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RACE WATCH
YROC: Still motoin' after all these years
“The 30-second board goes sideways, the starting gate drops and they’re off! Grabbing the holeshot is Jim ‘Hollywood’ Holley, with the ‘Golden Boy’ Broc Glover and Ron ‘The Machine’ Lechien right behind!” The announcer babbles excitedly, frenetic fans whip their T-shirts over the trackside fences and Bruce Springsteen’s “Glory Days” booms over the RA. system.
Flashback from Saddleback Park circa 1984? Nope. This was Glen Helen Raceway on June 23-24, 2001. The event was the second annual Yamaha Race of Champions, held as the featured race of the fourth annual Vintage Iron World Championships.
Back in 1998, Vintage Iron proprietor Rick Doughty envisioned an event that would bring together the cream of the crop in vintage motocross. This weekend wouldn’t only be about old bikes, however; it would also bring back the stars who raced those machines in their heyday.
Last year, Doughty came up with an idea to elevate the concept to the next level. Why not pit the past champions against one another in an IROC-style race? Yamaha seized the opportunity to showcase its YZ line, and YROC was born.
YROC 1 saw nine former factory stars compete in three motos, with each rider racing a YZ125, 250 and 426 once. This year, the format was expanded to include the new YZ250F four-stroke, so there were 12 riders in four motos-two on Saturday, two on Sunday. The entry list was a veritable Who’s Who of 1970s and ’80s motocross, with riders ranging from Gary Jones, who won the first three AMA 250cc Motocross Championships in 1972, ’73 and ’74, to Georges Jobe, who won the last of his five FIM world titles in 1992.
In fact, there was a bit of an age gap, and this was apparent in the pits, on the track and in the results. Marty Smith, who won three AMA titles in the mid’70s, put in the best showing of the old timers, winning moto one on a 426 and posting a worst finish of seventh on a 125 to wind up third overall.
Still extremely fit, Smith said, “I’d be lying if I told you I was happy, but I don’t mind finishing third to these guys, since I spot them a few years. They’re from the era slightly after mine.”
“These guys” were 40ish youngsters Jim Holley and Broc Glover, who finished first and second overall, respectively. The weekend didn’t start off too well for Glover, last year’s winner, as he fell on the first lap of the first moto and got a flat tire in the second. But he rebounded nicely on Sunday, riding a 250F to second after a war with 426-mounted Ron Lechien in the third moto, and then winning the final moto by 10 seconds on a 426.
Holley was The Man, however, as he posted second, first, first and fifth-place finishes to claim the overall victory. He also was the only rider to win on something other than a 426, topping moto two on a two-stroke 250.
Like the others, Holley said he was pumped just to be here, and hadn’t been riding much lately-oh, except for winning the Senior Pro race at Mammoth on the preceding Thursday, that is.
In fact, aside from Smith and Jim Gibson, who each operate motocross schools in Southern California, and Jones, who rides as part of his day job as head of R&D at White Bros., none of the former factory pros admitted to riding much anymore. Glover, for one, claimed he hadn’t ridden since YROC1. Funny, I recall seeing him at a KTM intro at Gorman, and there was that time I bumped into him testing with Racer X at Lake Elsinore...
Bottom line: These guys never stopped riding. With the possible exception of Ron Lechien-all 6 feet and 250 pounds of him-who’s such a natural that he doesn’t have to train, everyone spent hours practicing for this event. They’re all still racers at heart, and went to the starting gate with their race faces on. As proof of that, Smith and Holley had a heated exchange after banging bars in the first moto, and Glover stormed off after his moto-two flat and didn’t go to the podium after finishing second in moto three. But he also was the first to cop to being uppity when he thanked the Yamaha mechanics for their efforts, saying, “You don’t have any idea how much work it is taking care of 12 former factory riders.”
Originally envisioned as a made-forSpeedvision show, YROC1 erupted into an all-out race, and YROC2 was a noholds-barred war. At no point was this more evident than at the start of moto two, which saw a huge pileup in the first turn. Jones had his shoulder pop out of its socket in that melee (a medic popped it back in so he could ride on Sunday) and Mike Bell sustained a broken ankle, at which point Jim Pomeroy was drafted in to replace him. Also on the DL was Marty Moates with chronic back pain, plus Kent Howerton and Jobe with twisted knees.
Though the Glen Helen grandstands weren’t exactly overflowing, those spectators on hand were treated to a thoroughly entertaining weekend of racing and stargazing. The spectators weren’t the only ones who were starstruck, however. Said winner Holley, “I remember going to the local Honda dealer to get Marty Smith’s autograph, and Marty Moates used to ride out of an OSSA shop near my house in Reseda. It’s a real privilege to ride with these guys.”
Hey, it was a privilege just to watch.
Brian Catterson
Team CW does Laguna Seca Pro Thunder
Thirty hours before the first Pro Thunder practice at Laguna Seca Raceway, “Lupita” was missing.
A frantic coast-to-coast search ensued because Lupita happened to be the BCM Motorsports Ducati 748 lined up as the CW entry in this year’s Buell Pro Thunder event held during the combined AMA and World Superbike race weekend. But somewhere between New Hampshire and California, Lupita-so named by BCM team boss Bruce Meyers’ wife Susie-was lost. And when the trucking company told us the crate wasn’t in San Francisco as it was supposed to be, well...maybe we should have quit right then.
The search unearthed the bike in a shipping yard near Los Angeles, about 350 miles south of Monterey. We called in some favors with friends who lived in the area, my AMA 250cc Grand Prix tuner Steve Biganski and fellow 250cc GP racer Andre Castaños. After a midnight uncrating session in an L.A.-area parking lot, the bike arrived ignominiously at Laguna Seca in the back of a Toyota truck. Even for Pro Thunder, not the most budget-rich class on the AMA schedule, ours was not a high-dollar effort.
The 748 looked a bit begrimed from its travels, having recently been used by Eric Wood to win the Loudon, New Hampshire, Pro Thunder event. My coconspirators, Aaron Tachibana and Ed Robinson, and I (the entire crew, in other words) set about cleaning and prepping the bike. We found a serious problem: minutely cracked brake rotors. We consulted an expert, Team Yamaha’s crew chief Tom Houseworth, who said to throw away the Brembo cast-iron rotors. “Can I just run them in the first practice?” I asked. “No,” Houseworth replied emphatically. “They’re junk. Let me give you an example: Jimmy Adamo.” If you didn’t know, the Day tona crash in which Adamo was killed was caused by a broken disc. Maybe we should have quit then?
The team had no spare discs available, but David Roy of the HMC Ducati Superbike team came to the rescue, lending us the stainless-steel rotors from team rider Steve Rapp’s personal streetbike!
After getting comfortable on what turned out to be a really fun bike, practice and qualifying flew by. We ended up fifth on the grid, in and around the usual Pro Thunder heroes: Jeff Nash, Mike Ciccotto, Tripp Nobles, David Estok, Dean Mizdal and pole-sitter Tom Montano.
Fast company indeed, even if Pro Thunder is billed in the rulebook as the AMA’s entry-level class, aimed at nonfactory riders and tuners. One thing this means is that unlike in the Superbike class, where only riders lapping within 112 percent of the pole time are allowed on the final grid, Pro Thunder permits all qualifiers to start the race. At Laguna, of the 40 riders on the grid, only 23 were within 112 percent of Montano’s 1:32.258 pole time, and the last rider was some 20 seconds per lap slower! So I knew that lapped traffic would require some special efforts.
The 17-lap race started and I launched well, following Montano’s lead while being persistently challenged by Nobles’ Buell. Montano built a gap while Nobles and I battled, but I finally snuck into second, fell into a rhythm and decided to see what Lupita and I could do about Montano. On just the third lap, we hit lapped traffic. And in my case, four laps later, I mean that literally...
Accelerating out of Turn 3 and planning to go to the right of the slower Suzuki SV650-mounted rider ahead, I was surprised when he suddenly seemed to jump backward and faded right into my line. We collided hard enough that I broke his rear wheel and then crashed spectacularly, Lupita spinning down the track and bringing out the red flag. I discovered later that the other rider’s bike had stalled. The rider, who had stayed upright, later apologized and said his bike had never done that before. Terrible timing. Should we have quit then?
My body-and bike-were banged up pretty good, but my hopes of restarting prevented me from admitting my pain to the medics. Back in the pits, Biganski and Meyers began marshaling the rebuilding efforts. Parts were changed and checked while I fumed over the accident. Did the rider I hit have time to get his hand up? Should he have pulled left into the dirt? Did I fail to read the closing speed in time? Was it really the first time his bike had died at the exit of a corner? Should a rider who qualifies 15.1-seconds per lap slower than the pole time be allowed to start an AMA National?
Finally, Lupita appeared ready, but Meyers yelled in warning as the field completed the warm-up lap without me, “There’s no steering damper!”
Maybe we should have quit then, but I love to race, and Lupita is a tough, fast old broad.
After re-starting from pit lane, I caught riders in bunches, snuck into the top 10 and then started working even harder. Just as I passed into seventh place, the race was red-flagged again, this time for dropped oil that caused several bikes to crash. And so the race ended three laps early. As scoring reverted to the previous lap, Lupita and I were listed in eighth place. Montano, meanwhile, took the win in front of Nobles and Mizdal. I spent the next four hours at the hospital (thankfully, nothing broken) in a mixture of frustration and happiness, but I was glad we never quit.
Nick Ienatsch
