 350s. He finished second to Agostini at both the Nurburgring in Germany and at Opatija, Yugoslavia. He also rode the bike in the Isle of Man, but the chain fell off. He told Benelli things were not working out, so he rode his Yamahas for the rest of the season, finishing second in both the 250 and 350 world championships.

“HE WAS WINNING SOMETIMES, THOUGH THERE WAS A YOUNG KID, RUSTY BRADLEY, ON A THREE-CYLINDER KAWASAKI HE BEAT HIM FROM TIME TO TIME.”