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Stories Of The Daytona 200 And 50 Years Of Superbike Racing! Hot
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00:00:00ترجمة نانسي قنقر
00:01:30Gary Fisher
00:01:31Steve McLaughlin
00:01:33Tune by Udo Giedel
00:01:35and Reg Pridmore of course
00:01:36Steve McLaughlin barely took it at the line
00:01:39by 6 inches
00:01:40they said
00:01:40after they developed the film
00:01:42of the photo finish
00:01:44which took 45 minutes
00:01:45and there was no podium
00:01:48but 50 years of super bike racing
00:01:51it kind of all started there
00:01:52it reminded me very much
00:01:54of bagger racing
00:01:55because most street bikes of the time were absolutely unfit for purpose they were not made
00:02:01to race and everything that got changed had to get changed they the rules were written uh suitably
00:02:07loose to allow for things to happen um repositioning of the shocks for example and
00:02:13the butler and smith bmws two of those bikes not regs reg preferred the twin shock i think
00:02:19uh someone said he didn't want to be protested he was sort of like no i'm gonna keep those shocks
00:02:23i like them um but the other ones were converted to single shock and uh udo's joke was i repositioned
00:02:30one of them to the shelf in the shop because the rules were repositioning was allowed so there was
00:02:37a lot of uh interpretation it was pretty good stuff um kevin's seen a few daytona 200s and of course
00:02:43it evolved from beach racing and a dirt track there was a dirt track a 200 miler that was somewhere
00:02:49local down there but uh you know it finally made it to the speedway and uh turned into 200 miles
00:02:56once the there was a contingent at the beach who really wanted to stay at the beach but um they
00:03:02moved it into the speedway to some protest but after a few years it caught on and it became huge
00:03:08so you should you should transition here i've i've set the stage probably too much as usual
00:03:15but um tell us tell us about your daytona days kevin well um
00:03:25the early times were the period in which uh flathead or side valve engines were given 750 cc displacement
00:03:36because they were uh less able on a specific basis than overhead valve engines which were given
00:03:45500 cc's so the triumphs won daytona um in 66 and 67 i think and harley davidson replied in a
00:04:01big way
00:04:03they they and it was quite quite an accident really because there was a group of people
00:04:10in axtel cr axtel shop in in socal and they were uh shooting the breeze and they were talking about
00:04:22flatheads and it turned out that there was one belonging to a um a rider whose name is not of
00:04:31record
00:04:32and they said why don't we have a look at this so they took off a cylinder head and two
00:04:39of the guys
00:04:39are looking in there and they say one of them had worked with hudson's which were big straight eight
00:04:46flatheads when this when the uh nascar first started 300 cubic inch sixes and he said well
00:04:57it's nothing like what was developed by hudson and the other fellow chimed in and he said well
00:05:03i've seen the auburns and it's nothing like them either and so there's more conversation finally
00:05:11somebody said really what's going on here is that the roof the head is too close to the cylinder deck
00:05:20where the the valve pocket feeds across to the cylinder and then down
00:05:27well why don't we make a quarter inch head gasket for this and test it well axdell's bandsaw welder
00:05:37didn't work right then so um one of them gets in the in the car car and drives off to
00:05:46somebody
00:05:46whose bandsaw welder is working he takes a couple of these um blanks that they'd made
00:05:53with holes drilled so they could feed the end of the saw blade through there and then weld it together
00:05:58put the blade on the big bandsaw wheels and then they'd be able to saw out the inside shape
00:06:04of the piston and the two valves in this in the side valve pocket well they get the head on
00:06:11there
00:06:13and it made as much horsepower as the engine with much higher compression ratio imagine what
00:06:21a quarter of an inch spacing the head up towards space the whole quarter of an inch means like
00:06:29no compression hardly puffing at all yes but because they had increased that slot where the flow went from
00:06:39from the side pocket to the cylinder they gained as much as they lost from compression at that point
00:06:47they thought they sort of looked at each other like we we got something here this is this is something
00:06:54and so they put in a call to dick o'brien at harley um he had been the race manager
00:07:02since 57
00:07:05and he got on a plane with the uh foreman of the race shop harley not only had a race
00:07:16shop
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
00:07:43and uh old calvin just left him for dead it was clear that the triumph was was dumpster material
00:07:52uh so far as daytona was concerned lots of people loved their daytona 500 twins and but there's
00:08:00nothing as old as last year's bike and i mean vintage bikes are new in our minds they're gleaming with
00:08:10dealer fresh surface finishes but in this case or the or the promise that's that's yeah and that's what
00:08:19seduces us to buy them when they're crusty is like oh but it's how wonderful it could be yes and
00:08:25soon so in a few years so the new motorcycle uh they they took the thing to the caltech wind
00:08:34tunnel
00:08:34they developed the the uh infamous whale that's what buell's customers called it when he put that
00:08:42highly effective fairing this is a fairing that made 250s faster than the little narrow
00:08:50fairings where the riders knees bulged out on the two sides
00:08:55every just about every motorcycle that fairing was ever put on went faster so calvin just blew them away
00:09:06and that was the end of an era because at the uh 68 uh pro comp board meeting triumph said
00:09:17uh
00:09:18we want a 650 cc formula same for everyone hmm you do huh the harley guys stood up and he
00:09:28said well
00:09:29you've got a 650 but we've got a 750 so let's make it 750 while we're at it
00:09:35and they voted and it went through and what happened because of this was
00:09:41that because bigger motorcycles were just catching on in the u.s and i mean really bigger
00:09:48um
00:09:52that 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
00:10:16honda with a cb 750 based racer uh won the event by the narrowest margin because
00:10:27the motors were eating uh camp chain tensioners and turning them into
00:10:35um friction reducing powder in the oil well i had i had dinner with john long
00:10:42and a bunch of these other retired road racers who were there and and john was regaling us with
00:10:48stories about how they they did rebuild that they were the ones who rebuilt that engine and the other
00:10:55guys who were running it didn't yeah and suffering suffering the consequences and they barely
00:10:59the consequences but they you know what there's no asterisk like barely made it right you won that's it
00:11:06yeah because because because um dick mann was a money rider he had grown up in that whole
00:11:17money uh situation where if you didn't finish in the money you were going to have to borrow something
00:11:24from people you're going to be racing against next weekend and they probably would lend it to you but
00:11:30how does it feel so uh then he won again in in uh in 71 this time uh on a
00:11:43bsa three cylinder four stroke
00:11:46and in this case they told him this is an 8250 rpm engine and in his own mind he thought
00:11:54it feels like a 7800 rpm engine and that's how he wrote it
00:12:00and one by one the great names fell by the wayside uh with all the ills of the internal
00:12:08combustion engine and he won it a second time what could be better so then next year the 750s
00:12:16are there but they couldn't win because the tires all flew to bits the race was won by little tinky
00:12:22350
00:12:23yamaha's both years and then the 750 era um the tz 751 in 1974 and it went on winning until
00:12:331982 which
00:12:34was the last um the last time but that was uh from from 72 onward was the two-stroke era
00:12:45at daytona
00:12:46and remember this it was not the 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
00:13:06uh that was a first time i went to daytona was 1969 and i had it my rider was a
00:13:13junior and i was not
00:13:16eligible to be in the speedway on sunday to watch the 200 so that meant that i crept under the
00:13:24sleeping platform and pretended to be a toolbox a toolbox was pushed up against me so that it was
00:13:31assumed that there were other toolboxes and so forth in the space i was occupying and as soon as we
00:13:38got past
00:13:39the geyser guards we were in and i was free to walk about now it is of note that uh
00:13:48kayla
00:13:50was third after putting a move on another rider on the last lap in classic um
00:14:00duhamel fashion well that was really remarkable uh kaylee atkov is 18 she's riding a ray hall ducati
00:14:09uh 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 jacobson
00:14:27were pitted you know one i think it was one slot apart uh jacobson is is leading heron comes in
00:14:35they
00:14:35both pit at the same time they're filming jacobson leaving the pit and the moto america
00:14:41film crew is on the hot side of the pit and as pj's 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 he
00:14:56lifted the back wheel hit the brakes did not saw did not crash and i was able to rejoin but
00:15:01obviously
00:15:01frustrated and he lost something like at least four seconds maybe more uh pj crashed out of the lead
00:15:10passing a lapper as you might be rushed because you feel like an angry josh heron might be coming
00:15:17but all the while it was darren bender and kayla yakov uh in the in third and fourth yakov was
00:15:23fourth
00:15:23and she closed the gap and caught up and then um passed the lap before the finish
00:15:32and drafted and and i think got the line everyone was cheering but it wasn't over and you would think
00:15:38that bender could have witnessed what happened on that lap and done something about it the next lap
00:15:44but didn't and it was kayla just did a really expert professional draft pass to take third and get
00:15:51the podium as a first woman on a daytona 200 podium and in in wonderful fashion i think
00:15:59actually seeing her on uh the interview it was great because she was
00:16:05you know being a female in the paddock at all i think historically may have been somewhat
00:16:10challenging and to show up in leathers and race like there's a lot of supportive people but there's
00:16:14plenty 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
00:16:24didn't want to be emotional right she didn't want to be you know the 18 year old crying
00:16:30and then she she teared up she's like oh i've been trying so hard to you know keep it together
00:16:35and
00:16:35like she had to cry i mean i'd cry like if i could get on the podium and watch me
00:16:40weep buddy so it was
00:16:42cool it was really it was really neat and she just did it out of pure grit talent and determination
00:16:46and
00:16:47you know she's had an incredible sport uh support crew like ben speed's has been helping
00:16:51with 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
00:17:03off the chicane 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
00:17:30seating and read a book well it wasn't too long after that that a woman in the state of new
00:17:39york
00:17:39had applied for a license am a license and it was sent to her she showed up at the races
00:17:48and she was
00:17:49told oh you're a woman you can't do this go out of here she went straight to the legal profession
00:17:57and
00:17:58said do you fellows want to join me in an easy one and the ama was summoned
00:18:08sit right here we will now read you the law which basically said yes you can create a private club
00:18:16and
00:18:16so forth and so on but if you're going to exclude women from this sport you will not do it
00:18:24in the state
00:18:25of new york because it's not legal here to do that so just think about it so there were there
00:18:34was a
00:18:34an important precursor and i'm sorry that i don't know her name but uh somebody did what americans have
00:18:43done when they are wronged they took it to law and the law updated the interpretation
00:18:55rather than saying well i'm a man these are all other men we live in a society of men and
00:19:01this is
00:19:01the way it's always been so get back to the kitchen and mind the kids and i'll see you in
00:19:06church 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
00:19:30old 1826 house she put the roof on there the flooring in the bridge had been there too long and
00:19:39the boards were starting to go so she organized that there should be trees sawn in the woods that
00:19:47they should be sawn into planks and she and another person were down there with sawhorses
00:19:54creosote all this stuff put a new floor in the bridge so i am accustomed to capable women people
00:20:02getting done yeah yes that's my mom was like that too get it done so hats off
00:20:11so to speak to kayla no it was it was awesome it was very cool to be there and i
00:20:19was sitting you
00:20:19know i was sitting with uh watching the race with thad wolf who's uh you know retired racer he was
00:20:26around quite a bit in the 80s and no he phoned yesterday yeah he was at cycle and uh he
00:20:32um you
00:20:33know he did racing and he was around cycle and all that stuff and came up and raced tz 750s
00:20:39and all
00:20:40that we were watching that with curtis adams who is uh my home my hometown is uh whittier and i
00:20:46always
00:20:46admired curtis because he was six foot four six foot six really tall guy he so he was tall and
00:20:52i'm i'm
00:20:52six two but i was like oh wait i got a chance curtis curtis can road race and win so
00:20:57i was
00:20:58covering him when i was in cycle news back back at willis springs and he was racing chuck graves on
00:21:03a
00:21:047-11 we just watched we were watching the 200 and we're like well pj's race to to lose at
00:21:09this point
00:21:10and he did and then we watched kayla hunt down uh darren bender he was racing on the moto gp
00:21:17stage
00:21:18fairly recently so daytona's a unique track and uh it was really something well daytona is a place
00:21:28where the advice is don't run your new bike you don't know much about your new bike and you know
00:21:36last year's bike really well so you might have a chance at daytona because a lot of people called it
00:21:42d tuna because um a lot of people had to reduce their compression ratio there because the engine
00:21:52holds a high note second after second after second just keeps on singing and so in that sense it is
00:22:01like a destructive dynamometer test and once you've got your engine right you know how to make it run at
00:22:10daytona that is a valuable piece of information and that's why they say don't run your new bike
00:22:17at daytona but of course that doesn't apply today because we have computers so that we can analyze
00:22:23everything and know the future in advance good luck yeah right good luck ask ai 60 chance of being right
00:22:33maybe yeah you never know yeah there was a um so thad has raced there and uh i think everyone
00:22:42uh
00:22:42ella ella dreyer young road racer coming up she was she is 16 and she's the youngest uh racer to
00:22:49participate in the 200 and thad knowingly went over and said you know i think you know the best advice
00:22:55i can give you is just finish the race and and everybody else said everybody already told her that
00:23:00yeah but hey but finish the race you know get experience it get across the line and she did
00:23:06so it's pretty neat definitely and heron you know heron that's four in a row for heron which is
00:23:12is damn remarkable in five total so he's joining russell on the uh mr daytona list scott russell who
00:23:19did it five times new homel was always really good there's that epic win uh back in the day when
00:23:25he was
00:23:25fairly injured and they had to kind of lever him onto the bike um off of his cane and put
00:23:32him
00:23:32in the saddle and then he went off and rode 200 miles and finished and and won um his amazing
00:23:39drive
00:23:40up to the wall i don't know if that was the same year it's a little foggy but uh that
00:23:45was amazing how
00:23:46hard he stayed in the throttle as he was drifting up toward the wall and you just thought oh man
00:23:50he's
00:23:50gonna splat and he didn't splat it was really impressive that's the thing about daytona is over
00:23:57the years you um it is such a an interesting and unique track and then we had international folks
00:24:04for so long and i think you know there's been the lull they they didn't want super bikes to be
00:24:10doing
00:24:10you know 213 miles an hour or whatever so now we're we're doing next gen super sport which you're
00:24:16running you know mid 180s baggers are running mid 180s by the way 185 at five 186 um i don't
00:24:25know
00:24:25i had brought i had breakfast with kyle wyman and he he mentioned offhandedly that he thought they might
00:24:31break 190 this year with uh the off-season gains but it looks like we stayed under under that that's
00:24:38a
00:24:38lot of air to crush on a bagger that's a lot of air to crush it is it certainly is
00:24:42but uh
00:24:44that big refrigerator in the front that big obstruction that they have to push yeah i
00:24:51understand the bags are not you know you would think maybe the bags bags could be good or the
00:24:55bags could be bad um only the tunnel knows but it turns out you know from what i understand from
00:25:02talking to a few folks is that they aren't really hugely detrimental and they are 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
00:25:14know make them a little bigger get them to try to try to enhance the continuity between the faring
00:25:21over the rider and off the back of the bike but uh it's outside the rules contrary to the spirit
00:25:28another big change that occurred uh at daytona in 69 i drained the gearbox oil on the two new
00:25:38yamahas that we had uh td2 250 and a tr2 350 and i'm walking around with the drain pan
00:25:50and finally somebody in a ama shirt let me catch his eye and i said what do we do with
00:26:00this and i
00:26:01showed him the oil and he said well um i know what everybody else does it see that ditch over
00:26:08there
00:26:08he said you just kind of amble over there and pour it in so that's what i did and today
00:26:16of course
00:26:17uh the next thing that would happen would be the black arrow of an environmental group would be
00:26:23sticking out between your shoulder blades the naughty behavior mustn't mustn't so now they have
00:26:31little cabins at least two little cabins and each cabin is staffed by an older experienced gentleman
00:26:41of whom there are a good many in florida and there is a barrel for unwanted fuel a barrel for
00:26:50oil a
00:26:51barrel for coolant a barrel for brake fluid so we're doing things right now yeah we got that out
00:26:59at the airport too i've been going out to my local airport working on vintage aircraft and
00:27:03and messing around and we make the run over to the big uh brick the cinder block shed it's run
00:27:10by the
00:27:10county and away we go we got a great big giant drain we can take our our ashless dispersant oil
00:27:17that
00:27:17we've just drained out of a taylor craft or cub and uh put it in the right spot hopefully we
00:27:23get it
00:27:24used for something else yeah there's 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
00:27:53the earth ye arose to the earth ye shall return yeah except when you want your groundwater to not taste
00:28:01like 2050 yes so i think we we've done pretty well to to pick that up and put it somewhere
00:28:08put it in the
00:28:09barrel send it somewhere that uh maybe we can do it again i know there's some very uh thrifty people
00:28:15who use their use oil for the oil furnace that they built for their garage and they
00:28:23which you know i could see that happening in the colder climb yep it's been known to happen there are
00:28:30people that will come by and take your barrel of unwanted liquid away you wonder where they're going with it
00:28:41there was one company that had an unfortunate reputation uh for botched fuel stops and i won't mention
00:28:50their name out of hmm natural restraint and i worked it out i i saw them practicing one day and
00:29:01basically
00:29:02what 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
00:29:20and losing i want you to be really tense i want you to be worrying about a misstep and not
00:29:31paying
00:29:31attention to what you're doing so in comes paul smart i think this was talladega and with
00:29:43decisive motions the team manager stepped forward with the hose this was overhead hose refuelers in this
00:29:52time oh and you had to twist lock them on there were three lugs
00:29:58um on the connector um on the connector and then you pulled a lever and the poppet valve was pushed
00:30:04into 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 trying to he's shut the valve by this time and he's trying to get the thing off and
00:30:30it
00:30:30won't won't come off he he put real effort into it so that the rear end of the tank began
00:30:37to rise 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 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
00:31:30was rider comes in they hook up nothing comes out nothing is happening so they disconnected 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
00:31:57wire a ground wire in it because you don't want to spark when you're handling fuel
00:32:01it has layers of fabric and it has an inner liner the inner liner somehow a section of it detached
00:32:12and went across 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 to drink deep
00:32:28at 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
00:32:58the rider wants to stay in his rhythm that's the safest place for him or her
00:33:06and so the making a fuel stop is a bore let's just
00:33:10do 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 worked okay we're ready for sunday and i'll 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
00:34:00a tz250d in 1977 um in first practice we got a baseline and then i pulled the ignition timing back
00:34:10to 1.8 and that was better it tacked up same gear pulled it back to 1.6 we picked
00:34:22up 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 tack of course is banging bouncing all around in its rubber mountings uh
00:34:48uh it's it's quite a it's it's not exactly efficient information transfer but we're not
00:34:57looking for you know we're not saying like oh my top speed was 131 miles an hour when you're you
00:35:01have
00:35:01the bike you have the tack and if you're in top gear and your gearing is the same you pick
00:35:05up 300 rpm
00:35:06that's a huge positive because you're going faster it's a biggie so that evening i widened the exhaust
00:35:14ports and raised them a millimeter and polished the edges another 300 revolutions
00:35:22same gearing and we just kept doing stupid stuff we put on 36 millimeter carburetors and got them
00:35:29dialed i can't believe how lucky we were i can't take credit for any of this because we are two
00:35:36crazy
00:35:37guys that went to daytona to try experiments schlocker says i'm going to go over to the
00:35:44AMA office and see where we're at so he goes off uh after a while he comes back and he
00:35:52said
00:35:52we're third on lap time he said we're third and that was the moment when he made the transition
00:36:01from being a talented clubman to being something else you know to be announced
00:36:10um it 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
00:37:36were saying to themselves we have to make a tire that'll go 200 miles at the speed with the extra
00:37:42load of the banking 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 back 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
00:38:13department out of no longer wanted zero w31 parts and the that thing was designed to win daytona and it
00:38:26did it
00:38:26just 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 to make this
00:38:45big splash but it was a big splash even if they didn't win because it changed the nature of the
00:38:51uh
00:38:52undertaking 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
00:39:52altered or replaced and that was a good one too because it meant that put on real stuff
00:40:01because as mark noted earlier in this uh diatribe duotribe
00:40:09that uh those bikes weren't built to be raceable they were built by engineers who had been told
00:40:17usa has a 60 mile per hour speed limit put in plenty of power uh 1960s chassis tires and suspension
00:40:27thumbs up okay and they weren't and the ama had the sense to realize or it was explained to them
00:40:35and so those bikes those first era super bikes the the sit-up jobs had to be completely re-engineered
00:40:47all new suspension all new wheels um tremendous reinforcing of the chassis
00:40:57in 1978 goodyear had had enough being told that their tires were causing a certain other manufacturer's
00:41:05motorcycle to weave and 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
00:41:37it was wonderful wow and it shut the complaints up
00:41:47the manufacturer went away and attended to their own knitting
00:41:54yeah rather than well those 76 bmws you know i was there in daytona with the three that that bmw
00:42:00brought down the 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
00:42:18yeah he had gearbox problems somebody bounced on the back of the bike bike and bent the pipes
00:42:25and it jammed his linkage and he was able to get through most of the race but then it uh
00:42:29hung up
00:42:30between fourth and fifth and it over revved and it and it hurt it and ended it so it's just
00:42:36you know
00:42:37and talking to udo udo with all the changes about lifting the engine and moving it forward and if you
00:42:42looked at the cylinder i think it's the left cylinder it's up against the frame rail the twin loop coming
00:42:48down it is it is like pushed up and forward as far as it'll go until the cylinder basically hits
00:42:55the frame it was uh it was remarkable and it was cool because those early kawasaki's
00:43:02they were incredibly powerful they had plenty more power than the bmw r90s but they couldn't make them
00:43:11turn or get off corners they just they just were not working so it took a few seasons and of
00:43:16course
00:43:17everything changed and suddenly you know gripping 10 25 cc four cylinders we're doing all the biz but
00:43:23well this is this is the thing about handling and that is that it it's like um
00:43:33the the explanation is what was made to uh bmw people uh during the time of their s1000 rr
00:43:43uh when it was eating tires and marco malandre said in formula one where bmw had tremendous
00:43:54experience in formula one you work to sensor data but in this kind of racing you have to work to
00:44:04what
00:44:04the rider says because if the rider doesn't have confidence a choir of engineers singing the praises of
00:44:14their algorithm will have no effect and so uh this kind of experimental handling amelioration
00:44:26is necessary there is no computer that will just give you a good one
00:44:34when honda had to um 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
00:44:50and they put a little 16 in there sweet little 16 and a tubeless slick tire and
00:45:01lots of other changes because riders could haul on the bars and the whirling flywheel
00:45:08daytona really spins those flywheels it doesn't want to steer no i don't have to and i'm not going to
00:45:18so they had to put little stuff on they had to change make huge changes to convert a
00:45:27beach cruiser into a road race bike and this is why it the baggers experience is so wonderful because it
00:45:37it shows that the things that work in racing will work on a bagger and i think that's so wonderful
00:45:47because i watched carefully at uh laguna and those things change direction at respectable speed they
00:45:58they aren't uh heavy and slow like the mcgrath highway in boston at rush hour
00:46:06they are nimble and further they slide rather than high side
00:46:12it's really quite a control mechanism you instead of fearing having the terrible fear of of the
00:46:24the 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
00:46:40with standard road race weight wheels and brakes and tires underneath it good uh unsprung weight ratio
00:46:49keep those pieces of rubber kissing the pavement
00:46:56so i think the baggers experiences has a lesson to teach us and those mccandless brothers in northern
00:47:05in ireland who developed the feather bed frame that was adopted by norton a frame that was the model for
00:47:14so many frames in the years that followed that's how they developed that chassis was by
00:47:23constant testing and changing so that they got a feel for what was possible with this chassis
00:47:31good stuff real good stuff yeah kayla uh kayla yakoff was talking about the banking as uh
00:47:40a place where currently people are suffering about two g's
00:47:45she says it's hard to breathe you know you really gotta get off the banking and then you catch up
00:47:50on
00:47:50your breaths because it's pretty pretty good uh uh jamming situation but yeah the baggers in the early
00:47:57super bikes in 76 era especially um and that flexibility of rules allowing just enough uh
00:48:07creativity to make the bikes work and evolve to what we got in you know 83 with uh interceptors and
00:48:14stuff where it was actually handling became a a marketable trait you know prior to that it was all
00:48:21it was all a mile and top speed quarter mile and top speed man that was what we were going
00:48:26for
00:48:27because one way of looking at the magazine business is 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 cuts 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 debouched into a
00:49:42a 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
00:50:11might have enough fuel in them for you to do everything without running it dry but the moment
00:50:17you get to a place where it has to sing that that dulcet song for all those seconds it will
00:50:25pump the
00:50:25but the bowl is dry and cut oh it's one of my favorite things that you've uh repeatedly
00:50:31talked to me about over the years it's pounds per horsepower hour oh yes well 0.5 pounds per
00:50:39horsepower per hour is a uh a rule of thumb for four strokes and 0.65 for two strokes
00:50:50and we ran our um what i don't remember what year it was it was an 80s 250 yamaha on
00:51:00uh
00:51:02the dyno of the former um snowmobile expert out in buffalo and when that thing was working really well
00:51:15it's fuel full it's it's fuel consumption was like 0.595 pound per horsepower per hour
00:51:24and of course where the rest of the fuel go out the tailpipe i always wanted to put a spark
00:51:29plug in
00:51:30the tailpipe see uh 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 up these
00:51:52transfer ducts it makes some of it makes the turn and it enters the cylinder where do i go some
00:52:00of them
00:52:00go to the exhaust port because it's over there sucking away the the pipe signal from the exhaust pipe is
00:52:07say this way this way little darling and of course you'd like to talk sweetly to that fuel and
00:52:16have it all go to the back of the cylinder and perform the loop but they were wasteful so well
00:52:23i have a question for you that's barely related and we used spark plug spark plugs at daytona right
00:52:30just to confirm okay it's connected great um did you spend time indexing spark plugs in your i
00:52:38never got to that i always had something to do yeah because you can buy these washers right so indexing
00:52:45the spark plug is is aiming the open part of the uh to you know the positive and negative the
00:52:51oncoming
00:52:52mixture yeah so that the spark is just unshrouded unshrouded it's just pure spark here's the mixture
00:52:59let let me have it let's go let's light this thing up and uh paul dean the great paul dean
00:53:05has been
00:53:06involved in sprint car racing for a very long time and he said that indexing the plugs on their
00:53:12five or eight hundred horsepower engine picked them up something like maybe five to ten percent
00:53:19uh aiming them all at the intake so that's that's a lot i mean that is a huge amount and
00:53:25you just buy these washers of different thicknesses you mark the plug you know where the opening of the
00:53:31electrode is and you thread it in and torque it down and just get it into that ballpark i've considered
00:53:36it you know it's easy to do on a single cylinder i could probably start with that and see how
00:53:41that goes
00:53:42dare i say bella set i don't want to there are plenty of other singles in the world where you
00:53:48could index your plug you know but yeah you know i kind of want to do that on the xs
00:53:52650 too
00:53:54well i saw that there was a day when i saw a difference in between um ways of thinking about
00:54:01spark plugs gary nixon was asked to ride his 1976 uh irv kanamoto um c and j framed
00:54:12kawasaki kr 750 in a demo at loudon new hampshire and i had a box of the plugs that we
00:54:21used then
00:54:22so that's what i put in it and after practice he said uh uh thing don't don't pick up real
00:54:31good
00:54:31off the corner you got some some of them spark plugs that stick out yes in fact i do because
00:54:38because that was the last spark plugs that we were using in tz 750s um as the 80s got underway
00:54:48they 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 into 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
00:55:24in the mid-1960s they had we we they called out b10 en which was the spark plug that had
00:55:32the gap
00:55:33down inside 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 you'd put in
00:56:12the triumph 650 if you're going on a long trip on the interstates didn't want to burn things down
00:56:21and it worked a treat in tz 750s it was certainly better oh yeah well you know if
00:56:29we're in the 70s era i have to bring up a story you told me uh about an unnamed road
00:56:35racer who was
00:56:37growing recreational crops such as perhaps marijuana on freeway interchanges yes and so i had the
00:56:44audience of all these road racers who were racing in the 60s and through the 70s and into the 80s
00:56:50and
00:56:50i said oh yeah you know that kevin cameron told me about this guy like because they were all
00:56:55talking about how they funded their racing and john long is talking about winning a race in italy and
00:57:00he's driving to emola for the next thing and he's got to earn his money and he's driving a van
00:57:05and he
00:57:05pulls in he's like i don't know the difference between benzina and whatever else was on the side
00:57:09but he's like there was fuel that was cheaper i'm like well i'm gonna get that cheap stuff and he
00:57:13said
00:57:13he put it in his van and he didn't have a lot of money so he just uh he just
00:57:18put a little bit in and
00:57:19got like a mile down the road and the van stopped because 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 gallons
00:57:29of it and so you know he used he barely used it and he's like drains it out and he
00:57:34gets some like
00:57:35last bit of gasoline that he had for his race bike and he gets in the van they go back
00:57:39he sells the fuel
00:57:40that he drained out back to the station and then he buys the right fuel so they're trying to get
00:57:44money
00:57:45together so there are a lot of these stories then he won this big race in italy and he said
00:57:49you know he had a suitcase full of cash millions of lira and he's like his wife theo's like he's
00:57:54like
00:57:54yeah let's you can buy whatever you want at the gucci store or whatever you know it's very cool to
00:57:58hear
00:57:58these stories living in the van racing and i asked all of them i was like yeah do you know
00:58:03anybody you
00:58:03know who did that who was who was growing weed in the freeway interchanges in georgia and stuff
00:58:08and they're like wow that could look that could have been this guy it could have been that guy it
00:58:12could have
00:58:14another guy who was a coke dealer so it was pretty uh pretty interesting insight into the
00:58:18into that era pretty cool it's one time um i was at the fence and i looked over and
00:58:28about excellence there and nick rikiki goes by nick rikiki was a new york city um kid
00:58:37from queens i think and he uh advanced really rapidly in in road racing he he was spending
00:58:47everything that he could make he got up at five o'clock in the morning and delivered orange juice
00:58:52in his van and he was doing everything he could to scratch up the money you know 600 bucks for
00:58:58cylinders
00:58:58600 bucks for cranks because the two strokes ate those things up they lasted about 900 miles a piece so
00:59:08um he goes by i think he was he was being timed at that point and he went probably 183
00:59:16which was
00:59:17good going in those times and i could hear bud axlin saying something next to me he said
00:59:24what he was saying was now who is that going about a million miles an hour looks to me like
00:59:33one of those
00:59:34black and scrungy east coast bikes i think didn't miles baldwood get called that too oh probably
00:59:43because he you know he broke all the fair fairing off his bike and he didn't have a lot of
00:59:48money and
00:59:49so he he raced one whole season with no lower on didn't make any difference because pretty pretty full
00:59:56behind the fairings on a tz john britain told me about testing his bike the bike that he built
01:00:05including 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
01:00:27fairing off bike went faster he said it only made sense because here's the narrow engine and the
01:00:35footpegs are out here the rider's feet are here and there's this big space just let the air through
01:00:44well 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
01:00:59went fast motorcycles go fast by just cramming themselves through the air with brute force
01:01:05and that's why i love the winglets because i know a lot of people are upset about winglets so
01:01:13they wish that they would stop looking that way this but imagine that you're nearing top speed
01:01:23and the front wheels coming up now you don't have control are you going to go 200 miles an hour
01:01:31on one wheel
01:01:31you might feel caution was necessary but the winglets gently push the front end back down
01:01:41restoring 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
01:01:57it's 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 gaze or
01:02:28averting it all together but it works keep on accelerating but at the same time there's a small but vocal
01:02:37group 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 production bikes or
01:03:09prototypes
01:03:10one of the one of the uh tales told to me by cook nelson who was editor of cycle at
01:03:19one time he's
01:03:20the one well and also also he was part of the west coast contingent at afm who was racing
01:03:27basically superbike production ducatis they were yep they were there udo guido had no tuning background
01:03:34in road racing he was just a clever electrical engineer who loved motorcycles and was willing
01:03:39to test things and try things and think about them he was he was not he did not come out
01:03:45of you know
01:03:46germany somehow tuning bmws his entire life father smith said hey we got these 750s see what you can do
01:03:54that was it and he just started messing with them and then it became time to do 900s and that
01:03:59for bmw
01:04:00who saved the save the company if if you if you need spare parts uh go to the warranty department
01:04:06you can have anything you have yeah in there so anyway but but cook was there cook that's the point
01:04:12is like oh yeah um you know california hot rod and they were calling them california hot rods like
01:04:18that's what these production-based super bikes were and you know cook and phil are now they're out there
01:04:24like trying to squeeze this new ducati 750 into you know something else proven by paul smart at the
01:04:311972 emola 200 that it can go and that it will revs 9 000 and it may not scatter amazing
01:04:38anyway tell
01:04:39your cook story well he um 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 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 racing
01:05:51is 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 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 one of the
01:06:37interesting stories from uh from the fellas i was eating with down in daytona john long and
01:06:42and mclaughlin and all those guys carrie 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 that it had a
01:07:08a lot of points on it and he said they were they were throwing tired chunks out and it was
01:07:13just
01:07:13tearing them up and then eventually you know it got paved and and away we went but uh
01:07:20it was a lot of fun it's it's really fun to hear about the paddock hear about the life you've
01:07:26talked
01:07:26about it so many times about being there where you had you know on the on the fast end and
01:07:33the
01:07:33eventual factory and your irv kanamoto's and and kelker others who were no strangers to the hacksaw
01:07:40you know just whatever it was cut the pipes cut the pipes uh cut the steering head reangle the
01:07:46steering head overnight overnight do well uh do it do
01:07:531976 we had a kr 250 that was going pretty well and i think the reason was that i'd made
01:08:01a little weir
01:08:01around the two four inch gears that joined the two crankshafts it has two cylinders one ahead of
01:08:09the other and um i'd made a one millimeter hole to let oil in so the gears were throwing it
01:08:17out and
01:08:18the one millimeter hole was letting it in so instead of drowning in solid oil the gears were able to
01:08:25do
01:08:26what gears do transmit power run not eat it so uh ron pierce qualified on pole and
01:08:34kel must have said to himself well i gotta go do it which meant um what i described for the
01:08:43250
01:08:43widening raising the exhaust ports taking 20 millimeters out of the head pipe uh raise pushing
01:08:50compression up there that ought to do and my bike was out with a water pump drive shaft failure how
01:08:59can water pump drive shaft fail anyway that's what happened and uh kenny prevails so
01:09:12i in those days i wanted to go to daytona and live there and just just try stuff but i
01:09:20remember hearing um
01:09:23gene romero say why do we have to be here all week i want to just get in race and
01:09:30go home
01:09:31and i thought i'm not sympathetic to this viewpoint but uh people come to daytona for
01:09:41different reasons well you know for it got popular because it was there's so much of the country that's
01:09:48still suffering the death grip of you know arctic biting frost you know and it's always the place where
01:09:55we you know people got got to be set free it wasn't the cool west coast you know all those
01:10:00east coast
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
01:10:14shilling uh 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 got a big
01:10:48winery that he makes wine at and uh the trailblazer yeah the trailblazers dinner is is this week
01:10:55and uh ron's going and ron always brings the wine he's driving down with 25 cases apparently for the
01:11:01trailblazers 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 photo
01:11:14here he's with pops yoshimura sure and that's ron pierce and he's got his team cycle world shirt
01:11:19on so we had a little chit chat about you know the days and joe joe parker's celeb of racing
01:11:24and
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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