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Stories of the Daytona 200 and 50 years of Superbike Racing! HOT
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00:02:17He prefered the twin shock.
00:02:19I think someone said he didn't want to be protested.
00:02:22He 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.
00:02:28And Udo's joke was, I repositioned one of them to the shelf in the shop
00:02:33because the rules where repositioning was allowed.
00:02:37So 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 but uh you know it
00:02:53finally made it to the speedway and uh turned into 200 miles once the there was a contingent
00:02:58at the beach who really wanted to stay at the beach but they moved it into the speedway to
00:03:03some protests but after a few years it caught on and it became huge so you should you should
00:03:10transition here i've i've set the stage probably too much as usual but um tell us tell us about your
00:03:18daytona days kevin well um the early times were the period in which uh flathead or side valve engines
00:03:32were given 750 cc displacement because they were uh less able on a specific basis than overhead valve
00:03:44engines which were given 500 cc so the triumphs won daytona um in 66 and 67 i think and
00:03:57and harley davidson replied in a big way they and it was quite quite an accident really
00:04:08because there was a group of people in axdell cr axdell shop in in socal and they were uh shooting
00:04:18the breeze and they were talking about flatheads and it turned out that there was one belonging to a
00:04:26um a rider whose name is not of record and they said why don't we have a look at this
00:04:35so they took
00:04:36off a cylinder head and two of the guys are looking in there and they say one of them had
00:04:43worked with
00:04:43hudson's which were big straight eight flatheads when this when the uh nascar first started
00:04:52300 cubic inch sixes and he said well it's nothing like what was developed by hudson and the
00:05:02other fellow chimed in and he said well i've seen the auburns and it's nothing like them either
00:05:09and so there's more conversation finally somebody said really what's going on here is that the roof
00:05:16if the head is too close to the cylinder deck where the the valve pocket feeds across to the
00:05:25cylinder and then down well why don't we make a quarter inch head gasket for this and test it
00:05:35well axdell's bandsaw welder didn't work right then so um one of them gets in the
00:05:44in the car car and drives off to somebody whose bandsaw welder is working he takes a couple of these
00:05:50um blanks that they'd made with holes drilled so they could feed the end of the saw blade through
00:05:57there and then weld it together put the blade on the big bandsaw wheels and then they'd be able to
00:06:02saw
00:06:02out the inside shape of the piston and the two valves in this in the side valve pocket
00:06:09well they get the head on there and it made as much horsepower as the engine with much higher
00:06:19compression ratio imagine what a quarter of an inch spacing the head up towards space a whole quarter
00:06:27of an inch means like no compression hardly puffing at all yes but because they had increased
00:06:35that slot where the flow went from the side pocket to the cylinder they gained as much as they lost
00:06:44from
00:06:45compression at that point they thought they sort of looked at each other like we we got something here
00:06:52this is this is something and so they put in a call to dick o'brien at harley um he
00:07:01had been the race manager
00:07:02since 57 and he got on a plane with the uh foreman of the race shop harley not only had
00:07:15a race shop
00:07:16but the race shop had a foreman now that's real 1940 stuff right there so they get there and
00:07:26they make a lot of changes they find out they go to daytona with 58 horsepower versus triumphs 49 point
00:07:35something well it's a bigger motorcycle but not 10 horsepower bigger and uh
00:07:45old calvin just left him for dead it was clear that the triumph was was dumpster material
00:07:53so far as daytona was concerned lots of people loved their daytona 500 twins
00:07:58and but there's nothing as old as last year's bike
00:08:04and i mean vintage bikes are new in our minds they're gleaming with dealer fresh surface finishes
00:08:13but in this case or the or the promise that's that's that's what seduces us to buy them when
00:08:20they're crusty is like oh but it's how wonderful it could be yes and soon so in a few years
00:08:29so the new motorcycle uh they they took the thing to the caltech wind tunnel they developed the the
00:08:37infamous whale that'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 riders knees
00:08:52bulged out on the two sides every just about every motorcycle that fairing was ever put on went faster
00:09:01so calvin just blew them away and that was the end of an era because at the uh 68
00:09:12uh pro comp board meeting triumph said uh we want a 650 cc formula same for everyone
00:09:23hmm you do huh the harley guys stood up and he said well you've got a 650 but we've got
00:09:31a 750
00:09:32so let's make it 750 while we're at it and they voted and it went through and what happened because
00:09:40of
00:09:40this was that because bigger motorcycles were just catching on in the u.s and i mean really bigger
00:09:50um that what happened next was it was the fastest motorcycles in the world on the fastest racetrack
00:10:00in the world written by an international field of the fastest riders in the world and that happened
00:10:07in 1972 when suzuki and kawasaki brought their three cylinder two strokes to town and in 1970 honda
00:10:17with a cb750 based racer uh won the event by the narrowest margin because the motors were eating
00:10:29uh camp chain tensioners and turning them into um friction reducing powder in the oil well i had i had
00:10:40dinner with john long and a bunch of these other retired road racers who were there and and john was
00:10:48regaling us with stories about how they they did rebuild that they were the ones who rebuilt that engine
00:10:54and the other guys who were running it didn't yeah and suffered suffering the consequences and they
00:10:59suffered the consequences but they you know what there's no asterisk like barely made it right you
00:11:05won that's it history because because because um dick mann was a money rider he had grown up in that
00:11:17whole
00:11:18money uh situation where if you didn't finish in the money you were going to have to borrow
00:11:24something from people you're going to be racing against next weekend and they probably would lend it to
00:11:29you but how does it feel so uh then he won again in in uh in 71 this time uh
00:11:42on a bsa three cylinder four
00:11:45stroke and in this case they told him this is an 8250 rpm engine and in his own mind he
00:11:54thought
00:11:54it feels like a 7800 rpm engine and that's how he wrote it and one by one the great names
00:12:02fell by the
00:12:04wayside uh with all the ills of the internal combustion engine and he won it a second time
00:12:12what could be better so then next year the 750s are there but they couldn't win because the tires
00:12:19all flew to bits the race was won by little dinky 350 yamaha's both years and then the 750 era
00:12:27um
00:12:28the tz 751 in 1974 and it went on winning until 1982 which was the last um the last time
00:12:37but that was uh from from 72 onward was the two stroke era at daytona and remember this it was
00:12:48not
00:12:49the tz 750 that sent the four strokes home it was little 350 twins
00:12:57not only were they easy on tires they were also easy on riders so
00:13:05uh that was a first time i went to daytona was 1969 and i had it my rider was a
00:13:13junior
00:13:14and i was not eligible to be in the speedway on sunday to watch the 200 so that meant that
00:13:22i crept
00:13:23under the sleeping platform and pretended to be a toolbox a toolbox was pushed up against me so that
00:13:30it was assumed that there were other toolboxes and so forth in the space i was occupying and as
00:13:38soon as we got past the geyser guards we were in and i was free to walk about now it
00:13:45is of note that uh
00:13:48kayla uh was third after putting a move on another rider on the last lap in classic um
00:14:00do hamel fashion well that was really remarkable uh kaylee akov is 18 she's riding a ray hall ducati
00:14:09and uh she hooked up with the lead group in the beginning of the race six riders blanket over
00:14:13them as they say uh but slowly you know some of those folks lost the draft she was one of
00:14:18them
00:14:19um there was a lot of drama at the race uh you know josh heron won again but it was
00:14:25heron and jacobsen
00:14:27were pitted you know one i think it was one slot apart uh jacobsen is is leading heron comes in
00:14:35they
00:14:35both pit at the same time they're filming jacobsen leaving the pit and the moto america film crew is on
00:14:42the hot side of the pit and as pj's pulling out the cameraman starts stepping back and heron is exiting
00:14:50the
00:14:51pit and suddenly a cameraman is backing into his line leaving the pit he lifted the back wheel
00:14:57hit the brakes did not saw did not crash and i was able to rejoin but obviously frustrated and
00:15:02he lost something like at least four seconds maybe more uh pj crashed out of the lead passing a lapper
00:15:11as you might be rushed because you feel like an angry josh heron might be coming but all the while
00:15:18it
00:15:18was darren bender and kayla yakov uh in the in third and fourth yakov was fourth and she closed
00:15:24the gap and caught up and then um passed the lap before the finish and drafted and and i think
00:15:34got
00:15:34the line everyone was cheering but it wasn't over and you would think that bender could have witnessed
00:15:39what happened on that lap and done something about it the next lap but didn't and it was kayla just
00:15:46did a
00:15:47really expert professional craft pass to take third and get the podium as a first woman on a
00:15:53daytona 200 podium and in in wonderful fashion i think actually seeing her on uh the interview it
00:16:02was great because she was you know being a female in the paddock at all i think historically may have
00:16:09been somewhat challenging and to show up in leathers and race like there's a lot of supportive people but
00:16:14there's plenty who are not and so to be an 18 year old in that situation and she's still
00:16:20she's trying to not i think she was really trying to not be emotional because she just didn't want
00:16:24to be emotional right she didn't want to be you know the 18 year old crying and then she she
00:16:31teared
00:16:31up she's like oh i've been trying so hard to you know keep it together and like she gotta cry
00:16:37i mean i'd
00:16:37cry like if i could get on the podium watch me weep buddy so it was cool it was really
00:16:42it was really
00:16:43neat and she just did it out of pure grit talent and determination and you know she's had an incredible
00:16:48sport uh support crew like ben speez has been helping with ray all of course she did it right
00:16:55she did it right she did the things she knew were effective at that racetrack yeah be second off the
00:17:04chicane yeah and then do it to him right yeah being thoughtful about it really because well
00:17:10relevant to this is after daytona in 69 i went to the ama national in annapolis and
00:17:21i brought a woman with me and she was not allowed in the paddock she had to go and sit
00:17:28in the spectator
00:17:31and read a book well it wasn't too long after that that a woman in the state of new york
00:17:39had applied
00:17:40for a license ama license and it was sent to her she showed up at the races and she was
00:17:49told oh you're
00:17:50a woman you can't do this go out of here she went straight to the legal profession and said
00:17:58do you fellows want to join me in an easy one and the ama was summoned sit right here we
00:18:10will now
00:18:10read you the law which basically said yes you can create a private club and so forth and 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
00:18:26because it's not legal here to do that so just think about it so there were there was a an
00:18:35important
00:18:35precursor and i'm sorry that i don't know her name but uh somebody did what americans have done when they
00:18:44are wronged they took it to law and the law updated the interpretation rather than saying well
00:18:56i'm a man these are all other men we live in a society of men and this is the way
00:19:01it's always been
00:19:02so get back to the kitchen and mind the kids and i'll see you in church sunday
00:19:09what is it kinder kuchen and kirche so that was a good thing back then and i'm a person whose
00:19:20mother
00:19:21when i was 10 was called upon by circumstances to put a roof on the porch three sides of a
00:19:30of a big old 1826
00:19:31house she put the roof on there the flooring in the bridge had been there too long and the boards
00:19:40were starting to go so she organized that there should be trees sawn in the woods that they should
00:19:48be sawn into planks and she and another person were down there with sawhorses creosoting all this
00:19:55stuff to put a new floor in the bridge so i am accustomed to capable women people getting done
00:20:03yeah yes that's my mom was like that too get it done so hats off so to speak to kayla
00:20:15no it was it was awesome it was very cool to be there and i was sitting you know i
00:20:20was sitting with uh
00:20:21watching the race with thad wolf who's uh you know retired racer he was around quite a bit in
00:20:27the 80s and oh he phoned yesterday yeah he was at cycle and uh he um you know he did
00:20:34racing and
00:20:34he was around the cycle and all that stuff and came up and raced tz 750s and all that we
00:20:40were watching
00:20:40that with curtis adams who is uh my home my hometown is uh whittier and i always admired curtis because
00:20:47he
00:20:47was six foot four six foot six really tall guy he so he was tall and i'm i'm six two
00:20:53but i was like
00:20:53oh wait i got a chance curtis curtis can road race and win so i was covering him when i
00:20:58was in cycle news
00:20:59back back at willis springs and he was racing chuck graves on a 7 11 we just watched we were
00:21:06watching
00:21:06the 200 and we're like well pj's race to to lose at this point and he did and then we
00:21:12watched kayla hunt
00:21:13down uh darren bender he was racing on the moto gp stage fairly recently so daytona's a unique track
00:21:22and uh it was really something well 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 so you might have
00:21:39a chance at daytona because a lot of people called it d tuna because um a lot of people had
00:21:48to reduce their compression ratio there because the engine holds a high note second after second after
00:21:55second just keeps on singing and 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 that is a valuable
00:22:12piece of information and 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
00:22:24and know the future in advance good luck yeah all right good luck ask ai 60 chance of being right
00:22:33maybe yeah let's never know yeah there was a um so that is race there and uh i think everyone
00:22:42uh ella
00:22:43ella dreyer young road racer coming up she was she is 16 and she's the youngest uh racer to participate
00:22:49in
00:22:49200 and sad knowingly went over and said you know i think you know the best advice i can give
00:22:55you is just finish the race and and everybody else said everybody already told her that yeah but hey
00:23:01but finish the race you know get experience it get across the line and she did so it's pretty neat
00:23:09definitely and heron you know heron that's four in a row for heron which is is damn remarkable and
00:23:14five total so he's joining russell on the uh mr daytona list scott russell who did it five times
00:23:21new homo was always really good there's that epic win uh back in the day when he was fairly injured
00:23:26and they had to kind of lever him onto the bike um off of his cane and put him in
00:23:32the saddle and then
00:23:33he went off and rode 200 miles and finished and and won um his amazing drive uh up to the
00:23:41wall i don't
00:23:42know if that was the same year it's a little foggy but uh that was amazing how hard he stayed
00:23:47in the throttle as he was drifting up toward the wall and you just thought oh man he's gonna splat
00:23:51and he didn't splat it was really impressive that's the thing about daytona is over the years you um
00:23:58it is such a an interesting and unique track and then we had international folks for so long and i
00:24:05think
00:24:06you know there's been the lull they they didn't want super bikes to be doing you know 213 miles an
00:24:12hour or whatever so now we're we're doing next gen super sport which you're running you know mid 180s
00:24:18baggers are running mid 180s by the way 185 at 5 186 um i don't know i had brought i
00:24:26had breakfast with
00:24:26kyle wyman and he he mentioned offhandedly that he thought they might break 190 this year with uh
00:24:33the off-season gains but it looks like we stayed under under that that's a lot of air to crush
00:24:38on
00:24:39a bagger that's a lot of air to crush it is it certainly is but uh that big refrigerator in
00:24:46the
00:24:46front that big obstruction that they have to push yeah i understand the bags are not you know you would
00:24:53think maybe the bags bags could be good or the bags could be bad um only the tunnel knows but
00:25:00it turns
00:25:01out you know from what i understand from talking to a few folks is that they aren't really
00:25:05hugely detrimental and they are they aren't a benefit and i don't think you know it'd be nice
00:25:11if you could sort of fill the gap with the bags you know make them a little bigger get them
00:25:16to
00:25:18try to try to enhance the continuity between the faring over the rider and off the back of the bike
00:25:23but
00:25:24uh it's outside the rules contrary to the spirit another big change that occurred uh at daytona in
00:25:3269 i drained the gearbox oil on the two new yamahas that we had uh td2 250 and a tr2
00:25:44350
00:25:46and i'm walking around with the drain pan and finally somebody in a ama shirt let me catch his eye
00:25:58and i said what do we do with this and i showed him the oil and he said well um
00:26:04i know what everybody
00:26:06else does see that ditch over there he said you just kind of amble over there and pour it in
00:26:14so that's what i did and today of course uh the next thing that would happen would be the black
00:26:21arrow of an environmental group would be sticking out between your shoulder blades
00:26:26naughty behavior mustn't mustn't so now they have little cabins at least two little cabins and each
00:26:35cabin 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 yeah we got that out at the airport too i've been going out to
00:27:01my
00:27:01local airport working on vintage aircraft and and messing around and we make the run over to the
00:27:07big uh brick the cinder block shed it's run by the county and away we go we got a great
00:27:12big giant drain
00:27:13we can take our our ashless dispersant oil that we've just drained out of a taylor craft or cub
00:27:20and uh put it in the right spot hopefully we get it used for something else
00:27:26yeah it was the classic old popular science uh it's an illustration from uh
00:27:32i don't remember the year but it's say it's 50s ish and it's uh it's this is how you dispose
00:27:39of your
00:27:40your oil and it showed you to dig a pit and fill the bottom with gravel make it of this
00:27:45dimension and
00:27:46then you can pour your oil uh you know in this pit that you dug in your yard from the
00:27:52earth from the
00:27:53earth ye arose to the earth ye shall return yeah except when you want your groundwater to not
00:28:00taste like 2050 yes so i think we we've done pretty well to to pick that up and put it
00:28:08somewhere put it
00:28:09in the barrel send it somewhere that uh maybe we can do it again i know there's some very uh
00:28:14thrifty
00:28:15people who use their use oil for the oil furnace that they built for their garage and they
00:28:21they which you know i could see that happening in the colder climb yep it's been known to happen
00:28:30there are people that will come by and take your barrel of unwanted liquid away you wonder where they're
00:28:37going with it there was one company that had an unfortunate reputation uh for botched fuel stops and
00:28:49i won't mention their name out of hmm natural restraint and i worked it out i i saw them practicing
00:29:00one day
00:29:00and basically what the management was saying to the uh payones who were performing this minuet
00:29:13realize that the slightest error by any one of you could make the difference between winning and losing
00:29:21i want you to be really tense i want you to be worrying about a misstep and not paying attention
00:29:32to what
00:29:32you're doing so in comes paul smart i think this was talladega and with decisive motions the team manager
00:29:47step forward with the hose this was overhead hose refuelers in this time oh and you had to twist lock
00:29:55them on there were three lugs um on the connector and then you pull the lever and the poppet valve
00:30:03was
00:30:03pushed into your tank and the fluid rushed in he pulled the thing and he's you can imagine him counting
00:30:11inwardly one and two and three and when he got to about 15 he's he's looking all around
00:30:23and he's
00:30:26trying to he shut the valve by this time and he's trying to get the thing off and it won't
00:30:31won't come off he he put real effort into it so that the rear end of the tank began to
00:30:37rise up
00:30:38off of its um rubber cushions and smarty is revving the engine as if to say could you
00:30:47snap it up we're losing time here and i'm counting seconds i'm a bystander
00:30:55finally with a tremendous effort he gets the thing breaks the thing off of the tank there'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 in in uh at at um
00:31:18oh what's that paul ricard in the south of france
00:31:23and similar similar business it could all be bad luck of course and one time it definitely was rider
00:31:31comes in they hook up nothing comes out nothing is happening so they disconnected they send the
00:31:39rider out frantically they're carrying draining fuel from the overhead can and putting it into their b
00:31:46unit they had a b a second tower what had happened was that the hose structure is it has a
00:31:56a wire a ground wire in it because you don't want to spark when you're handling fuel
00:32:02it has layers of fabric and it has an inner liner the inner liner somehow a section of it detached
00:32:12and went
00:32:15across the neck of the thing and blocked the flow completely
00:32:21but because by this time of course they were expecting trouble they were expecting
00:32:27to drink deep at the font of bad luck and 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
00:32:41you have to carry out these rituals you have to do all of these things right
00:32:47and there are people who can't get in step with that because
00:32:53what i told people when we were doing fuel stops was the rider hates to stop the rider wants to
00:32:59stay
00:33:00in his rhythm that's the safest place for him or her and so the making a fuel stop is a
00:33:09bore let's just
00:33:11do 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 they would actually
00:33:22transfer fuel it was a live stop but it was just practice and then the attitude was there we can
00:33:30do
00:33:30that you see it worked okay we're ready for sunday and i good stuff
00:33:41um daytona is not a place for experiments daytona is not a place where you go to try stuff
00:33:50and when rich schlachter rider um east coast guy and i were given the use of a tz-250d in
00:34:021977
00:34:04um in first practice we got a baseline and then i pulled the ignition timing back to 1.8
00:34:15and that was better it tacked up same gear pulled it back to 1.6 we picked up 300 revolutions
00:34:25on those two changes with no change elsewhere same gearing it's just going faster what kevin means
00:34:34is on the top end yeah so he's we're they're they're in six when you're on the banking and the
00:34:40attack is
00:34:40over here um and the attack of course is banging bouncing all around in its rubber mountings
00:34:48uh it's it's quite a it's 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
00:35:00hour when you're you have the bike you have the tack and if you're in top gear and your gearing
00:35:05is
00:35:05the same you pick up 300 rpm that's a huge positive because you're going faster it's a biggie
00:35:11so that evening i widened the exhaust ports and raised them a millimeter
00:35:18and polished the edges another 300 revolutions same gearing and we just kept doing stupid stuff
00:35:26we put on 36 millimeter carburetors and got them dialed i can't believe how lucky we were i can't
00:35:34take credit for any of this because we are two crazy guys that went to daytona to try experiments
00:35:42schlocker says i'm going to go over to the ama office and see where we're at
00:35:47so he goes off uh after a while he comes back and he said we're third on lap time he
00:35:56said we're third
00:35:58and that was the moment when he made the transition from being a talented clubman to being
00:36:03something else you know to be announced um
00:36:11it was it was a great day but that's naughty you can't count on being that lucky
00:36:22it's a uh those those two 250 d's they had of course steel tube frames and horrible cracking
00:36:31tubular steel braced swing arms they looked right but they had certain problems
00:36:41and we just had that wonderful experience in in 1982 um honda decided they were going to make this
00:36:54big push at daytona they brought thousand ccv4s called fws and everyone is being heard oh honda's
00:37:03bringing a super weapon oh yeah and uh freddie spencer on one mike baldwin on the other and i don't
00:37:14know
00:37:14what roberto pietri was was writing maybe another one um but at any rate they they went tremendously fast
00:37:22through practice it was just stunning and they were equipped to change tires during the race they
00:37:28had suzuka eight hour stuff and that transformed daytona because before that the tire companies were
00:37:36saying to themselves we have to make a tire that'll go 200 miles at the speed with the extra load
00:37:43of the
00:37:43banking just make something you know out of stone
00:37:50well in the race uh honda had tire trouble and so they were pulling in and getting a tire and
00:37:58going
00:37:59back out and going fast and earning their way forward again and then having more tire trouble
00:38:05and meanwhile here's graham crosby plugging away on a bike built at the last moment in the parts
00:38:14department out of no longer wanted zero w 31 parts and the that thing was designed to win daytona and
00:38:25it did it just kept chugging it didn't have any exceptional tire trouble and but but uh freddie was second
00:38:35and uh mike was in there too so they were of course horribly disappointed because they wanted
00:38:44to make this big splash but it was a big splash even if they didn't win because it changed the
00:38:51nature of
00:38:51the uh undertaking and that was cool
00:38:57and of course we knew that daytona was going to turn into a four-stroke race eventually that the
00:39:03manufacturers were saying oh ama you tell us what rules you want then we we comply but
00:39:12it wasn't really true it was sort of like i'm in your country so you rule and uh 1985 it
00:39:20became
00:39:21a superbike but the thing was that when superbike first came to daytona or when it first became a
00:39:28national class that the ama had the good sense to make the races very short i'm sure that the sense
00:39:37was talked into them by certain persons but uh you know a 50 mile race
00:39:45and they 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 because as mark noted earlier
00:40:03in
00:40:03this uh diatribe duo tribe um that uh those bikes weren't built to be raceable they were built by engineers
00:40:16who had been told usa has a 60 mile per hour speed limit put in plenty of power uh 1960s
00:40:24chassis tires and
00:40:26suspension thumbs up okay and they weren't and the ama had the sense to realize or it was explained to
00:40:35them
00:40:35and so those bikes those first era superbikes the the setup jobs had to be completely re-engineered all new
00:40:48suspension all new wheels um tremendous reinforcing of the chassis in 1978 goodyear had had enough
00:41:00being 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 and you go out and
00:41:20run
00:41:20a practice and then we'll make a uh a wireframe model and we'll animate it with the motions revealed
00:41:29by the strain gauges and they showed they on the screen they showed the chassis going
00:41:38it was wonderful wow and it shut the complaints up
00:41:47the manufacturer went away and attended to their own knitting yeah
00:41:54well those 76 bmws you know i was there in daytona with the three that that bmw brought down
00:42:01the r90s's built by udo geedle and i was it was so wonderful to talk to udo because
00:42:07you just got a lot of the backstory like what happened to fisher and the rear stand on the axle
00:42:14goes into the axle holds the bike the pipes are just above it and udo's like yeah he had gearbox
00:42:20problems somebody bounced on the back of the bike bike and bent the pipes and it jammed his linkage
00:42:26and he was able to get through most of the race but then it uh hung up between fourth and
00:42:31fifth
00:42:32and it over revved and it and it hurt it and ended it so it's just you know and talking
00:42:37to udo
00:42:37udo with all the changes about lifting the engine and moving it forward and if you looked at the cylinder
00:42:44i think it's the left cylinder it's up against the frame rail the twin loop coming down it is
00:42:50it is like pushed up and forward as far as it'll go until the cylinder basically hits the frame it
00:42:56was
00:42:56uh it was remarkable and it was cool because those early kawasaki's they were incredibly powerful they
00:43:05had plenty more power than the bmw r90s but they couldn't make them turn or get off corners they
00:43:13just they just were not working so it took a few seasons and of course everything changed and suddenly
00:43:19you know ripping 10 25 cc four cylinders were doing all the biz but well this is this is the
00:43:25thing about
00:43:26handling and that is that it it's like um the the explanation is what was made to bmw people
00:43:40during the time of their s1000 rr uh when it was eating tires and marco malandre said in formula one
00:43:52where
00:43:52bmw 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 because if the writer doesn't
00:44:09have confidence a choir of engineers singing the praises of their algorithm will have no effect
00:44:18and so uh this kind of experimental handling amelioration is necessary there is no computer that
00:44:30will just give you a good one when honda had to make a proper superbike out of the um cb900f
00:44:44the first thing they threw away was that lead flywheel of a front wheel and they put a little 16
00:44:52in
00:44:53there sweet little 16 and a tubeless slick tire and lots of other changes because
00:45:04riders could haul on the bars and the whirling flywheel daytona really spins those flywheels
00:45:13it doesn't want to steer no i don't have to and i'm not going to so they had to put
00:45:19little stuff
00:45:20on they had to change make huge changes to convert a uh beach cruiser into a road race bike and
00:45:32this is
00:45:32why it the baggers experience is so wonderful because it shows that the things that work in racing
00:45:41will work on a bagger and i think that's so wonderful because i watched carefully at uh laguna
00:45:53and those things change direction at respectable speed they aren't uh heavy and slow
00:46:01like the mcgrath highway in boston at rush hour they are nimble and further they slide rather than high
00:46:11side it's really quite a control mechanism it you instead of fearing having the terrible fear of of the
00:46:23the the two-stroke era as it slips and grips and one of those times you're going over the top
00:46:32it just goes into this lovely slide maybe it has something to do with the 620 pound minimum weight
00:46:41with standard road race weight wheels and brakes and tires underneath it good uh unsprung weight
00:46:49ratio keep those pieces of rubber kissing the pavement so i think the baggers experiences has a
00:47:00lesson to teach us and those mccandless brothers in northern ireland who developed the feather bed frame
00:47:07that was adopted by norton a 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 so that they got a feel for
00:47:27what was possible with this chassis good stuff real good stuff yeah kayla uh kayla yakoff was talking about
00:47:38the banking as uh a place where currently people are suffering about two g's she 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 because it's
00:47:51pretty pretty good uh jamming situation but yeah the baggers in the early super bikes that 76 era especially
00:48:01um and that flexibility of rules allowing just enough uh creativity to make the bikes work and evolve to what
00:48:10we got in you know 83 with uh interceptors and stuff where it was actually handling became a
00:48:17a marketable trait you know prior to that it was all it was all a mile and top speed quarter
00:48:24mile and top speed man that was what we were going for because one way of looking at the magazine
00:48:29business
00:48:30is that it provides young hot persons with bar talk
00:48:38about their favorite subject or social media talk at this point too well that's a later development
00:48:46one of the things that daytona um you have to look out for is fuel starvation
00:48:52in 1972 we brought our barn job homemade h2r 752 stroke down there and my rider went out and he
00:49:04said
00:49:07the cut's dead at 8500 he said i thought it had seized but then the tack needle went down when
00:49:13it got to six
00:49:14pop it cut back in so that told me that i had to get everything out of the way of
00:49:23the fuel
00:49:24no quick disconnects no filters uh bigger float valve in the carburetors and when i had uh fuel flowing
00:49:34from taking the bowl plugs out of all three carburetors into a trough that depouched into a
00:49:41a jar when i had 50 percent more than what i had calculated to be the likely fuel consumption on
00:49:51full throttle it sang its song all the way up to the little let's stop here number which was about
00:49:599200 in those days
00:50:03so always something to think of on other racetracks um your motorcycle the float bowls
00:50:10might have enough fuel in them for you to do everything without running it dry but the
00:50:16moment you get to a place where it has to sing that that dulcet song
00:50:22for all those seconds it will pump the bolts dry and cut oh it's one of my favorite things that
00:50:29you've
00:50:30uh repeatedly talked to me about over the years it's pounds per horsepower hour
00:50:35oh yes well 0.5 pounds per horsepower per hour is a uh a rule of thumb for four strokes
00:50:44and 0.65 for two strokes
00:50:49and
00:50:50uh we ran our um what i don't remember what year it was it was an 80s 250 yamaha on
00:51:00uh
00:51:01uh the dyno of the former um snowmobile expert out in buffalo
00:51:08and when that thing was working really well it's fuel full it's it's fuel consumption was like
00:51:180.595 pound per horsepower per hour and of course where the rest of the fuel go
00:51:26out the tailpipe i always wanted to put a spark plug in the tailpipe see
00:51:33uh it could discourage drafting it could be a safety issue
00:51:40it's common to blow a lot of fuel out the tailpipe on a two stroke there's not uh
00:51:45yes because when the when the the door slams late the mixture is innocent it's it's brushing
00:51:52up these transfer ducts it makes some of it makes the turn and it enters the cylinder where do i
00:51:59go
00:52:00some of them go to the exhaust port because it's over there sucking away the the pipe signal from the
00:52:05exhaust pipe is saying this way this way little darling and of course you'd like to talk
00:52:14sweetly to that fuel and have it all go to the back of the cylinder and perform the loop but
00:52:21they
00:52:21were wasteful so well i have a question for you that's barely related and we used spark plug spark
00:52:29plugs at daytona right just to confirm okay it's connected great um did you spend time indexing spark
00:52:37plugs in your career i never got to that i always had something to do
00:52:42yeah because you can buy these washers right so indexing the spark plug is is aiming the open
00:52:48part of the uh to you know the positive and negative the oncoming mixture yeah so that the
00:52:53spark is just unshrouded unshrouded it's just pure spark here's the mixture let let me have it let's go
00:53:01let's light this thing up and uh paul dean the great paul dean has been involved in sprint car racing
00:53:07for a
00:53:08very long time and he said that indexing the plugs on their five or eight hundred horsepower
00:53:14engine picked them up something like maybe five to ten percent uh aiming them all at the intake so
00:53:21that's that's a lot i mean that is a huge amount and uh you just buy these washers of different
00:53:26thicknesses you mark the plug you know where the opening of the electrode is and you thread it in
00:53:32and torque it down and just get it into that ballpark i've considered it you know it's easy
00:53:37to do on a single cylinder i could probably start with that and see how that goes dare i say
00:53:43bella set
00:53:43i don't want to there are plenty of other singles in the world where you could index your plug you
00:53:49know
00:53:49you know i kind of want to do that on the xs 650 too well i saw that there was
00:53:56a day when i saw a
00:53:57a difference in between um ways of thinking about spark plugs gary nixon was asked to ride his 1976 uh
00:54:07irv kanemoto um c and j framed kanasaki kr 750 in a demo at loudon new hampshire and i had
00:54:20a box of
00:54:20the plugs that we used then so that's what i put in it and after practice he said uh uh
00:54:29thing don't
00:54:30don't pick up real good off the corner you got some some of them spark plugs that stick out yes
00:54:37in fact
00:54:37i do because that was the last spark plugs that we were using in tz 750s um as the 80s
00:54:46got underway
00:54:47they you could even see the insulator sticking out and then the fine platinum iridium wire
00:54:55and the side the side electrode and i put a set of those in there and he
00:55:02told me that was way better yeah the p and the ngk plugs it's the b you know you might
00:55:09get your b8 es
00:55:10or your b7 es and your norton or whatever but you can also get the p model where that protrudes
00:55:16that
00:55:16stuff out and yeah project a tip they champion called it and when we started out with td1s in the
00:55:25mid-1960s they had we we they called out b10 en which was the spark plug that had the cap
00:55:33down
00:55:33inside the shell and finally um i asked um
00:55:41oh bobby stralman bobby stralman yeah who was the champion man i showed him his little monocle
00:55:50his little monocle yes and i showed him a set of those i said this is what we used to
00:55:55run he said
00:55:55today that's a top fuel plug they got the plug gap down inside where it's partly protected from the
00:56:03firestorm so that projected tip spark plug by the way had a heat range similar to what
00:56:11you'd put in the triumph 650 if you're going on a long trip on the interstates
00:56:18didn't want to burn things down and it worked a treat in tz750s it was certainly better oh yeah
00:56:28well you know if we're in the 70s era i have to bring up a story you told me uh
00:56:33about an unnamed
00:56:34road racer who was uh growing recreational crops such as perhaps marijuana on freeway interchanges
00:56:42yes and so i had the audience of all these road racers who were racing in the 60s and through
00:56:48the
00:56:4870s and into the 80s and i said oh yeah you know that kevin cameron told me about this guy
00:56:53like because
00:56:54they were all talking about how they funded their racing and john long is talking about winning
00:56:59a race in italy and he's driving to emola for the next thing and he's got to earn his money
00:57:03and he's driving a van and he pulls in he's like i don't know the difference between benzina and
00:57:08whatever else was on the side but he's like there was fuel that was cheaper i'm like well i'm gonna
00:57:12get
00:57:12that cheap stuff and he said he put it in his van and he didn't have a lot of money
00:57:16so he just uh
00:57:18he just put a little bit in and he got like a mile down the road and the van stopped
00:57:21because it was diesel
00:57:24and he's like oh no you know it's these they were on fumes and he bought something like five
00:57:28gallons of it and so you know he used he barely used it and he's like drains it out and
00:57:34he gets
00:57:34some like last bit of gasoline that he had for his race bike and he gets in the van they
00:57:38go back he
00:57:39sells the fuel that he drained out back to the station and then he buys the right fuel so they're
00:57:44trying to get money together so there are a lot of these stories then he won this big race in
00:57:48italy
00:57:48and he said you know you had a suitcase full of cash millions of lira and he's like his wife
00:57:53theo's like he's like yeah let's you can buy whatever you want at the gucci store or whatever
00:57:57you know it's very cool to hear these stories living in the van racing and i asked all of them
00:58:02i
00:58:02like yeah do you know anybody you know who did that who was who was growing weed in the freeway
00:58:06interchanges in georgia and stuff and they're like wow that could that could have been this guy it
00:58:11could have been that guy it could have been that guy yes and there's that other guy who was a
00:58:15coke dealer so
00:58:16it was pretty uh pretty interesting insight into the into that era pretty cool it's one time um i was
00:58:24at the fence and i looked over and about excellence there and nick rikiki goes by nick rikiki was a
00:58:34new york city um kid from queens i think and he
00:58:42uh advanced really rapidly in in road racing he he was spending everything that he could make he
00:58:49got up at five o'clock in the morning and delivered orange juice in his van and he was doing
00:58:54everything
00:58:54he could to scratch up the money you know 600 bucks for cylinders 600 bucks for cranks because the two
00:59:02two strokes ate those things up they lasted about 900 miles a piece so um he goes by i think
00:59:12he was
00:59:12he was being timed at that point and he went probably 183 which was good going in those times
00:59:19and i could hear bud axlin saying something next to me he said
00:59:23what 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 i think didn't miles bald would
00:59:41get called that too oh probably because he you know he broke all the fair fairing off his bike and
00:59:47he didn't have a lot of money and so he he raced one whole season with no lower on didn't
00:59:52make any
00:59:53difference because pretty pretty full behind the fairings on a tz john written told me about
01:00:01testing his bike the bike that he built including the engine with a carbon fiber frame
01:00:11on this 20 mile straightaway famous place in new zealand where the the white helmet people the
01:00:18the people who tried to outdo one another in craziness and he said let's take the lower fairing off
01:00:28bike went faster he said it only made sense because here's the narrow engine and the foot pegs are out
01:00:36here the rider's feet are here and there's this big space just let the air through
01:00:45well might not be theoretically right but if if it goes faster isn't that what you want
01:00:52because we have to remember daytona or any bonneville anywhere else two strokes went fast motorcycles go
01:01:01fast by just cramming themselves through the air with brute force and that's why i love the
01:01:08winglets because i know a lot of people are upset about winglets so they they wish that they would stop
01:01:15looking that way this but imagine that you're nearing top speed and the front wheels coming up
01:01:27now you don't have control are you going to go 200 miles an hour on one wheel
01:01:32you might feel caution was necessary but the winglets gently push the front end back down restoring
01:01:42rider 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
01:01:56towards closed just enough to let the front wheel come down and removing torque yeah so you're you're
01:02:05you're just reducing power until the front wheel comes down what you want is a helping hand from above
01:02:13that is arrow down force it's free well mostly free there is lift over drag after all
01:02:22and you you attach all this stuff to your motorcycle the old timers are shielding their
01:02:27gaze or averting it all together but it works keep on accelerating but at the same time there's a
01:02:36small but vocal group in moto gp who would like to see what 600 cc's would be like so
01:02:47live long and learn
01:02:54well if you're managing two world championship series world superbike and moto gp
01:03:02how do you want it to turn out i guess who who's going fast who goes faster
01:03:08production bikes or prototypes one of the one of the uh tales told to me by cook nelson who was
01:03:17editor of cycle at one time he's the one well and also also he was part of the west coast
01:03:23contingent
01:03:23at afm who was racing basically superbike production ducatis they were yep they were there
01:03:31udo guido had no tuning background in road racing he was just a clever electrical engineer who loved
01:03:38motorcycles and was willing to test things and try things and think about them he was he was not he
01:03:44did not come out of you know germany somehow tuning bmws his entire life father and smith said hey we
01:03:52got
01:03:52these 750s see what you can do that was it and you just started messing with them and then it
01:03:57became time to do 900s and that for bmw saved it saved the company if if you if you need
01:04:04spare parts uh
01:04:05go to the warranty department you can have anything you have yeah in there so anyway but but cook was
01:04:11there cook that's the point is like oh yeah um you know california hot rod and they were calling
01:04:16them california hot rods like that's what these production-based super bikes were and you know
01:04:23cook and phil are now they're out there like trying to squeeze this new nucati 750 into you know
01:04:28something else proven by paul smart at the 1972 emola 200 that it can go and that it will revs
01:04:349000
01:04:35and it may not scatter amazing anyway tell your cook story well he um
01:04:43he knew that mike baldwin from the uncool east coast was making waves
01:04:51and so he asked kenny what about this baldwin kid what about him well i mean is he for real
01:05:01and kenny said i can tell you this of the three things it takes to win races he's got one
01:05:10of them
01:05:11and what's that he's fast
01:05:17and this is this is a very important thing kenny is is not just playing with you when he says
01:05:26these
01:05:26things because 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 do not cast it to the wind
01:05:44and it's a it's a complicated thing nikki lauda said that half of what's involved in
01:05:50is getting on the starting line with the running car
01:05:57and you know the the crazy stuff the racing and remembering everything about the way the tires
01:06:04and the core the pavement and all this stuff are changing that's essential too so kenny was telling
01:06:13it straight well he's got one of them he's fast
01:06:18just reminding everyone that 100 as kevin cameron has often said 100 doesn't make the grid and uh
01:06:27fiercely prioritizing what does get you to the grid they may not be perfect but making those
01:06:31choices on the way is probably part of nikki's nikki lauda's uh conversation as well
01:06:37one of the interesting stories from uh from the fellas i was eating with down in daytona john long
01:06:42and mclaughlin and all those guys care harry clinsman was there was um they were they were testing
01:06:49tires for this this uh you know this 200 mile race and he said the they were trying to do
01:06:56it without
01:06:57a stop i think they were looking into whether they could you know get it done without a stop
01:07:02but the pavement at the speedway at the time was kind of warrant like weathered so they had a lot
01:07:08of points on it and he said they were they were throwing tired chunks out and it was just tearing
01:07:14them up and then eventually you know it got paved and and away we went but uh it was a
01:07:20lot of fun it's
01:07:21it's really fun to hear about the paddock hear about the life you've talked about it so many times
01:07:27about being there where you had you know on the on the fast end and the eventual factory and your
01:07:35irv kanamoto's and and kelker others who were no strangers to the hacksaw you know just whatever it
01:07:42was cut the pipes cut the pipes uh cut the steering head reangle the steering head overnight overnight
01:07:48do well uh do in duke 1976 we had a kr 250 that was going pretty well and i think
01:07:59the reason was
01:07:59that i'd made a little weir around the two four inch gears that joined the two crankshafts it has
01:08:07two cylinders one ahead of the other and um i'd made a one millimeter hole to let oil in
01:08:14so the gears were throwing it out and the one millimeter hole was letting it in so instead of
01:08:21drowning in solid oil the gears were able to do what gears do transmit power run not eat it
01:08:30so uh ron pierce qualified on pole and kel must have said to himself oh shit i gotta go do
01:08:39it which meant
01:08:40um what i described for the 250 widening raising the exhaust ports taking 20 millimeters out of the
01:08:48head pipe uh raise pushing compression up there that ought to do and my bike was out with a water
01:08:57pump
01:08:57drive shaft failure how can water pump drive shaft fail anyway that's what happened and uh kenny prevails
01:09:11so i in those days i wanted to go to daytona and live there and just just try stuff but
01:09:19i remember
01:09:20hearing um gene romero say why do we have to be here all week i want to just get in
01:09:28race and go home
01:09:31and i thought i am not sympathetic to this viewpoint but uh people come to daytona for different
01:09:41reasons well you know for it got popular because it was there's so much of the country that's still
01:09:48suffering the death grip of you know arctic biting frost you know and it's always the place where we
01:09:55you know people got got to be set free it wasn't the cool west coast you know all those east
01:10:00coast
01:10:00people you were you among them getting in the van slogging through the slush to the beautiful sunny
01:10:07climbs and and slightly humid spring air of daytona beach waiting ever phil shilling the late phil shilling
01:10:15uh arriving on a flight from california wearing his puffy jacket and he would wear it all week
01:10:22you know because he was never warm and daytona we you know we're we're basking in this wonderful
01:10:32sunlight and he's in his in his puffy jacket i always thought that was another take on daytona
01:10:42yeah you mentioned ron pierce he was down there as well was he yeah yeah he ron ron was there
01:10:48he's
01:10:48a big winery that he makes wine at and uh the trailblazer yeah the trailblazers dinner is is this
01:10:54week and uh ron's going and ron always brings the wine he's driving down with 25 cases apparently for
01:11:01the trailblazers it was really cool i he they had signature like uh autograph cards at the tent where
01:11:08everyone was sitting around talking to people and i picked up one because if you look at this this
01:11:13photo here he's with pops yoshimura sure and that's ron pierce and he's got his team cycle world
01:11:18shirt on so we had a little chit chat about you know the days and joe joe parker's celeb of
01:11:24racing and
01:11:24all that it was it was pretty remarkable another thing about daytona of course is you can expect
01:11:30the possibility of tire trouble you can the rider comes in says things vibrating in a funny way
01:11:37and you look at the rear tire and it has pos pimples that have burst black rubber pos pimples that
01:11:46is blistering components of the tire tread compound are vaporizing at temperature and erupting
01:11:56and the other one of course is chunking failure of the bond between the tread rubber and the fiber
01:12:04carcass of the tire barry sheen had his bad accident in 75 with chunking the motorcycle and
01:12:15the tire and everything about that whole episode just disappeared in a twinkling of an eye but
01:12:20news no nothing happened what and so um when michelin tires were being put on some bikes at daytona
01:12:31uh you could count on the michelin people being there to make sure you had i don't know some
01:12:37tremendous pressure like 42 pounds in your tires because one the one thing just as the ama uh wanted
01:12:46to avoid being criticized in cycle news uh michelin didn't want bad daytona luck and so the riders
01:12:56responded to to uh these michelin guys stationed at the entry to pit lane with air bottles and gauges
01:13:07airing 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 moto gp that you
01:13:26could be fined by people who work in offices because they're going through sheets and sheets of tire data
01:13:33if your tire is below a certain pressure for a certain percentage of the race you are sanctioned
01:13:43yep but the riders are tempted to begin with a lower pressure just because when you're drafting
01:13:53other bikes your front tire pressure will go up up up and your footprint nice and healthy will
01:14:00will dwindle away and you'll find that the front is locking when you're braking so you're caught between
01:14:11contrasting um
01:14:15goals i picked up a bike from our office one time in r1 that had um some dot race tires
01:14:22i think they
01:14:22were michelins and i didn't know the correct pressure and it's hard with race tires sometimes
01:14:27it's hard to find that info unless you get that info from the tire person it's not it's not normally
01:14:33uh
01:14:34you know it's not like on the swing arm really so oh 42 at the rear let's go a little
01:14:40below that
01:14:41or whatever and i i just was like ah you know i will go with the 30 32 or something
01:14:47and um it took
01:14:50three corners to figure out that that was absolutely wrong because it lit up it spun like crazy and so
01:14:57i'm
01:14:58okay let's tiptoe back to the pits go back in the pits i talked to a couple people and you
01:15:03know
01:15:03it was at chuck wall i talked a couple people and and uh did some more research and i found
01:15:08it was
01:15:08meant to be 22 so i was eight eight to ten pounds over depending on what my final decision was
01:15:14and
01:15:14boy when i put a 22 what a great tire that was yes it was superb got some footprint now
01:15:21yeah well that
01:15:22was uh that's the daytona 200 a little bit of this and a little bit of that it walked down
01:15:26memory lane for us plus um recounting this year's very exciting race and a lot of a lot of history
01:15:33going on it was great to be there and see it again being be down in the spring in daytona
01:15:38it's been a
01:15:39long time since i did that i got to ride steve mclaughlin's bike on a parade lap you know around
01:15:45the banking
01:15:45we did a lap i lined up with sad wolf and jason uribe who's racing the orange cat um factory
01:15:52-backed
01:15:52bmw and moto america so he was there on a essentially on a you know press press deal he wasn't
01:15:59racing
01:16:00and uh yeah it was it was fun it was cool to check out one of those i raced a
01:16:05bmw in arma so it was a
01:16:07fun fun connection to make for me personally and uh to be honored with steve's bike and steve was there
01:16:12and he's i believe he's as much steve mclaughlin as he ever has been so and he was he was
01:16:19a little
01:16:19wound up because they were getting headlines in germany about 80 year old steve mclaughlin rides
01:16:24his old super bmw super bike again because he did a parade lap himself yeah jim france he's friends
01:16:30with jim france and jim france asked him to do it moto america said please don't cross the stripe
01:16:35we need we have we don't have very much time go out pit lane do the lap and don't cross
01:16:40the stripe
01:16:40come into the pit and steve said you know this was jim france's idea can you take that back to
01:16:47the people telling us not to do this jim would like me to cross the stripe and so they took
01:16:53it back and
01:16:53said hey this when they came back hey that worked so he got to he got to do his lap
01:16:58and well i i just
01:17:00thought of something you know um kayla being 18 reminded me of a photo one of those dim looking
01:17:10black and white photos from world war ii that show the uh king of england bestowing some
01:17:18medal upon 19 year old john cunningham a an experienced night fighter pilot who went up every night
01:17:30in a twin engine airplane with his radar operator kneeling on the deck plate behind him
01:17:36with two scopes one for x and one for y and he's calling out left a bit now that looks
01:17:45good okay
01:17:47you should just about be seeing his exhaust flames now and there's nothing wrong with being young and
01:17:56there's nothing about being young that means that you're necessarily inexperienced or lacking in
01:18:02judgment it just depends on the path you've drawn to that age john cunningham later became chief test
01:18:10pilots for a chess pilot i think for uh to have one or one of the biggies that they used
01:18:17to have in
01:18:17england making aircraft well self-confidence people to people helping you people not telling you know people
01:18:24telling you you can't do it no or if they do you you must be self-possessed enough to uh
01:18:31to overcome
01:18:32that and great confidence to someone like kayla who obviously would have faced a lot of challenges to get
01:18:38where she is yep so um mad respect to uh a really great and interesting career path to follow
01:18:47we have a story by maria gudati on secondworld.com just live today at this recording and uh kayla gave
01:18:56a really nice it's a really nice interview and she's it's a great read so go check it out yeah
01:19:02thanks
01:19:02for listening folks we'll catch you next time definitely go check us out on patreon we'll see
01:19:06down in the comments we love the comments um somebody said do a swing arm you guys have ever
01:19:11done a swing arm podcast and i'm not kidding kevin and i recorded it that day or the next day
01:19:16so
01:19:18we're listening we're listening all right thanks catch you next time
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