Simply from looking at the results of the 1976 Daytona 200 it's easy to classify that race as one of the greatest Daytona 200s ever.
The race was was won by '75 350cc world champion Johnny Cecotto on a Yamaha. He and Kenny Roberts dueled for the win, but Roberts suffered a small crash when his rear tire delaminated and that crash took him out of contention for the race. Cecotto's win wasn't a fluke, though, as the Latin rider made a strong showing at Daytona in 1974 and Grand Prixs that same season.
Former Daytona winner Gary Nixon finished second on an Erv Kanemoto-tuned Kawasaki.
He with a tragically short yet successful racing career, Pat Hennen, finished third.
Gene Romero, the 1975 winner of the Daytona 200 and possibly the coolest rider of the era, finished fourth.
French teammates Patrick Pons and Michael Rougerie finished fifth and sixth. Yamaha's Hideo Kanya finished seventh, just in front of Randy Cleek, Kenny Roberts and John Dodds.
Further back in the finishing order are more notable riders: Briton Barry Sheene finished thirty-fourth, Canadian Yvon DuHamel thirty-sixth, future Superbike champion Wes Cooley was fortieth, Steve McLaughlin two spots back, former world champion Phil Read in fifty-fifth spot and the late Australian go-fast man, Gregg Hansford, in fifty-eighth.
The legendary names just continue to scroll from the '76 D200 results sheet: A man with perhaps sixty gad-zillion Kenny Roberts stories in his memory banks, Skip Aksland, finished sixty-sixth, while Yamaha Canada's Steve Baker in ended the race in seventy-first, future Team Roberts and KTM GP/MotoGP engineer, Warren Willing, finished seventy-fourth
