In team sports, the role of a teammate is easy to understand and follow but in MotoGP™ it can be a very different story. I remember the first time I realised just how important a trusted teammate can be on two wheels. Ivy admitted later he slowed to let teammate Read win because the plan at the beginning of the season was for Read to win his first 125cc title and Ivy his first 250. He won the race and out of the blue declared he was chasing the title because he wanted Yamaha to continue racing the next year and that he’d done all the work to develop the 250 bringing Yamaha their first world title. He won the 22-lap race from Ivy in which the Yamaha pair lapped the rest of the field. Read was crowned World Champion after the times from the races they had both completed were added together. Read continued to win more World titles for Yamaha and MV Agusta where his relationship with teammate Agostini was strained, to say the least.

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