Home
Change
category
"

Ronnie Weir: Donnie McLeod

My next subject was arguably on his day the best rider in the 250cc Class in Britain in the mid eighties. Lanarkshire rider Donnie McLeod went on to win several British titles and regularly acquitted himself well at Grand Prix level with a podium finish at a wet Spa behind Honda works rider Sito Pons being a particular highlight in 1986.

From humble beginnings racing a 200cc Tiger Cub in 1976 that he dubbed “leaky Larry” because it was always blowing up, there was no holding McLeod back as he won the Scottish 250cc Championship two years later on a bike that he built himself from various boxes of parts.

Strangely Donnie’s racing career suddenly all fell into place when he was made redundant as a design draughtsman in the early eighties. So armed with his redundancy cheque and a group of newly found enthusiastic sponsors he decided that there was nothing to lose in racing full time and to seek his fortune as a privateer on the Grand Prix circuits of Europe.

“I was doing my job half right and racing half right,” explained Donnie during a rare feature with BBC Scotland’s Alan Douglas after he’d captured his first British 250cc title in 1984. “I was really able to concentrate on my racing for the first time.” That certainly started to pay dividends in the results he obtained.

For 1983 he purchased the latest 250cc Yamaha and a bigger transporter and competed in Europe and England where the opportunities were greater. Success was soon to come with some excellent results in the European and British Championships. He tackled every European Grand Prix he could often knowing he wasn’t guaranteed an entry to compete. With over 80 riders queuing for the 36 places on the grid there was always a race from track to track to be first in that queue. Usually Donnie would only get on the track after the first practice session was finished as then the organisers knew who wouldn’t be showing up to race.
His first cherished Grand Prix point would come at the 1983 Dutch TT at Assen, with a hard fought 10th place. That point though would ease the pressure on gaining entries from then on. His Grand Prix experience also stood him in good stead for the home British meetings where his new found increased pace he needed against foreign riders would leave the domestic men behind.

In 1984 armed with another new privateer Yamaha, he just missed out on a podium at Misano in Italy with a highly creditable 5th place behind the likes of future 500cc World Champion Wayne Rainey. “When the bike was running well I was always consistently in the top ten that year,” McLeod reflects who had no problems at home wrapping a well deserved British title at Oulton Park with straight wins.

For 1985 he was chosen to join the British Silverstone Armstrong team with fellow Scot Niall Mackenzie who had also shot to prominence in the early eighties. Often the two Scots would battle out the top rostrum places with Alan Carter in British events only for technical problems to rob them of good results abroad.

As Mcleod explains, “Unfortunately the team and bikes did not perform as well as they looked. It was almost a step back for me, as the team was more used to the demands of national racing rather than Grand Prix. I had difficulty convincing the team that things like changing gear ratios were necessary and I just couldn’t cope with the 16” front wheel we used. I fell off at least 15 times that year, more than all my other years of racing combined!” In fact McLeod never suffered a major injury in his 12 years of racing.

With improved bikes built in Bolton for 1986 and the experiences of 1985 to draw on, hopes were high that Grand Prix success would come to the team which still lacked the huge European budgets.

Early season shake down meetings showed that the McLeod/Armstrong pairing could finally be going somewhere with early race wins and podiums at Cadwell Park, Donington and Mallory in the UK while the first Grand Prix in Spain netted a promising 7th place. However the mechanical woes were not over and retirement followed in Italy, though he grabbed 8th in the West German GP staving off the challenges of Japanese works star Tadahiko Taira and Alan Carter.

A personal best fourth place in Holland was followed up a few days later with that runner-up finish on a rain lashed Spa- Francorchamps in Belgium. Donnie explains later that second place could so easily have been a win. “I knew we were in with a chance of winning because mid-race I was actually catching Sito (Pons) rapidly. I thought about the situation and rather than push too hard I decided that 2nd place was still a good result and so I backed off to make sure of the rostrum.”

For various reasons, the rest of the year didn’t live up to that Belgian result and even a cracked piston in the last round of the British Championship at Silverstone cost McLeod the chance of regaining his 250cc crown.

With the Silverstone Armstrong team being disbanded , McLeod’s hopes of running Honda engines in the existing carbon fibre frames came to nought as his seat was bought out from under him leaving him to contest the grand prix season with Doctor Joe Ehlrich’s EMC machine. McLeod spent the next two years with Ehlrich but with mixed results of scoring low points finishes one weekend only to retire the next.

In what was to be his last season in 1988 before taking a Master’s Degree in Design Engineering, McLeod also helped Suzuki to improve their latest V-4 engine racer for Kevin Schwantz and he also had some guest rides on a Honda 500cc triple before hanging up his racing leathers.

Now McLeod still swings his leg over a bike but it’s mainly his trials bikes and he still gets aboard his immaculately restored Jock Gibb Yamaha 350 that he raced in 1983 and 1984 for historic events.

Memory added on August 17, 2012

Comments

No comments have yet been added to this memory.

Add a comment

Mark as favourite
Donnie McLeod - East Fortune in 1980 Donnie McLeod - East Fortune in 1980