Japan Grand Prix
JAPAN GRAND PRIX
W. B. SWIM
HONDA FOUR-MOUNTED Jim Redman of Southern Rhodesia won the 250cc race at the first Japan Grand Prix to gain the 1963 World Championship and score a double as he already had earned the 350cc crown. Suzuki rider Hugh Anderson of New Zealand backed into the 50cc crown with a second in the race after Kreidler's Hans-Georg Anscheidt retired with mechanical trouble to complete his double crown (he had already won the 125cc Championship).
Honda's Luigi Taveri amazed the crowd of 120,100 on a perfect sunshiny day in the 50cc race by running away from all competition. Jim Redman crossed the finish line first in a 350cc class farce in which only three Honda Four factory riders left the starting line. The sponsoring Motorcycling Federation of Japan will have to do away with this sort of foolishness if Japan is to retain the Grand Prix sanction which it secured only this year.
50cc RACE, 14 LAPS, 84.05 KM
Luigi Taveri on a Honda twin, probably with transistorized ignition, was off the line first and that was the old ball game. Suzuki's Hugh Anderson and Kreidler's Hans-Georg Anscheidt, with 34 and 32 points, respectively, toward the World Championship, couldn't begin to keep up with him, and no one else in the field could either, including the other Honda factory machines. Every lap Taveri had gained another 100 yards on the whole field until he finished up 31.9 seconds in front of second place Anderson, or about
half a lap. Kreidler's Anscheidt retired in the second lap with either a seized big end or piston, ruining his chances at the world crown. He had been second behind Taveri for those first two laps, with Anderson fourth. Suzuki's Ernst Degner stopped half way around the first lap and changed spark plugs and still managed to come in seventh. After the first lap Suzuki's Toshio Fujii was third behind Taveri and Anscheidt and he held this position until lap three when he dropped to fourth and then retired in lap 5 with engine trouble. Suzuki's Isao Morishita started off fifth, jumped to second after Anscheidt retired in the third lap, dropped to fourth in the 4th lap, third in the 5th lap and back to second in the 6th lap before he retired.
125cc RACE, 20 LAPS, 120.08 KM
The lead changed hands nine times between Frank Perris (Suzuki), Jim Redman (Honda) and Hugh Anderson (Suzuki) before Perris nosed Redman out by four seconds. Anderson dropped back in the sixth lap because he was sliding in the corners, probably from an over-inflated rear tire, and took fifth behind Ernst Degner (Suzuki) and Tommy Robb (Honda). Sixth was Mitsuo Ito (Suzuki), who
moved into that position in lap five and held it the rest of the way. Luigi Taveri, who had the fastest time in practice, retired in lap two with electrical trouble, probably the transistorized ignition. Redman was in the lead at the end of the first lap, with Anderson right behind and Degner not far off the pace, followed by Haruo Koshino (Suzuki), Robb and Frank Perris (Suzuki). Anderson swapped places with Redman for laps two and three and then they changed back again for lap four and yet again for lap five, when Anderson cut back. This let Frank Perris move up into the lead from third place and he held it for three laps. Redman overtook him in lap nine, but Perris got back in the lead on the next round and stayed there until lap 15, when Redman nosed him out again. Lap 16 saw Perris back out in front, Redman second, Degner third, Robb fourth, Anderson fifth and Ito sixth, and that's the way they stayed until the checkered flag.
250cc RACE, 24 LAPS, 144.096 KM
This was the race of the day, the one everyone had come to see, the event to decide the individual championship for either Jim Redman or Tarquinio Provini and the maker's ranking for either Honda or Morini. And it proved to be the best race of the day, with the winner undecided between three riders until the last lap and between the first and second places right up to within yards of the finish line. Spectators were disappointed that MV Agusta's Mike Hailwood didn't find the financial offer sufficient to bring him to Japan, but still in the field in addition to the two men fighting it out for the World Championship were Suzuki's new watercooled rotary valve fours and Yamaha's hot racer with Phil Read riding for a 1964 contract and Japanese ace Fumio Ito ready to burn up Suzuka Circuit, which is just his piece of pie. He was cornering smoothest of the whole Japan G.P. field during Friday and Saturday practice sessions. Read, Ito, Redman, Hiroshi Hasegawa (Yamaha), Tommy Robb (Honda) and Ernst Degner (Suzuki) got off to a fast start, Provini was stuck in the middle of the pack and Frank Perris (Suzuki) was left at the starting line with an engine that didn't want to fire, luckily for teammate Degner. Degner spilled coming out of the first corner and his machine caught on fire and burned furiously, sending up a tall column of thick, black smoke. Perris braked to a stop and pulled Degner away from the burning bike, with the help of a spectator who had jumped the fence, holding Degner's injuries down to burns on the face, chest and arms requiring three weeks of hospitalization and possibly a skin transplant on his face later. Perris retired at the end of the lap. At the end of lap one Ito was in the lead by only a few yards followed by Read and Redman. These three opened a lead over the next four or five, who were bunched and dicing it out, with Hasegawa fourth, Robb fifth, Isamu Kasuya (Honda) sixth and Hugh Anderson (Suzuki), and Provini right behind them. Provini nosed Robb out for sixth in lap three after Anderson grabbed fifth in the second lap. The next time around Redman and Read had swapped places for second and third behind Ito, and there were only three riders left in the second group, Hasegawa, Anderson and Provini, in that order. Ito held the lead until lap seven, when Redman took it. Ito was back in front in lap eight, but Redman passed him and held it until lap 18. All the way through the race until the last half of the last lap there weren't 30 yards between the first and third, and it was largely a matter of who was slipstreaming whom, with Ito and Read jumping in and out of second four or five times. Lap 18 saw Read in the lead with Redman second and Ito third, but the next lap it was Ito, Redman, Read. Lap 20 made it Redman, Read, Ito, and the next time around it was Read, Redman, Ito. The crowd was screaming every time they came around, but the three held this order for lap 22. On next to the last lap it was Redman in front again, followed by Read and Ito, with only feet separating the three. Halfway around the last lap Read ran into ignition trouble, and ended the race on one 125cc barrel. Redman beat Ito to the finish line by perhaps 10 yards.
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350cc RACE, 25 LAPS, 150.1 KM, 3 STARTERS
Despite an entry list of 14 machines, only three appeared up on the starting line for the race.^ Provini withdrew without stating a reason after coming in fourth in the 250cc race, although he had put in many practice laps on his 350cc, Mike Hailwood and John Hartle didn't come to Japan for the races, and neither did three Indonesians who had sent in entries for two Nortons and an AJS. Three Japanese private entries dropped out, and Honda factory team riders Tommy Robb and Isamu Kasuya scratched. This left only Jim Redman, Morisuke Yamashita and Luigi Taveri, all factory riders on Honda Fours, and they finished in that order after 25 circuits of the course. About the only noteworthy thing in the race, although they swapped places several times, was Taveri's bike, which fouled out the two rear plugs in the 21st lap. He pulled into the pits but didn't even bother to change them, finishing on two cylinders, more than a lap behind the other two bikes. •
