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Stories of the Daytona 200 and 50 years of Superbike Racing! HOT
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00:00:00Welcome to the Cycle World Podcast. I'm Mark Hoyer. I'm with Kevin Cameron, our technical editor.
00:00:05Right out of the gate, you can find us on Patreon. Thanks for all the new subscribers.
00:00:10We've been up a week and got a bunch of folks in there doing $5 or doing supporter tier,
00:00:16which is less than that, but $5 gets you everything that we do without commercials,
00:00:20plus the additional content that we do for Patreon subscribers only.
00:00:24So there's a link in the description. You can go check that out, see if it suits you.
00:00:28And we'll be adding more content there. I'm going to convince Kevin to grab one of his sons with a
00:00:36smartphone
00:00:36and make a video tour of his shop and show us the U-Boat lathe.
00:00:40I'm doing that on camera, Kevin, to make that promise to our Patreon subscribers.
00:00:47So thanks for that. This is, of course, YouTube, and we're doing it for everybody.
00:00:50But if you don't like those commercials, by all means, join us over on the other side. Thank you.
00:00:56Today, we're going to talk about the Daytona 200. I just got back from the Daytona 200.
00:01:02I had quite an experience there with BMW.
00:01:05Superbike racing in America is 50 years old.
00:01:09The rules are written on the floor of an empty apartment by Steve McLaughlin and John Ulrich.
00:01:16John Ulrich recently told this story to a large assemblage of BMW fans who were gathered for the three BMWs
00:01:24campaign by Udo Giedel and Butler & Smith in the 1976 race.
00:01:29And that was Gary Fisher, Steve McLaughlin, tuned by Udo Giedel, and Reg Pridmore, of course.
00:01:37And Stephen McLaughlin barely took it at the line by six inches, they said, after they developed the film of
00:01:43the photo finish, which took 45 minutes.
00:01:45And there was no podium.
00:01:49But 50 years of superbike racing, it kind of all started there.
00:01:52It reminded me very much of bagger racing because most street bikes of the time were absolutely unfit for purpose.
00:02:00They were not made to race.
00:02:02And everything that got changed had to get changed.
00:02:05The rules were written suitably loose to allow for things to happen.
00:02:11Repositioning of the shocks, for example, and the Butler & Smith BMWs, two of those bikes, not Reg's.
00:02:17Reg preferred the twin shock.
00:02:19I think someone said he didn't want to be protesting.
00:02:21He was sort of like, no, I'm going to keep those shocks.
00:02:23I like them.
00:02:25But the other ones were converted to single shock.
00:02:27And Udo's joke was, I repositioned one of them to the shelf in the shop because the rules were repositioning
00:02:35was allowed.
00:02:36So there was a lot of interpretation.
00:02:38It was pretty good stuff.
00:02:40Kevin's seen a few Daytona 200s.
00:02:42And, of course, it evolved from beach racing and a dirt track.
00:02:47There was a dirt track, a 200-miler that was somewhere local down there.
00:02:51But, you know, it finally made it to the Speedway and turned into 200 miles.
00:02:56There was a contingent at the beach who really wanted to stay at the beach, but they moved it into
00:03:02the Speedway to some protests.
00:03:05But after a few years, it caught on, and it became huge.
00:03:08So you should transition here.
00:03:11I've set the stage probably too much, as usual.
00:03:17Tell us about your Daytona days, Kevin.
00:03:20Well, the early times were the period in which flathead or side valve engines were given 750 cc displacement
00:03:36because they were less able, on a specific basis, than overhead valve engines, which were given 500 cc's.
00:03:47So the Triumphs won Daytona in 66 and 67, I think.
00:03:57And Harley Davidson replied in a big way.
00:04:05And it was quite an accident, really, because there was a group of people in Axtell's, C.R. Axtell's shop
00:04:13in SoCal,
00:04:15and they were shooting the breeze, and they were talking about flatheads.
00:04:23And it turned out that there was one belonging to a rider whose name is not of record.
00:04:32And they said, why don't we have a look at this?
00:04:35So they took off a cylinder head, and two of the guys are looking in there, and they say,
00:04:41one of them had worked with Hudson's, which were big, straight-eight flatheads when the NASCAR first started.
00:04:52300 cubic inch sixes.
00:04:54And he said, well, it's nothing like what was developed by Hudson.
00:05:01And the other fellow chimed in, and he said, well, I've seen the Auburns, and it's nothing like them either.
00:05:09And so there was more conversation.
00:05:11Finally, somebody said, really, what's going on here is that the roof, the head, is too close to the cylinder
00:05:19deck
00:05:20where the valve pocket feeds across to the cylinder and then down.
00:05:28Well, why don't we make a quarter-inch head gasket for this and test it?
00:05:34Well, Axdell's bandsaw welder didn't work right then.
00:05:39So one of them gets in the car and drives off to somebody whose bandsaw welder is working.
00:05:48He takes a couple of these blanks that they'd made with holes drilled so they could feed the end of
00:05:56the saw blade through there
00:05:57and then weld it together, put the blade on the big bandsaw wheels,
00:06:01and then they'd be able to saw out the inside shape of the piston and the two valves in the
00:06:06side valve pocket.
00:06:09Well, they get the head on there,
00:06:14and it made as much horsepower as the engine with much higher compression ratio.
00:06:20Imagine what a quarter of an inch spacing the head up towards space,
00:06:26a whole quarter of an inch, means like no compression.
00:06:31Hardly puffing at all.
00:06:32Yes, but because they had increased that slot where the flow went from the side pocket to the cylinder,
00:06:42they gained as much as they lost from compression.
00:06:45At that point, they thought, they sort of looked at each other like,
00:06:50we got something here.
00:06:52This is something.
00:06:54And so they put in a call to Dick O'Brien at Harley.
00:07:00He had been the race manager since 57.
00:07:05And he got on a plane with the foreman of the race shop.
00:07:14Harley not only had a race shop, but the race shop had a foreman.
00:07:19Now, that's real 1940 stuff right there.
00:07:22So they get there, and they make a lot of changes.
00:07:29They find out, they go to Daytona with 58 horsepower versus Triumph's 49 point something.
00:07:38Well, it's a bigger motorcycle, but not 10 horsepower bigger.
00:07:44And old Calvin just left him for dead.
00:07:49It was clear that the Triumph was dumpster material so far as Daytona was concerned.
00:07:55Lots of people love their Daytona 500 twins.
00:07:59But there's nothing as old as last year's bike.
00:08:04And, I mean, vintage bikes are new in our minds.
00:08:08They're gleaming with dealer fresh surface finishes.
00:08:13But in this case...
00:08:16Or the promise.
00:08:17That's what seduces us to buy them when they're crusty.
00:08:21It's like, oh, but how wonderful it could be.
00:08:23Yes, and soon.
00:08:25So, in a few years.
00:08:29So, the new motorcycle, they took the thing to the Caltech wind tunnel.
00:08:34They developed the infamous whale.
00:08:39That's what Buell's customers called it when he put that highly effective fairing.
00:08:44This is a fairing that made 250s faster than the little narrow fairings where the rider's knees bulged out on
00:08:53the two sides.
00:08:55Just about every motorcycle that fairing was ever put on went faster.
00:09:01So, Calvin just blew them away.
00:09:06And that was the end of an era.
00:09:09Because at the 68 Pro Comp Board meeting, Triumph said, we want a 650cc formula.
00:09:20Same for everyone.
00:09:22Hmm.
00:09:24You do, huh?
00:09:26The Harley guys stood up and he said, well, you've got a 650, but we've got a 750.
00:09:32So, let's make it 750 while we're at it.
00:09:35And they voted.
00:09:36And it went through.
00:09:38And what happened because of this was that because bigger motorcycles were just catching on in the U.S., and
00:09:46I mean really bigger, that what happened next was it was the fastest motorcycles in the world, on the fastest
00:09:59racetrack in the world,
00:10:00written by an international field, and that happened in 1972 when Suzuki and Kawasaki brought their three-cylinder two-strokes
00:10:12to town.
00:10:14And in 1970, Honda, with a CB750-based racer, won the event by the narrowest margin because the motors were
00:10:29eating camchain tensioners and turning them into friction-reducing powder in the oil.
00:10:38Well, I had dinner with John Long and a bunch of these other retired road racers who were there, and
00:10:47John was regaling us with stories about how they did rebuild that.
00:10:51They were the ones who rebuilt that engine, and the other guys who were running it didn't and suffered the
00:10:58consequences.
00:10:58They suffered the consequences.
00:11:00But you know what?
00:11:01There's no asterisk like barely made it, right?
00:11:04You won.
00:11:05That's it.
00:11:06History says you won.
00:11:07Yes, because Dick Mann was a money rider.
00:11:15He had grown up in that whole money situation where if you didn't finish in the money, you were going
00:11:23to have to borrow something from people you're going to be racing against next weekend.
00:11:27And they probably would lend it to you, but how does it feel?
00:11:31Well, so then he won again in 71, this time on a PSA, three-cylinder, four-stroke.
00:11:46And in this case, they told him this is an 8,250 RPM engine.
00:11:52And in his own mind, he thought it feels like a 7,800 RPM engine.
00:11:57And that's how he rode it.
00:11:59And one by one, the great names fell by the wayside with all the ills of the internal combustion engine,
00:12:10and he won it a second time.
00:12:12What could be better?
00:12:14So then next year, the 750s are there, but they couldn't win because the tires all flew to bits.
00:12:20The race was won by little dinky 350 Yamahas both years.
00:12:25And then the 750 era, the TZ-751 in 1974, and it went on winning until 1982, which was the
00:12:35last time.
00:12:38But that was from 72 onward was the two-stroke era at Daytona.
00:12:46And remember this, it was not the TZ-750 that sent the four-strokes home.
00:12:52It was little 350 twins.
00:12:57Not only were they easy on tires, they were also easy on riders.
00:13:07The first time I went to Daytona was 1969, and my rider was a junior, and I was not eligible
00:13:16to be in the speedway on Sunday to watch the 200.
00:13:20So that meant that I crept under the sleeping platform and pretended to be a toolbox.
00:13:28A toolbox was pushed up against me so that it was assumed that there were other toolboxes and so forth
00:13:34in the space I was occupying.
00:13:37And as soon as we got past the geyser guards, we were in, and I was free to walk about.
00:13:44Now, it is of note that Kayla was third after putting a move on another rider on the last lap
00:13:55in classic Duhamel fashion.
00:14:02Well, that was really remarkable.
00:14:05Kayla Yakov is 18.
00:14:06She's riding a Ray Hall Ducati.
00:14:09And she hooked up with the lead group in the beginning of the race, six riders, blanket over them, as
00:14:14they say.
00:14:15But slowly, you know, some of those folks lost the draft.
00:14:18She was one of them.
00:14:20There was a lot of drama at the race.
00:14:22You know, Josh Heron won again.
00:14:24But it was Heron and Jacobson who were pitted, you know, one, I think it was one slot apart.
00:14:32Jacobson is leading.
00:14:34Heron comes in.
00:14:35They both pit at the same time.
00:14:36They're filming Jacobson leaving the pit.
00:14:40And the Moto America film crew is on the hot side of the pit.
00:14:44And as PJ is pulling out, the cameraman starts stepping back.
00:14:48And Heron is exiting the pit, and suddenly a cameraman is backing into his line, leaving the pit.
00:14:56He lifted the back wheel, hit the brakes, did not saw, did not crash, and was able to rejoin.
00:15:01But obviously frustrated, and he lost something like at least four seconds, maybe more.
00:15:09PJ crashed out of the lead, passing a lapper, as you might be rushed, as you feel like an angry
00:15:15Josh Heron might be coming.
00:15:16But all the while, it was Darren Binder and Kayla Yakov in third and fourth.
00:15:23Yakov was fourth, and she closed the gap and caught up and then passed the lap before the finish and
00:15:32drafted and I think got the line.
00:15:34Everyone was cheering.
00:15:35But it wasn't over.
00:15:37And you would think that Binder could have witnessed what happened on that lap and done something about it the
00:15:42next lap, but didn't.
00:15:45And Kayla just did a really expert, professional draft pass to take third and get the podium as a first
00:15:53woman on a Daytona 200 podium.
00:15:55And in wonderful fashion, I think actually seeing her on the interview, it was great because she was, you know,
00:16:05being a female in the paddock at all,
00:16:07I think historically may have been somewhat challenging.
00:16:10And to show up in leathers and race, like there's a lot of supportive people, but there's plenty who are
00:16:14not.
00:16:15And so to be an 18-year-old in that situation, and she's still, she's trying to not, I think
00:16:21she was really trying to not be emotional because she just didn't want to be emotional, right?
00:16:25She didn't want to be, you know, the 18-year-old crying.
00:16:30And then she, she teared up.
00:16:32She's like, oh, I've been trying so hard to, you know, keep it together.
00:16:35And I'm like, she had to cry.
00:16:37I mean, I'd cry.
00:16:38Like if I could get on the podium and watch me weep, buddy.
00:16:41So it was cool.
00:16:42It was really, it was really neat.
00:16:43And she just did it out of pure grit, talent, and determination.
00:16:47And, you know, she's had an incredible support, support crew like Ben Spees has been helping with Ray Hall, of
00:16:52course, as the manager.
00:16:52She did it right.
00:16:55She did it right.
00:16:56She did the things she knew were effective at that racetrack.
00:17:01Yeah.
00:17:02Be second off the chicane.
00:17:05Yeah.
00:17:06And then do it to them.
00:17:07Right.
00:17:07Yeah.
00:17:08Being thoughtful about it, really.
00:17:09Well, relevant to this is after Daytona in 69, I went to the AMA National in Annapolis.
00:17:20And I brought a woman with me, and she was not allowed in the paddock.
00:17:26She had to go and sit in the spectator seating and read a book.
00:17:34Well, it wasn't too long after that that a woman in the state of New York had applied for a
00:17:40license, AMA license, and it was sent to her.
00:17:46She showed up at the races, and she was told, oh, you're a woman.
00:17:51You can't do this.
00:17:52Go out of here.
00:17:54She went straight to the legal profession and said, do you fellows want to join me in an easy one?
00:18:04And the AMA was summoned.
00:18:08Sit right here.
00:18:09We will now read you the law, which basically said, yes, you can create a private club and so forth
00:18:17and so on.
00:18:18But if you're going to exclude women from this sport, you will not do it in the state of New
00:18:25York because it's not legal here to do that.
00:18:29So just think about it.
00:18:32So there was an important precursor, and I'm sorry that I don't know her name, but somebody did what Americans
00:18:43have done when they are wronged.
00:18:47They took it to law, and the law updated the interpretation.
00:18:55Rather than saying, well, I'm a man.
00:18:57These are all other men.
00:18:58We live in a society of men, and this is the way it's always been.
00:19:03So get back to the kitchen and mind the kids, and I'll see you in church Sunday.
00:19:09What is it?
00:19:10Kinder, Kuchen, and Kirche.
00:19:13So that was a good thing back then.
00:19:18And I'm a person whose mother, when I was 10, was called upon by circumstances to put a roof on
00:19:27the porch, three sides of a big old 1826 house.
00:19:33She put the roof on there.
00:19:35The flooring in the bridge had been there too long, and the boards were starting to go.
00:19:41So she organized that there should be trees sawn in the woods, that they should be sawn into planks, and
00:19:51she and another person were down there with sawhorses, creosoting all this stuff to put a new floor in the
00:19:57bridge.
00:19:57So I am accustomed to capable women.
00:20:02People getting done, yeah.
00:20:03Yes.
00:20:04My mom was like that too.
00:20:05Get it done.
00:20:07So hats off.
00:20:09Yes.
00:20:11So to speak, to Kayla.
00:20:15No, it was awesome.
00:20:17It was very cool to be there.
00:20:18And I was sitting, you know, I was sitting with, watching a race with Thad Wolf, who's, you know, a
00:20:24retired racer.
00:20:25He was around quite a bit in the 80s.
00:20:28Oh, he phoned yesterday.
00:20:30Yeah, he was at Cycle.
00:20:31And he, you know, he did racing and he was around Cycle and all that stuff and came up and
00:20:37raced TZ750s and all that.
00:20:40We were watching that with Curtis Adams, who is my hometown is Whittier.
00:20:46And I always admired Curtis because he was 6'4", 6'6", really tall guy.
00:20:51So he was tall.
00:20:52And I'm 6'2", but I was like, oh, wait, I got a chance.
00:20:55Curtis can road race and win.
00:20:57So I was covering him when I was at Cycle News back at Willis Springs.
00:21:01And he was racing Chuck Graves on a 7-11.
00:21:05And we just watched, we were watching the 200 and we're like, well, PJ's raced to lose at this point.
00:21:10And he did.
00:21:11And then we watched Kayla hunt down Darren Bender, who was racing on the MotoGP stage fairly recently.
00:21:19So Daytona's a unique track.
00:21:22And it was really something.
00:21:26Well, Daytona is a place where the advice is, don't run your new bike.
00:21:32You don't know much about your new bike and you know last year's bike really well.
00:21:38So you might have a chance at Daytona because a lot of people called it D-Tuna because a lot
00:21:47of people had to reduce their compression ratio there.
00:21:50Because the engine holds a high note second after second after second, just keeps on singing.
00:21:58And so in that sense, it is like a destructive dynamometer test.
00:22:05And once you've got your engine right, you know how to make it run at Daytona.
00:22:10That is a valuable piece of information.
00:22:13And that's why they say, don't run your new bike at Daytona.
00:22:19But of course, that doesn't apply today because we have computers so that we can analyze everything and know the
00:22:24future in advance.
00:22:26Good luck.
00:22:27Yeah, all right.
00:22:29Good luck.
00:22:30Ask AI.
00:22:3160% chance of being right, maybe.
00:22:34Yeah.
00:22:35You never know.
00:22:36Yeah, so Thad has raced there.
00:22:39And I think everyone, Ella Dreyer, young road racer coming up, she is 16 and she's the youngest racer to
00:22:49participate in the 200.
00:22:51And Thad knowingly went over and said, you know, I think, you know, the best advice I can give you
00:22:55is just finish the race.
00:22:57And everybody else said, everybody already told her that.
00:23:01Yeah.
00:23:01But finish the race, you know, get experience it, get across the line.
00:23:06And she did.
00:23:06So it's pretty neat.
00:23:09Definitely.
00:23:09And Heron, you know, Heron, that's four in a row for Heron, which is damn remarkable in five total.
00:23:14So he's joining Russell on the Mr. Daytona list, Scott Russell, who did it five times.
00:23:21New Hamill was always really good.
00:23:23There's that epic win back in the day when he was fairly injured and they had to kind of lever
00:23:28him onto the bike off of his cane and put him in the saddle.
00:23:33And then he went off and rode 200 miles and finished and won his amazing drive up to the wall.
00:23:41I don't know if that was the same year.
00:23:43It's a little foggy, but that was amazing how hard he stayed in the throttle as he was drifting up
00:23:48toward the wall.
00:23:49And you just thought, oh, man, he's going to splat.
00:23:51And he didn't splat.
00:23:53It was really impressive.
00:23:56That's the thing about Daytona is over the years, it is such an interesting and unique track.
00:24:02And then we had international folks for so long.
00:24:05And I think, you know, there's been the lull.
00:24:08They didn't want super bikes to be doing, you know, 213 miles an hour or whatever.
00:24:13So now we're doing next-gen super sport, which you're running, you know, mid-180s.
00:24:19Baggers are running mid-180s, by the way.
00:24:22185, 186.
00:24:25I don't know.
00:24:25I had breakfast with Kyle Wyman.
00:24:27And he mentioned offhandedly that he thought they might break 190 this year with the off-season gains.
00:24:35But it looks like we stayed under that.
00:24:37That's a lot of air to crush on a bagger.
00:24:39That's a lot of air to crush.
00:24:40Yes, it is.
00:24:41It certainly is.
00:24:43But that big refrigerator in the front, that big obstruction that they have to push.
00:24:50Yeah, I understand the bags are not, you know, you would think maybe the bags, bags could be good or
00:24:55the bags could be bad.
00:24:58Only the tunnel knows.
00:24:59But it turns out, you know, from what I understand from talking to a few folks, is that they aren't
00:25:04really hugely detrimental and they aren't a benefit.
00:25:09And I don't think, you know, it'd be nice if you could sort of fill the gap with the bags,
00:25:14you know, make them a little bigger.
00:25:16Get them to try to enhance the continuity between the faring over the rider and off the back of the
00:25:23bike.
00:25:23But it's outside the rules.
00:25:25Contrary to the spirit, another big change that occurred at Daytona in 69, I drained the gearbox oil on the
00:25:37two new Yamahas that we had, a TD2-250 and a TR2-350.
00:25:46And I'm walking around with the drain pan and finally somebody in a AMA shirt.
00:25:56And let me catch his eye.
00:25:58And I said, what do we do with this?
00:26:00And I showed him the oil.
00:26:02And he said, well, I know what everybody else does.
00:26:07See that ditch over there?
00:26:08He said, you just kind of amble over there and pour it in.
00:26:14So that's what I did.
00:26:15And today, of course, the next thing that would happen would be the black arrow of an environmental group would
00:26:23be sticking out between your shoulder blades.
00:26:26Naughty behavior mustn't.
00:26:28Mustn't.
00:26:29So now they have little cabins, at least two little cabins.
00:26:35And each cabin is staffed by an older, experienced gentleman, of whom there are a good many in Florida.
00:26:44And there is a barrel for unwanted fuel, a barrel for oil, a barrel for coolant, a barrel for brake
00:26:53fluid.
00:26:55So we're doing things right now.
00:26:57Yeah, we got that out at the airport, too.
00:27:00I've been going out to my local airport working on vintage aircraft and messing around.
00:27:04And we make the run over to the big brick, the cinder block shed.
00:27:09It's run by the county.
00:27:11And away we go.
00:27:12We've got a great big giant drain.
00:27:13We can take our ashless dispersant oil that we've just drained out of a tailor craft or cub and put
00:27:22it in the right spot.
00:27:23Hopefully we get it used for something else.
00:27:26It was the classic old popular science.
00:27:28It's an illustration from, I don't remember the year, but it's, say, it's 50s-ish.
00:27:37And this is how you dispose of your oil.
00:27:40And it showed you to dig a pit and fill the bottom with gravel, make it of this dimension,
00:27:46and then you can pour your oil, you know, in this pit that you dug in your yard.
00:27:51From the earth, from the earth, ye arose to the earth, ye shall return.
00:27:58Yeah, except when you want your groundwater to not taste like 2050.
00:28:02Yes.
00:28:03So I think we've done pretty well to pick that up and put it somewhere, put it in the barrel,
00:28:09send it somewhere that maybe we can do it again.
00:28:12I know there's some very thrifty people who use oil for the oil furnace that they've built for their garage.
00:28:21And they, which, you know, I could see that happening in the colder climate.
00:28:28Yep, it's been known to happen.
00:28:30There are people that will come by and take your barrel of unwanted liquid away.
00:28:36You wonder where they're going with it.
00:28:41There was one company that had an unfortunate reputation for botched fuel stops, and I won't mention their name out
00:28:50of natural restraint.
00:28:56And I worked it out.
00:28:58I saw them practicing one day, and basically what the management was saying to the pay-owns who were performing
00:29:09this minuet,
00:29:13realize that the slightest error by any one of you could make the difference between winning and losing.
00:29:22I want you to be really tense.
00:29:25I want you to be worrying about a misstep and not paying attention to what you're doing.
00:29:34So in comes Paul Smart.
00:29:38I think this was Talladega.
00:29:40And with decisive motions, the team manager stepped forward with the hose.
00:29:49This was overhead hose refuelers in this time.
00:29:53And you had to twist lock them on.
00:29:56There were three lugs on the connector.
00:29:59And then you pulled a lever, and the poppet valve was pushed into your tank, and the fluid rushed in.
00:30:07He pulled the thing, and you can imagine him counting inwardly one and two and three.
00:30:14And when he got to about 15, he's looking all around.
00:30:23And he's trying to shut the valve by this time, and he's trying to get the thing off, and it
00:30:30won't come off.
00:30:32He put real effort into it so that the rear end of the tank began to rise up off of
00:30:38its rubber cushions.
00:30:40And Smarty is revving the engine as if to say, could you snap it up?
00:30:48We're losing time here.
00:30:51And I'm counting seconds.
00:30:52I'm a bystander.
00:30:55Finally, with a tremendous effort, he breaks the thing off of the tank.
00:31:01There's no leakage.
00:31:05Paul smokes the clutch all the way down the pit lane and loses the clutch.
00:31:13And I saw one at, oh, what's that?
00:31:20Paul Ricard in the south of France.
00:31:24And similar business.
00:31:26It could all be bad luck, of course.
00:31:28And one time, it definitely was.
00:31:30Rider comes in, they hook up, nothing comes out.
00:31:35Nothing is happening.
00:31:37So they disconnect it.
00:31:39They send the rider out.
00:31:40Frantically, they're draining fuel from the overhead can and putting it into their B unit.
00:31:47They had a B, a second tower.
00:31:50What had happened was that the hose structure is, it has a wire, a ground wire in it,
00:31:58because you don't want to spark when you're handling fuel.
00:32:02It has layers of fabric.
00:32:06And it has an inner liner.
00:32:08The inner liner, somehow, a section of it detached and went across the neck of the thing
00:32:17and blocked the flow completely.
00:32:21But because by this time, of course, they were expecting trouble.
00:32:25They were expecting to drink deep at the font of bad luck.
00:32:31And they were able to refuel them with the second tower.
00:32:36But that's what those high-speed tracks do to you, is they, you have to carry out these rituals.
00:32:43You have to do all of these things right.
00:32:47And there are people who can't get in step with that.
00:32:51Because what I told people when we were doing fuel stops was,
00:32:56the rider hates to stop.
00:32:58The rider wants to stay in his rhythm.
00:33:01That's the safest place for him or her.
00:33:06And so making a fuel stop is a bore.
00:33:09Let's just do it step by step and get it over with and get them out.
00:33:15And the teams that were always successful would run a couple of false fuel stops.
00:33:21They would actually transfer fuel.
00:33:23It was a live stop, but it was just practice.
00:33:27And then the attitude was, there, we can do that.
00:33:30You see, it worked.
00:33:31Okay, we're ready for Sunday.
00:33:36And good stuff.
00:33:42Daytona is not a place for experiments.
00:33:45Daytona is not a place where you go to try stuff.
00:33:50And when Rich Schlachter, rider, East Coast guy, and I were given the use of a TZ-250D in 1977,
00:34:04in first practice, we got a baseline.
00:34:08And then I pulled the ignition timing back to 1.8.
00:34:15And that was better.
00:34:17It tacked up.
00:34:18Same gear.
00:34:19Pulled it back to 1.6.
00:34:21We picked up 300 revolutions on those two changes with no change elsewhere.
00:34:28Same gearing.
00:34:30It's just going faster.
00:34:32What Kevin means is on the top end.
00:34:35Yeah.
00:34:36So they're in six.
00:34:38When you're on the banking and the tack is over here, and the tack, of course, is banging, bouncing all
00:34:45around in its rubber mountings,
00:34:49it's quite a, it's not exactly efficient information transfer.
00:34:56But we're not looking for, you know, we're not saying like, oh, my top speed was 131 miles an hour.
00:35:01When you're, you have the bike, you have the tack.
00:35:03And if you're in top gear and your gearing is the same, you pick up 300 RPM, that's a huge
00:35:08positive because you're going faster.
00:35:10It's a biggie.
00:35:11So that evening, I widened the exhaust ports and raised them a millimeter and polished the edges.
00:35:19Another 300 revolutions.
00:35:22Same gearing.
00:35:24And we just kept doing stupid stuff.
00:35:26We put on 36 millimeter carburetors and got them dialed.
00:35:31I can't believe how lucky we were.
00:35:33I can't take credit for any of this because we are two crazy guys that went to Daytona to try
00:35:39experiments.
00:35:41But Schlecker says, I'm going to go over to the AMA office and see where we're at.
00:35:47So he goes off.
00:35:50After a while, he comes back and he said, we're third on lap time.
00:35:56He said, we're third.
00:35:58And that was the moment when he made the transition from being a talented clubman to being something else, you
00:36:05know, to be announced.
00:36:11It was a great day.
00:36:15But that's naughty.
00:36:17You can't count on being that lucky.
00:36:25Those 250Ds, they had, of course, steel tube frames and horrible cracking tubular steel braced swing arms.
00:36:34They looked right, but they had certain problems.
00:36:41And we just had that wonderful experience.
00:36:47In 1982, Honda decided they were going to make this big push at Daytona.
00:36:56They brought 1,000 CCV4s called FWS.
00:37:00And everyone is being sort of, oh, Honda's bringing a super weapon.
00:37:08And Freddie Spencer on one, Mike Baldwin on the other.
00:37:13And I don't know what Roberto Pietri was riding.
00:37:16Maybe another one.
00:37:19But at any rate, they went tremendously fast through practice.
00:37:23It was just stunning.
00:37:24And they were equipped to change tires during the race.
00:37:28They had Suzuka eight-hour stuff.
00:37:30And that transformed Daytona.
00:37:34Because before that, the tire companies were saying to themselves, we have to make a tire that will go 200
00:37:39miles at the speed.
00:37:41With the extra load of the banking, just make something, you know, out of stone.
00:37:50Well, in the race, Honda had tire trouble.
00:37:55And so they were pulling in and getting a tire and going back out and going fast and earning their
00:38:02way forward again and then having more tire trouble.
00:38:04And meanwhile, here's Graham Crosby plugging away on a bike built at the last moment in the parts department out
00:38:15of no longer wanted 0W31 parts.
00:38:22And that thing was designed to win Daytona.
00:38:25And it did.
00:38:26It just kept chugging.
00:38:27It didn't have any exceptional tire trouble.
00:38:31But Freddie was second.
00:38:36And Mike was in there, too.
00:38:40So they were, of course, horribly disappointed because they wanted to make this big splash.
00:38:46But it was a big splash, even if they didn't win, because it changed the nature of the undertaking.
00:38:53And that was cool.
00:38:57And, of course, we knew that Daytona was going to turn into a four-stroke race eventually, that the manufacturers
00:39:03were saying, oh, AMA, you tell us what rules you want.
00:39:08Then we comply.
00:39:12But it wasn't really true.
00:39:14It was sort of like, I'm in your country, so you rule.
00:39:17And 1985, it became a superbike.
00:39:22But the thing was that when superbike first came to Daytona, or when it first became a national class, that
00:39:30the AMA had the good sense to make the races very short.
00:39:36I'm sure that the sense was talked into them by certain persons, but, you know, a 50-mile race.
00:39:45And the rules said that front forks and swing arms may be altered or replaced.
00:39:55And that was a good one, too, because it meant that put on real stuff.
00:40:00Because, as Mark noted earlier in this diatribe, duotribe, that those bikes weren't built to be raceable.
00:40:14They were built by engineers who had been told, USA has a 60-mile-per-hour speed limit.
00:40:20Put in plenty of power, 1960s chassis, tires, and suspension, thumbs up, okay.
00:40:28And they weren't.
00:40:30And the AMA had the sense to realize, or it was explained to them.
00:40:36And so those bikes, those first era superbikes, the sit-up jobs, had to be completely re-engineered.
00:40:47All new suspension, all new wheels, tremendous reinforcing of the chassis.
00:40:56In 1978, Goodyear had had enough being told that their tires were causing a certain other manufacturer's motorcycle to weave.
00:41:08And so Goodyear picked up the phone and dialed Goodyear Aerospace.
00:41:15And they sent over people who said, yeah, we'll put strain gauges on this thing.
00:41:20And you go out and run a practice.
00:41:21And then we'll make a wireframe model.
00:41:25And we'll animate it with the motions revealed by the strain gauges.
00:41:30And they showed, on the screen, they showed the chassis going, it was wonderful.
00:41:40And it shut the complaints up.
00:41:47The manufacturer went away and attended to their own knitting.
00:41:53Yeah.
00:41:54Well, those 76 BMWs, you know, I was there in Daytona with the three that BMW brought down, the R90s,
00:42:01built by Udo Giedel.
00:42:03And it was so wonderful to talk to Udo because you just got a lot of the backstory.
00:42:09Like, what happened to Fisher?
00:42:11And the rear stand on the axle goes into the axle, holds the bike.
00:42:16Like, the pipes are just above it.
00:42:18And Udo's like, yeah, he had gearbox problems.
00:42:20Somebody bounced on the back of the bike and bent the pipes.
00:42:25And it jammed his linkage.
00:42:26And he was able to get through most of the race.
00:42:28But then it hung up between fourth and fifth.
00:42:32And it over-revved.
00:42:33And it hurt it and ended it.
00:42:35So it's just, you know, and talking to Udo with all the changes about lifting the engine and moving it
00:42:41forward.
00:42:41And if you looked at the cylinder, I think it's the left cylinder, it's up against the frame rail.
00:42:47The twin loop coming down, it is like pushed up and forward as far as it'll go until the cylinder
00:42:54basically hits the frame.
00:42:56It was remarkable.
00:42:57And it was cool because those early Kawasaki's, they were incredibly powerful.
00:43:05They had plenty more power than the BMW R90s, but they couldn't make them turn or get off corners.
00:43:12They just were not working.
00:43:15So it took a few seasons.
00:43:16And, of course, everything changed.
00:43:18And suddenly, you know, ripping 1025cc four-cylinders were doing all the biz.
00:43:23Well, this is the thing about handling.
00:43:26And that is that it's like the explanation was made to BMW people during the time of their S1000RR when
00:43:45it was eating tires.
00:43:47And Marco Malandri said, in Formula One, where BMW had tremendous experience, in Formula One, you work to censor data.
00:44:00But in this kind of racing, you have to work to what the rider says.
00:44:07Because if the rider doesn't have confidence, a choir of engineers singing the praises of their algorithm will have no
00:44:17effect.
00:44:19And so this kind of experimental handling amelioration is necessary.
00:44:27There is no computer that will just give you a good one.
00:44:34When Honda had to make a proper superbike out of the CB900F, the first thing they threw away was that
00:44:47lead flywheel of a front wheel.
00:44:50And they put a little 16 in there, sweet little 16, and a tubeless slick tire, and lots of other
00:45:02changes.
00:45:02Because riders could haul on the bars, and the whirling flywheel, Daytona, really spins those flywheels.
00:45:13Because it doesn't want to steer.
00:45:15No, I don't have to, and I'm not going to.
00:45:18So they had to put little stuff on.
00:45:21They had to make huge changes to convert a beach cruiser into a road race bike.
00:45:31And this is why the bagger's experience is so wonderful.
00:45:36Because it shows that the things that work in racing will work on a bagger.
00:45:44And I think that's so wonderful.
00:45:47Because I watched carefully at Laguna, and those things change direction at respectable speed.
00:45:57They aren't heavy and slow, like the McGrath Highway in Boston at rush hour.
00:46:06They are nimble.
00:46:08And further, they slide rather than high side.
00:46:12It's really quite a control mechanism.
00:46:16You, instead of fearing, having the terrible fear of the two-stroke era,
00:46:25as it slips and grips, and one of those times, you're going over the top,
00:46:32it just goes into this lovely slide.
00:46:36Maybe it has something to do with the 620-pound minimum weight
00:46:40with standard road race weight wheels and brakes and tires underneath it.
00:46:47Good unsprung weight ratio.
00:46:49Keep those pieces of rubber kissing the pavement.
00:46:56So, I think the bagger's experience has a lesson to teach us.
00:47:01And those McCandless brothers in Northern Ireland who developed the featherbed frame
00:47:07that was adopted by Norton,
00:47:10a frame that was the model for so many frames in the years that followed,
00:47:18that's how they developed that chassis was by constant testing and changing
00:47:25so that they got a feel for what was possible with this chassis.
00:47:31Good stuff.
00:47:33Real good stuff.
00:47:35Yeah, Kayla Yakoff was talking about the banking.
00:47:38I mean, it's a place where currently people are suffering about two Gs.
00:47:45She says it's hard to breathe.
00:47:47You know, you really got to get off the banking and then you catch up on your breaths
00:47:51because it's a pretty good jamming situation.
00:47:55But, yeah, the baggers in the early Superbikes, that 76 era especially,
00:48:01and that flexibility of rules allowing just enough creativity to make the bikes work
00:48:09and evolve to what we got in, you know, 83 with interceptors and stuff
00:48:14where it was actually handling became a marketable trait.
00:48:18You know, prior to that, it was all like, yeah.
00:48:22Quarter mile and top speed.
00:48:23Quarter mile and top speed, man.
00:48:25That was what we were going for.
00:48:27Because one way of looking at the magazine business is that it provides young,
00:48:34hot persons with bar talk about their favorite subject.
00:48:40Or social media talk at this point, too.
00:48:42Well, that's a later development.
00:48:45Yeah.
00:48:46One of the things at Daytona you have to look out for is fuel starvation.
00:48:53In 1972, we brought our barn job homemade H2R, 752 stroke, down there.
00:49:02And my rider went out and he said, the cut's dead at 8,500.
00:49:09He said, I thought it had seized.
00:49:11But then the tack needle went down when it got to six.
00:49:15It cut back in.
00:49:18So that told me that I had to get everything out of the way of the fuel.
00:49:24No quick disconnects, no filters, bigger float valve in the carburetors.
00:49:30And when I had fuel flowing from taking the bowl plugs out of all three carburetors into a trough that
00:49:40debouched into a jar,
00:49:43when I had 50% more than what I had calculated to be the likely fuel consumption on full throttle,
00:49:52it sang its song all the way up to the little let's stop here number, which was about 9,200
00:50:00in those days.
00:50:03So always something to think of on other racetracks, your motorcycle, the float bowls might have enough fuel in them
00:50:12for you to do everything without running it dry.
00:50:16But the moment you get to a place where it has to sing that dulcet song, for all those seconds,
00:50:24it will pump the bowls dry and cut.
00:50:28Oh, it's one of my favorite things that you've repeatedly talked to me about over the years.
00:50:33It's pounds per horsepower hour.
00:50:35Oh, yes.
00:50:37Well, 0.5 pounds per horsepower per hour is a rule of thumb for four strokes and 0.65 for
00:50:47two strokes.
00:50:51And we ran our, I don't remember what year it was.
00:50:56It was an 80s 250 Yamaha on the dyno of the former snowmobile expert out in Buffalo.
00:51:08And when that thing was working really well, its fuel consumption was like 0.595 pound per horsepower per hour.
00:51:24And, of course, where did the rest of the fuel go?
00:51:27Out the tailpipe.
00:51:28I always wanted to put a spark plug in the tailpipe.
00:51:30See?
00:51:33It could discourage drafting.
00:51:36It could be a safety issue.
00:51:40It's common to blow a lot of fuel out the tailpipe on a two-stroke.
00:51:44There's not...
00:51:45Yes, because when the...
00:51:47The door slams late.
00:51:48The mixture is innocent.
00:51:51It's brushing up these transfer ducts.
00:51:53It makes...
00:51:54Some of it makes the turn.
00:51:56And it enters the cylinder.
00:51:58Where do I go?
00:52:00Some of them go to the exhaust port because it's over there sucking away.
00:52:03The pipe signal from the exhaust pipe is saying,
00:52:07this way, this way, little darling.
00:52:12And, of course, you'd like to talk sweetly to that fuel
00:52:16and have it all go to the back of the cylinder and perform the loop.
00:52:20But they were wasteful.
00:52:23So...
00:52:23Well, I have a question for you that's barely related.
00:52:27We used spark plugs at Daytona, right?
00:52:30Just to confirm.
00:52:31Okay.
00:52:31It's connected.
00:52:32Great.
00:52:34Did you spend time indexing spark plugs in your career?
00:52:38I never got to that.
00:52:39I always had something to do.
00:52:42Yeah, because you can buy these washers, right?
00:52:44So indexing the spark plug is aiming the open part of the positive and negative.
00:52:51Toward the oncoming mixture, yeah.
00:52:53So the spark is just unshrouded.
00:52:57It's just pure spark.
00:52:58Here's the mixture.
00:53:00Let me have it.
00:53:01Let's go.
00:53:01Let's light this thing up.
00:53:02And Paul Dean, the great Paul Dean,
00:53:05has been involved in sprint car racing for a very long time.
00:53:08And he said that indexing the plugs on their 500 or 800 horsepower engine
00:53:14picked them up something like maybe 5% to 10% aiming them all at the intake.
00:53:21So that's a lot.
00:53:23I mean, that is a huge amount.
00:53:24And you just buy these washers of different thicknesses.
00:53:27You mark the plug where the opening of the electrode is,
00:53:31and you thread it in and torque it down and just get it into that ballpark.
00:53:35I've considered it.
00:53:36You know, it's easy to do on a single cylinder.
00:53:39I could probably start with that and see how that goes.
00:53:42Dare I say Belisette.
00:53:43I don't want to.
00:53:46There are plenty of other singles in the world where you could index your plug.
00:53:49You know, I kind of want to do that on the XS650, too.
00:53:54Well, I saw it.
00:53:55There was a day when I saw a difference in between ways of thinking about spark plugs.
00:54:01Gary Nixon was asked to ride his 1976 Irv Kanemoto C&J framed Kawasaki KR 750 in a demo at
00:54:16Loudon, New Hampshire.
00:54:19And I had a box of the plugs that we used then.
00:54:22So that's what I put in it.
00:54:24And after practice, he said,
00:54:29the thing don't pick up real good off the corner.
00:54:32You've got some of them spark plugs that stick out.
00:54:36Yes, in fact, I do.
00:54:38Because that was the last spark plugs that we were using in TZ750s as the 80s got underway.
00:54:48You could even see the insulator sticking out.
00:54:51And then the fine platinum iridium wire and the side electrode.
00:54:58And I put a set of those in there, and he told me that was way better.
00:55:05Yeah, the P and the NGK plugs, it's the B.
00:55:08You know, you might get your B8ES or your B7ES into your Norton or whatever.
00:55:14But you can also get the P model where it protrudes that stuff out.
00:55:17And, you know, that's not...
00:55:18Projected tip, they called it.
00:55:21And when we started out with TD1s in the mid-1960s,
00:55:26they called out B10EN,
00:55:30which was the spark plug that had the gap down inside the shell.
00:55:36And finally, I asked...
00:55:41Oh, Bobby Strallman.
00:55:44Bobby Strallman, yeah.
00:55:45Who was the champion man.
00:55:47I showed him his little monocle.
00:55:50His little monocle, yes.
00:55:52And I showed him a set of those.
00:55:53I said, this is what we used to run.
00:55:55He said, today, that's a top fuel plug.
00:55:58They got the plug gap down inside where it's partly protected from the firestorm.
00:56:06So that projected tip spark plug, by the way,
00:56:09had a heat range similar to what you'd put in the Triumph 650
00:56:13if you were going on a long trip on the interstates.
00:56:18Didn't want to burn things down.
00:56:21And it worked a treat in TZ750s.
00:56:24It was certainly better.
00:56:26Oh, yeah.
00:56:28Well, you know, if we're in the 70s era,
00:56:31I have to bring up a story you told me
00:56:33about an unnamed road racer
00:56:35who was growing recreational crops,
00:56:39such as perhaps marijuana,
00:56:40on freeway interchanges.
00:56:43Yes.
00:56:43And so I had the audience of all these road racers
00:56:46who were racing in the 60s and through the 70s
00:56:48and into the 80s.
00:56:50And I said, oh, yeah, you know,
00:56:52that Kevin Cameron told me about this guy.
00:56:54Like, because they were all talking about
00:56:55how they funded their racing.
00:56:57And John Long is talking about winning a race in Italy.
00:57:00And he's driving to Imola for the next thing.
00:57:02And he's got to earn his money.
00:57:04And he's driving a van.
00:57:05And he pulls in.
00:57:05And he's like, I don't know the difference
00:57:07between benzina and whatever else was on the side.
00:57:09But he's like, there was fuel that was cheaper.
00:57:11I'm like, well, I'm going to get that cheap stuff.
00:57:13And he said he put it in his van.
00:57:14And he didn't have a lot of money.
00:57:16So he just put a little bit in.
00:57:19And he got like a mile down the road.
00:57:21And the van stopped because it was diesel.
00:57:24And he's like, oh, no.
00:57:25You know, it's diesel.
00:57:26They were on fumes.
00:57:27And he bought something like five gallons of it.
00:57:29And so, you know, he barely used it.
00:57:31And he's like, drains it out.
00:57:34And he gets some like last bit of gasoline
00:57:36that he had for his race bike.
00:57:37And he gets in the van.
00:57:38They go back.
00:57:39He sells the fuel that he drained out back to the station.
00:57:42And then he buys the right fuel.
00:57:44So they're trying to get money together.
00:57:45So there were a lot of these stories.
00:57:47And then he won this big race in Italy.
00:57:48And he said, you know, he had a suitcase full of cash.
00:57:51Millions of lira.
00:57:52And he's like, his wife, Theo, is like,
00:57:54he's like, yeah, you can buy whatever you want
00:57:56at the Gucci store or whatever.
00:57:57You know, it's very cool to hear these stories
00:57:59living in the van racing.
00:58:00And I asked all of them.
00:58:02I was like, yeah, do you know anybody, you know,
00:58:03who did that, who was growing weed
00:58:06in the freeway interchanges in Georgia and stuff?
00:58:08And they're like, wow, that could have been this guy.
00:58:10It could have been that guy.
00:58:11It could have been that guy.
00:58:13And there's that other guy who was a coke dealer.
00:58:16So it was pretty interesting insight into that era.
00:58:19Pretty cool.
00:58:20One time I was at the fence and I looked over and Bud Axlund was there.
00:58:30And Nick Rikiki goes by.
00:58:32Nick Rikiki was a New York City kid from Queens, I think.
00:58:39And he advanced really rapidly in road racing.
00:58:46He was spending everything that he could make.
00:58:48He got up at five o'clock in the morning and delivered orange juice in his van.
00:58:53And he was doing everything he could to scratch up the money, you know,
00:58:57600 bucks for cylinders, 600 bucks for cranks.
00:59:01Because the two strokes ate those things up.
00:59:04They lasted about 900 miles apiece.
00:59:06So he goes by.
00:59:11I think he was being timed at that point.
00:59:14And he went probably 183, which was good going in those times.
00:59:19And I could hear Bud Axlund saying something next to me.
00:59:23He said, what he was saying was, now, who is that going about a million miles an hour?
00:59:32Looks to me like one of those black and scrungy East Coast bikes.
00:59:38I think, didn't Miles Baldwin get called that too?
00:59:42Oh, probably.
00:59:43Because he, you know, he broke all the fairing off his bike and he didn't have a lot of money.
00:59:49And so he raced one whole season with no lower on.
00:59:52Didn't make any difference.
00:59:54Because.
00:59:55Pretty full behind the fairings on a TZ.
00:59:58John Britton told me about testing his bike, the bike that he built, including the engine,
01:00:07with a carbon fiber frame on this 20-mile straightaway famous place in New Zealand
01:00:16where the white helmet people, the people who tried to outdo one another in craziness.
01:00:24And he said, let's take the lower fairing off.
01:00:28Bike went faster.
01:00:30He said, it only made sense because here's the narrow engine and the foot pegs are out here.
01:00:36The rider's feet are here and there's this big space.
01:00:40Just let the air through.
01:00:45Well, might not be theoretically right, but if it goes faster, isn't that what you want?
01:00:52Because you have to remember, Daytona or Bonneville, anywhere else, two-strokes, went fast.
01:01:00Motorcycles go fast by just cramming themselves through the air with brute force.
01:01:06And that's why I love the winglets.
01:01:09Because I know a lot of people are upset about winglets.
01:01:13So they wish that they would stop looking that way.
01:01:19But imagine that you're nearing top speed and the front wheel is coming up.
01:01:26Now, you don't have control.
01:01:29Are you going to go 200 miles an hour on one wheel?
01:01:32You might feel caution was necessary.
01:01:36But the winglets gently push the front end back down, restoring rider control so that acceleration can continue.
01:01:48Now, an anti-wheeling system cannot do this because it works by closing, by squeaking the throttle towards closed, just
01:01:58enough to let the front wheel come down and touch.
01:02:02Removing torque.
01:02:03Yeah.
01:02:03So you're just reducing power until the front wheel comes down.
01:02:09What you want is a helping hand from above.
01:02:13That is, arrow downforce.
01:02:16It's free.
01:02:17Well, mostly free.
01:02:19There is lift over drag, after all.
01:02:21And you attach all this stuff to your motorcycle.
01:02:25The old timers are shielding their gaze or averting it altogether.
01:02:30But it works.
01:02:31Keep on accelerating.
01:02:35But at the same time, there's a small but vocal group in MotoGP who would like to see what 600
01:02:42cc's would be like.
01:02:47So, live long and learn.
01:02:54Well, if you're managing two world championship series, world superbike and MotoGP, how do you want it to turn out,
01:03:03I guess?
01:03:04Who's going fast?
01:03:06Who's going fast?
01:03:07Who goes faster?
01:03:08Production bikes or prototypes?
01:03:11One of the tales told to me by Cook Nelson, who was editor of Cycle at one time.
01:03:20He's the one.
01:03:20Well, and also, he was part of the West Coast contingent at AFM who was racing, basically, superbike production, Ducatis.
01:03:29Yep.
01:03:29They were there.
01:03:31Udo Guido had no tuning background in road racing.
01:03:35He was just a clever electrical engineer who loved motorcycles and was willing to test things and try things and
01:03:41think about them.
01:03:42He was not, he did not come out of, you know, Germany somehow tuning BMWs his entire life.
01:03:50Butler and Smith said, hey, we got these 750s, see what you can do.
01:03:54That was it.
01:03:55And he just started messing with them.
01:03:57And then it became time to do 900s.
01:03:59And that, for BMW, saved the company.
01:04:02If you need spare parts, go to the warranty department.
01:04:06You can have anything you have in there.
01:04:10Anyway, but Cook was there.
01:04:11Cook, that's the point.
01:04:12Oh, yeah.
01:04:13We were, you know, California Hot Rod.
01:04:16And they were calling them California Hot Rods.
01:04:18Like, that's what these production-based superbikes were.
01:04:21And, you know, Cook and Phil are out there, like, trying to squeeze this new Ducati 750 into, you know,
01:04:28something else.
01:04:30Proven by Paul Smart at the 1972 MLA 200 that it can go and that it will rev 9000 and
01:04:35it may not scatter.
01:04:37Amazing.
01:04:38Anyway, tell your Cook story.
01:04:39Well, he knew that Mike Baldwin from the uncool East Coast was making waves.
01:04:51And so, he asked Kenny, what about this Baldwin kid?
01:04:56What about him?
01:04:58Well, I mean, is he for real?
01:05:01And Kenny said, I can tell you this.
01:05:06Of the three things it takes to win races, he's got one of them.
01:05:11And what's that?
01:05:13He's fast.
01:05:17And this is a very important thing.
01:05:21Kenny is not just playing with you when he says these things.
01:05:27Because he knows that you have to have a way of getting along with the people who are paying.
01:05:35He knows that you have to bring your judgment with you.
01:05:40Do not cast it to the wind.
01:05:44And it's a complicated thing.
01:05:47Nicky Lauda said that half of what's involved in racing is getting on the starting line with a running car.
01:05:57And, you know, the crazy stuff, the racing and remembering everything about the way the tires and the pavement and
01:06:05all this stuff are changing.
01:06:09That's essential, too.
01:06:11So, Kenny was telling it straight.
01:06:14Well, he's got one of them.
01:06:15He's fast.
01:06:18Just reminding everyone that, as Kevin Cameron has often said, 100% doesn't make the grid.
01:06:26And fiercely prioritizing what does get you to the grid.
01:06:29They may not be perfect, but making those choices on the way is probably part of Nicky's, Nicky Lauda's conversation
01:06:36as well.
01:06:37One of the interesting stories from the fellas I was eating with down in Daytona, John Long and McLaughlin and
01:06:43all those guys, Gary Klinsman was there,
01:06:46was they were testing tires for this 200-mile race.
01:06:53And he said they were trying to do it without a stop, I think.
01:06:58They were looking into whether they could get it done without a stop.
01:07:01But the pavement at the speedway at the time was kind of weathered, so it had a lot of points
01:07:08on it.
01:07:09And he said they were throwing tire chunks out, and it was just tearing them up.
01:07:14And then eventually, you know, it got paved, and away we went.
01:07:18But it was a lot of fun.
01:07:21It's really fun to hear about the paddock, hear about the life.
01:07:25You've talked about it so many times, about being there, where you had, you know, on the fast end and
01:07:33the eventual factory end,
01:07:34your Irv Kanemotos and Calcarothers, who were no strangers to the hacksaw.
01:07:40You know, just whatever it was, cut the pipes, cut the pipes, cut the steering head, re-angle the steering
01:07:47head overnight.
01:07:48Overnight.
01:07:49Do it and do.
01:07:531976, we had a KR250 that was going pretty well.
01:07:58And I think the reason was that I'd made a little weir around the two 4-inch gears that joined
01:08:05the two crankshafts.
01:08:06It has two cylinders, one ahead of the other.
01:08:10And I'd made a 1-millimeter hole to let oil in.
01:08:15So the gears were throwing it out, and the 1-millimeter hole was letting it in.
01:08:20So instead of drowning in solid oil, the gears were able to do what gears do, transmit power, run out,
01:08:28eat it.
01:08:30So Ron Pierce qualified on pole, and Cal must have said to himself, well, shit, now I've got to go
01:08:39do it.
01:08:39Which meant what I described for the 250, widening, raising the exhaust ports, taking 20 millimeters out of the head
01:08:48pipe, raise, pushing compression up.
01:08:52So there, that ought to do.
01:08:54And my bike was out with a water pump driveshaft failure.
01:08:59How can a water pump driveshaft fail?
01:09:01Anyway, that's what happened.
01:09:03And Kenny prevails.
01:09:12So in those days, I wanted to go to Daytona and live there and just try stuff.
01:09:19But I remember hearing Gene Romero say, why do we have to be here all week?
01:09:27I want to just get in, race, and go home.
01:09:31And I thought, I am not sympathetic to this viewpoint.
01:09:39But people come to Daytona for different reasons.
01:09:42Well, you know, it got popular because there's so much of the country that's still suffering the death grip of
01:09:50Arctic biting frost.
01:09:53And it's always the place where we, you know, people got to be set free.
01:09:57It wasn't the cool West Coast.
01:09:59You know, all those East Coast people, you among them, getting in the van, slogging through the slush to the
01:10:06beautiful sunny climes and slightly humid spring air of Daytona Beach.
01:10:12Remember Phil Schilling, the late Phil Schilling, arriving on a flight from California wearing his puffy jacket.
01:10:20And he would wear it all week because he was never warm.
01:10:27And Daytona, you know, we're basking in this wonderful sunlight, and he's in his puffy jacket.
01:10:36I always thought that was another take on Daytona.
01:10:42Yeah, you mentioned Ron Pierce.
01:10:44He was down there as well.
01:10:45Was he?
01:10:46Yeah.
01:10:46Yeah, Ron was there.
01:10:48He's got a big winery that he makes wine at.
01:10:51Oh, cool.
01:10:52The Trailblazers.
01:10:52Yeah, the Trailblazers dinner is this week.
01:10:55And Ron's going in.
01:10:57Ron always brings the wine.
01:10:58He's driving down with 25 cases, apparently, for the Trailblazers.
01:11:02It was really cool.
01:11:03Well, they had signature autograph cards at the tent where everyone was sitting around talking to people.
01:11:10And I picked up one because if you look at this photo here, he's with Pops Yoshimura.
01:11:15Sure.
01:11:16And that's Ron Pierce, and he's got his Team Cycle World shirt on.
01:11:19So we had a little chit-chat about, you know, the days.
01:11:22And Joe Parker's love of racing and all that.
01:11:25It was pretty remarkable.
01:11:26Another thing about Daytona, of course, is you can expect the possibility of tire trouble.
01:11:32You can, the rider comes in, says, thing's vibrating in a funny way.
01:11:37And you look at the rear tire, and it has Pops pimples that have burst.
01:11:42Black rubber Pops pimples.
01:11:45That is blistering.
01:11:47Components of the tire tread compound are vaporizing at temperature and erupting.
01:11:56And the other one, of course, is chunking.
01:11:59Failure of the bond between the tread rubber and the fiber carcass of the tire.
01:12:07Barry Sheen had his bad accident in 75 with chunking.
01:12:13The motorcycle and the tire and everything about that whole episode just disappeared in a twinkling of an eye.
01:12:20News?
01:12:21No, nothing happened.
01:12:23What?
01:12:24And so when Michelin tires were being put on some bikes at Daytona, you could count on the Michelin people
01:12:34being there to make sure you had, I don't know, some tremendous pressure, like 42 pounds in your tires.
01:12:41Because the one thing, just as the AMA wanted to avoid being criticized in cycle news, Michelin didn't want bad
01:12:53Daytona luck.
01:12:55And so the riders responded to these Michelin guys stationed at the entry to pit lane with air bottles and
01:13:05gauges, airing up every Michelin shod bike as it goes through.
01:13:11The riders had their men down at the end to let that pressure back out so they would have some
01:13:17grip.
01:13:19And Michelin carries on that tradition to this day with the tire pressure rule in MotoGP that you could be
01:13:26fined by people who work in offices because they're going through sheets and sheets of tire data.
01:13:33And if your tire, if your tire is below a certain pressure for a certain percentage of the race, you
01:13:40are sanctioned.
01:13:43Yep.
01:13:44But the riders are tempted to begin with a lower pressure just because when you're drafting other bikes, your front
01:13:55tire pressure will go up, up, up, and your footprint, nice and healthy, will dwindle away and you'll find that
01:14:03the front is locking when you're braking.
01:14:05So you're caught between contrasting goals.
01:14:15I picked up a bike from our office one time in R1 that had some DOT race tires.
01:14:22I think they were Michelins.
01:14:23And I didn't know the correct pressure.
01:14:25And it's hard with race tires.
01:14:27Sometimes it's hard to find that info unless you get that info from the tire person.
01:14:31And it's not normally, you know, it's not like on the swing arm where you just go, oh, 42 at
01:14:39the rear.
01:14:39Let's go a little below that or whatever.
01:14:42And I just was like, ah, you know, we'll go with 30, 32 or something.
01:14:48And it took three corners to figure out that that was absolutely wrong because it lit up.
01:14:54It spun like crazy.
01:14:57And so I'm like, okay, let's tiptoe back to the pits, go back in the pits.
01:15:01And I talked to a couple of people and, you know, I was at Chuck Walla.
01:15:04I talked to a couple of people and did some more research.
01:15:07And I found it was meant to be 22.
01:15:10So I was eight to 10 pounds over, depending on what my final decision was.
01:15:14And boy, when I put a 22, what a great tire that was.
01:15:17Yes.
01:15:18It was superb.
01:15:19Got some footprint now.
01:15:21Yeah.
01:15:22Well, that's the Daytona 200, a little bit of this and a little bit of that.
01:15:26It walked down memory lane for us, plus recounting this year's very exciting race and a lot of history going
01:15:33on.
01:15:34It was great to be there and see it again, be down in the spring in Daytona.
01:15:38It's been a long time since I did that.
01:15:40But I got to ride Steve McLaughlin's bike on a parade lap, you know, around the banking.
01:15:45We did a lap.
01:15:47I lined up with Sad Wolf and Jason Uribe, who's racing the Orange Cat factory-backed BMW in Moto America.
01:15:54So he was there on a, essentially on a, you know, press, press deal.
01:15:59He wasn't racing.
01:16:00And, uh, yeah, it was, it was fun.
01:16:03It was cool to check out one of those.
01:16:05I raced a BMW in Arma.
01:16:07So it was a fun, fun connection to make for me personally.
01:16:09And, uh, to be honored with Steve's bike and Steve was there and he's, I believe he's as much Steve
01:16:15McLaughlin as he ever has been.
01:16:17And so, and he was, he was a little wound up because they were getting headlines in Germany about 80
01:16:22year old Steve McLaughlin rides his old super BMW super bike again.
01:16:27Cause he did a parade lap himself.
01:16:29Yeah.
01:16:29Jim France, he's friends with Jim France and Jim France asked him to do it.
01:16:33Moto America said, please don't cross the stripe.
01:16:35We need, we have, we don't have very much time.
01:16:38Go out pit lane, do the lap and don't cross the stripe.
01:16:40Come into the pit.
01:16:41But, and Steve said, you know, this was Jim France's idea.
01:16:46Can you take that back to the people telling us not to do this?
01:16:49Jim would like me to cross the stripe.
01:16:51And so they took him back and said, Hey, this, when they came back, Hey, that worked.
01:16:56So he got to, he got to do his lap.
01:16:58Well, I just thought of something, you know, um, Kayla being 18 reminded me of a photo.
01:17:07One of those dim looking black and white photos from World War II that show the, uh, King of England
01:17:17bestowing some metal upon 19 year old John Cunningham, a, an experienced night fighter pilot.
01:17:27Who went up every night in a twin engine airplane with his radar operator, kneeling on the deck plate behind
01:17:35him with two scopes, one for X and one for Y.
01:17:40And he's calling out left a bit.
01:17:44Yeah, that looks good.
01:17:46Okay.
01:17:47Hey, you should just about be seeing his exhaust flames now.
01:17:52And there's nothing wrong with being young.
01:17:55And there's nothing about being young.
01:17:58That means that you are necessarily inexperienced or lacking in judgment.
01:18:02It just depends on the path you've drawn to that age.
01:18:08John Cunningham later became chief test pilots for a chess pilot, I think for, uh, to have one or one
01:18:15of the biggies that they used to have in England making aircraft.
01:18:19Well, self-confidence people to people helping you, people not telling you, you know, people telling you, you can't do
01:18:25it.
01:18:26No.
01:18:26Or if they do, you, you must be self-possessed enough to, uh, to overcome that and great confidence to
01:18:33someone like Kayla, who obviously would have faced a lot of challenges to get where she is.
01:18:39Yep.
01:18:40So, um, mad respect to, uh, a really great and interesting career path to follow.
01:18:47We have a story by Maria Goodati on, uh, cycleworld.com just live today at this recording.
01:18:54And, uh, Kayla gave a really nice, it's a really nice interview and she's, it's, it's a great read.
01:19:00So go check it out.
01:19:01Yeah.
01:19:02Thanks for listening, folks.
01:19:03We'll catch you next time.
01:19:04Definitely go check us out on Patreon.
01:19:05We'll see you down in the comments.
01:19:07We love the comments.
01:19:08Um, somebody said, do a swing arm.
01:19:10You guys have ever done a swing arm podcast and I'm not kidding.
01:19:14Kevin and I recorded it that day or the next day.
01:19:17So we're listening.
01:19:19We're listening.
01:19:20All right.
01:19:21Thanks.
01:19:22Catch you next time.
01:19:23Catch you next time.
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