TT Champion Jimmy Phillips dies after crashing his Harley-Davidson at Ascot Park in Gardena, California.
Jimmy Phillips was practically raised on a motorcycle. Born in Hawkersville, Oklahoma, but reared in Sanger, California, Jimmy began racing professionally for the famous Johnson Motors Triumphs after WWII. Phillips came to prominence in 1948 when he won the amateur portion of the Riverside (California) National TT Championship and finished a very rookie-respectable eighth in the national.
In 1949, Jimmy won several Pacific Coast titles and became one of the top road racers at the Torrey Pines circuit.
The years of West Coast TT racing experience really paid off in 1951 when he traveled to Peoria, Illinois, and, riding a Triumph, swept both AMA TT Steeplechase championship races. Only two other riders had previously held both TT titles in one year, Tommy Hayes in 1937 and Roger Soderstorm in 1950.
Phillips contested nearly every race in the 1955 season schedule in the AMA Grand National Series despite running a motorcycle dealership in California. He earned podium finishes at Daytona, Peoria and Langhorne, Pennsylvania. Matter-of-fact, Jimmy finished in the top-ten in every race he entered and finished the year ranked fifth in the series. One of the most consistent Daytona 200 performers of the 1950's, he posted four top-ten finishes in his eight appearances on the old beach course.
Known as one of the true gentlemen of the sport, for years afterwards the Ascot Park TT National was renamed in his honor.
Jimmy Phillips was inducted in the AMA Hall of Fame in 1998.
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