Mike Hailwood had retired from Grand Prix motorcycle racing after the 1967 season, when Honda withdrew from the championship and paid him £50,000 not to ride for rival manufacturers. He subsequently pursued a career in Formula One car racing, competing in 50 Grands Prix and earning the George Medal in 1973 for pulling Clay Regazzoni from a burning car at the South African Grand Prix. A serious crash at the 1974 German Grand Prix at the Nürburgring ended his car racing career, and Hailwood withdrew from top-level motorsport entirely, relocating first to New Zealand and then entering a motorcycle retail business in Birmingham.
By the mid-1970s, Hailwood's nine Grand Prix motorcycle world championships and 14 Isle of Man TT victories belonged to a different era. His last TT win had come in 1967, the same year he set a 500cc lap record of 108.77 mph on the Honda RC181 that stood for eight years. Few in the paddock believed a 38-year-old, absent for over a decade, could be competitive on the demanding 37.73-mile Snaefell Mountain Course.
Hailwood had kept a toe in motorcycle competition. In 1977 he travelled to Australia to race large-capacity Ducatis and a Yamaha in long-distance events. In April 1978 he rode at the Australian motorcycle Grand Prix on a 750 Yamaha. In May 1978, he attended a Donington Park national race day on a Yamaha XS1100 in Martini livery to reacquaint himself with motorcycle handling after his long absence, and subsequently tested his TT machinery — a Yamaha TZ750D, a 0W35 YZR500, a TZ250E, and the F1 Ducati — at Oulton Park.
The Ducati 900SS was supplied by Manchester dealer Sports Motorcycles, while Yamaha NV of the Netherlands provided machines for the other TT classes. Martini sponsored most of the Yamaha entries arranged through UK importer Mitsui. Despite the support and preparation, bookmakers and paddock insiders were sceptical: Hailwood would be competing against riders who had spent the decade refining their craft on the evolving Mountain Course.
The 1978 Formula One TT was a World Championship-status event, the F1 category having been introduced in 1977 for large-capacity road-derived machines. Hailwood started the race and rode with a composure and pace that silenced doubters. He won outright, taking his 14th and final Isle of Man TT victory.
His other results in the 1978 TT week were more modest: he finished 12th in the 250cc Junior event, placed 28th in the 500cc Senior race after suffering a faulty steering damper, and did not finish the Classic 1000cc race. But the F1 victory was the story that eclipsed everything else. Motorcycle News readers voted Hailwood their Man of the Year for 1978.
The commercial response was immediate. Ducati produced a road-legal derivative of Hailwood's winning machine and sold approximately 7,000 units of the 900SS-based Mike Hailwood Replica, a model that became a touchstone of the marque's identity and is still collected today.
Hailwood returned to the TT in 1979, winning the Senior TT on a Suzuki RG500 and finishing a close second to Alex George in the Unlimited Classic. He retired from racing at the end of that appearance, aged 39.
In 1981, the Snaefell Mountain Course was altered to name a section Hailwood's Rise, leading to the highest point at Hailwood's Height, commemorating his connection to the circuit. The Mike Hailwood Centre, a permanent facility at the TT Grandstand in Douglas operated by the Mike Hailwood Foundation, was officially opened in 1984 by his wife Pauline.
The FIM designated Hailwood a Grand Prix Legend in 2000. He was inducted into the AMA Motorcycle Hall of Fame and the International Motorsports Hall of Fame in the same year. His 1978 comeback remains the benchmark against which all motorcycle racing returns are measured — a nine-time world champion, absent for eleven years, winning on the hardest road circuit in the world at nearly 40 years old.
Hailwood died on 23 March 1981, two days after a road traffic collision in Warwickshire. He was 40 years old.