Wild cards, rider replacements or comebacks, call them what you want as three-time World Champion Dani Pedrosa and three-time MotoGP™ race winner Cal Crutchlow contemplate their return to the battlefield in Austria on Sunday. Eleven years after retiring from Grand Prix racing Mike Hailwood returned to where it had all started, the legendary TT mountain circuit on the Isle of Man. When Honda pulled out of World Championship racing at the end of the 1967 season, Hailwood retired from Grand Prix racing. Never has the birth of Grand Prix racing witnessed such scenes of wild celebration and emotion when Hailwood rode the Ducati 900 ss to victory in the six-lap TT Formula One race. I was lucky a year later to witness Hailwood’s last TT win with victory on the two-stroke 500 cc Grand Prix Suzuki in the six-lap Senior race.

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