Barry Sheene’s 1978 RG
Sheene’s spannerman Martyn Ogborne spills the beans about Barry, his RGs, and the struggle to win that elusive third World Championship during the 1978 season
The 69-year-old master mechanic Martyn Ogborne turns up with a large sticky plaster on a big welt on his head: “I headbutted the tailgate on the car.” For a man once hospitalized at Assen (NL) with a collapsed lung after rupturing his ribs saving a factory RG500 from falling out of a van, this is (literally) a mere flesh wound. Oggy has spent 43 years working with Suzuki, and 11 of those years looking after RG500 Grand Prix machines first for John Newbold, then for Barry Sheene.
Ogborne grew up with John Newbold in Jacksdale, Notts, a mining community: “We learned to ride bikes on the clinker from the blast furnaces. Three of us had an old Villiers two-stroke, and we slowly got to know how it worked, moving the flywheel to change the timing, breaking and fixing the frame from jumping it. Then we got a Royal Enfield 500 Bullet – and we were out of control on that thing, three-up in shorts and flip-flops, no lids, at 65mph. It was even too fast for the canal towpath, and we got warned off by the police, which was no bad thing. But I knew even back then I was going racing – whatever it took.”
By 1975 Martyn was working on production RG500 Suzukis in Grands Prix for John Newbold. It was good year: “We got noticed.” A fourth place at Assen, a second (to Phil Read on the MV) at Spa Francorchamps, and Newbold was a works Suzuki rider for 1976.
That team was Stan Woods, John Newbold, and Sheene “Stan crashed a lot, heavily at Imola on the TR750, and then John Williams replaced him.
“We were doing far too many races; Shellsport 500, Formula 750, British Championship, MCN Superbike, Grands Prix…” says Ogborne. Even so, Sheene won the 1976 World 500cc Championship at a canter [72 points to Tepi Länsivouri’s 48. The top six riders all on RG500s].
“For 1977 John [Newbold] realized there would be a dominant rider in the team and that was Sheene,” says Martyn. The reigning Champ duly collected his second World 500cc title with 107 points to American Steve Baker (Yamaha) on 80. Yamaha’s Johnny Cecotto won two of the 11 races that season.
