The Best Little Roadrace In America
THE BEST LITTLE ROADRACE IN AMERICA
RACE WATCH
Call it Daytona North or Laguna Seca East, but the Loudon Classic is hard to beat
DAVID EDWARDS
IT HAD BEEN THREE HOURS SINCE the checkered flag had fallen on Loudon 1986. Yet out on Route 106, the tree-and-pasture-lined road leading away from the New Hampshire track, local residents still watched the exodus of racing fans.
Lounging in lawn chairs and perched atop stationwagon tailgates, the audience witnessed the spectacle as a seemingly endless stream of motorcycles filed past. Harley-Davidsons—massive, low-slung and thundering—appeared to be the bikes of choice, although there were plenty of chrome-encrusted touring rigs to gawk at, as well as a good showing of intense-sounding sportbikes. One young boy, his face reddened by the late-Spring sun, had thrown caution to the wind and ridden his BMX bicycle to the very edge of the road, where he was frantically waving at every motorcycle that came by.
For one weekend each June, New Hampshire becomes Mecca to over 50,000 motorcyclists. They converge just below picturesque Lake Winnipesaukee for the Loudon Classic, billed as “America’s oldest motorcycle race.” That claim is a little sketchy because many of the race records were destroyed in a fire. But according to Don Brymer, the event’s promoter and current owner of the Bryar Motorsports Park where the race is now run, the first competition was conducted in 1923. For years the race was held on a half-dirt, halfpavement track, before being moved to the present facility, near the town of Laconia, in 1965. Brymer bought the track in 1980 and has made improvements each year; a new pit road was added this year, for example.
Brymer’s improvements aside, the Loudon track itself is nowhere near as picturesque as its setting would lead one to believe. Laid down in a clearing cut into the thick New Hampshire woods, the facility has seen 20 years of hard use—everything from motorcycles to stock cars to mud-boggers has run there—and it shows. Like a threadbare carpet, the scrub grass surrounding the road course has patches of dirt and rocks showing through. A haphazard array of telephone poles dots the landscape, with communication lines looping between them. A rough-andready collection of used car tires lines the more dangerous corners, their only concession to beauty being a slapped-on coat of white paint.
But while the aesthetics of Bryar Motorsport Park are desperately in need of a spruce-up, as a venue for watching race action, it may be the best track in the nation. Unlike the detached spectating that goes on at a super-speedway like Daytona, the fans at Loudon are treated to racing up-close and personal. The track is short and tight-tO corners in 1.63 miles-so the action is concentrated. Then, too, the track is laid out in such a way and with enough elevation changes that some spectators can see a rider for almost the entire lap. Those who opt for more restrictive viewing still get to see several cor ners, plus they have the added bonus of sitting close to the course, where the wrestling of handlebars and bang ing of fairings are in plain sight.
Bryar is popular with the Camel Pro roadracers as well as the specta tors, although for different reasons. Loudon is demanding and technical, a `~rider's track" that rewards skill more than horsepower. As Randy Renfrow, a former 250cc champion now trying to top the 500cc Formula One ranks, explained it, "At Loudon, a rider is very, very busy. Either you're rolling on the throttle or touching the brakes-doing some thing-every second. The tachometer is useless because you never have time to look down."
Many of Loudon’s corners are banked, like mini-speedbowls, and only add to the course’s difficulty. “There’s a lot of traction in the middle of the corners, but not at the exits,” says Renfrow, “so you roll on the gas and all of a sudden the rear tire lights up. That just adds to the fatigue factor. You have to be careful here, all the time.”
Renfrow, 29 years old and 118 pounds soaking wet, concocted just the right combination of care and speed to win Saturday’s F-l final, after dicing throughout the entire race with Rhodesian Kork Ballington. A four-time world champion who has been in semi-retirement for the past three years, Ballington called Loudon a “magic circuit, real fun to ride,” although he thought the track could be made safer with the inclusion of a few more hay bales.
Don Greene, defending Formula Two champion, had little trouble taking Sunday’s F-II final on his Honda RS250, but he, too, acknowledges the particular demands that Loudon puts on a rider. “This track is very demanding mentally; you have to be right on your line. As silly as it sounds, when you’re riding that hard, it’s easy to hold your breath, so you have to remember to breathe.”
Jeff Heino, who finished second to Greene, agreed. “Concentration is the key. If you let up (mentally), you almost come to a stop. It’s easy to lose five seconds a lap here.”
Sunday’s big finale was the Superbike race, and the man of the hour was Honda rider Wayne Rai ney. Billed as the best and brightest of the roadracers still competing in the U.S., Rainey is young, good-looking and ungodly fast, a genuine Top Gun on two wheels. And Rainey needed to win at Loudon.
Plagued by tire troubles at Daytona and rule-book blunders at Sears Point, Rainey came to Loudon trailing teammate Fred Merkel in Superbike series points. His confidence at Loudon had been shattered, along with his elbow, during a crash there last year. To make matters worse, he had made a bad decision before Saturday’s F-l final by instructing his mechanics to shorten the wheelbase of his RS500. Hoping the change would increase traction, Rainey was, instead, treated to a bike that spun its huge rear slick much too abruptly, and he had to settle for third place behind the privateer Hondas of Renfrow and Ballington.
But when the Superbikes were waved off the line, Rainey put all his troubles behind him. A catapult launch sent him to the first corner with the lead, and the race was his.
“I had a hard time getting mentally back into the track,” said Rainey after the champagne spraying. “I’ve got bad memories of this track. Lapped riders were my biggest problem; there were a lot of ‘Oh, no, am I going to make it?’ situations out there.”
As often happens at Loudon, even if there is a runaway win such a Rainey's, there’s action back in the pack worth watching. This year that turned out to be an understatement.
Behind Rainey and second-place Fred Merkel came the duo of Bubba Shobert and Dale Quarterly. Shobert, 1985 Camel Pro Champion and Honda’s premier dirt-tracker, is a shucks-ma’am Texan who also just happens to be damn good at clipping apexes and dragging his knees. And Quarterly is a hard-riding privateer who claims Loudon as his home track —and who also knows a thing or two about determination. Two years ago at Laguna Seca, he crashed during his F-l heat race and badly mangled his little finger. The next day he showed up for the Superbike final with the finger amputated, and in so much pain that he had to pull in the clutch lever with his wrist.
In this year’s Superbike race at Loudon, though, they went at each other for 38 laps, Shobert on one of last year’s Team Honda Interceptors, Quarterly on a Yamaha FZ, the trickest feature of which seemed to be its blue flame paint job. And of course, it all came down to the last lap. With Quarterly in the lead, just two turns away from the finish line, Shobert dove underneath and pulled into the lead. A deep—almost too deep—thrust into Turn 10 kept Quarterly at bay, and the two took the checkered flag to the biggest applause of the weekend.
“I never braked so hard in my life,” drawled Shobert afterward. “The back end came up in the air and everything.”
Asked about the track, Shobert was equally enthusiastic, likening some of the corners to dirt-track turns because of the sliding required to get through them quickly. He summed things up quite succinctly: “It’s the best track around.”
No one argued with him. E3
