Cycle News

VOL. 56 ISSUE 12 MARCH 26, 2019 P115 to 750cc and the distinct lack of factory seats at that point meant that Heino went from a promising factory prospect to a blue-collar privateer racer almost overnight. With the move to 750, Yo- shimura Suzuki was caught off guard and didn't really have a bike to compete against the stagger- ing technology of Honda's new VF750 Interceptor. Except here was this hungry young kid from New Hampshire knocking on the door, seeing what they could do. "I'd hooked up with Yoshimura at the end of 1982," Heino recalls. "And I moved out to California to pursue racing. So, my brother and I went in to talk to Fujio [Yoshimura] to find out what we could do. We wondered if we put so much into it, if they would put some into it, we could get things going, and he said, 'Yes, let's do it.'" With that agreement, the Heino brothers essentially helped keep Yoshimura developing a super- bike in '83, something they had no plans to do initially. So Heino raced that bike with decent suc- cess, including a handful of top 10 finishes and a sixth at Mid-Ohio, which was his top outing. Heino still has that Yoshimura built 1983 Suzuki GS750ES. Turns out to be a pretty significant race bike, being the first 750cc superbike Yoshimura developed. Heino also scored an AMA Formula One podium at Mid-Ohio in '83 on his own Suzuki RG500, finishing behind the factory Hon- das of Mike Baldwin and Steve Wise. Yet in spite of his strong rides, he was doing nothing but continuing to spend his own money, of which he was pretty much out of after two years on the pro circuit. "I had to sit out in '84 in the prime of my career," Heino said. "And then in '85, Honda was selling their RS250s, so I got one of those. I'd never ridden a 250 before. It was different. Every little movement you made was magni- fied. You stick your elbow out too far, and the bike leans over. But I did pretty good on them." Well enough to finish fourth in the final AMA 250 Grand Prix standings for 1985. He scored runner-up 250 GP finishes at Daytona in October of '85 and again at his home track of Loudon in '86. Heino, like dozens of top-level racers did in the mid-1980s, found a way to actually make a little money racing, by dropping back down to the club ranks and chas- ing factory contingency dollars. That led into racing with one of the leading AMA National Endur- ance teams, Dutchman Racing. His racing career took a hiatus when some of Heino's past deal- ings with marijuana trafficking came back to haunt him. In '93, he made a plea deal and spent a couple of years in a minimum- security federal prison in Jesup, Georgia, along with televangelist Jim Bakker. In one of his last races before going to jail, Heino scored a podium in a Harley 883 road race at Daytona. "That was it, I was riding so good," Heino said. "I really had some of my best years coming up and then that just really screwed me. But I did my time, did what I was supposed to do. Pat Moroney set me up with a job when I got out, and I stayed at his house, and he got me a Harley and a GSX-R, and I went back racing. "At that point, I was just so happy to be out and going to racetracks. I was just doing it by myself towing the bikes behind my car, but in my mind, I was living the dream." By then, Heino was in his mid- 30s and, even though he scored some top-10 pro results, at this point, he says he was doing it just for fun. A bad crash at Loudon in '96 that broke his femur caused him to call it a career. Today Heino is living in a com- fortable house in Daytona Beach and is close to retirement from his local truck-driving job. He regular- ly rides both on the road and off. His girlfriend, Tara, has him eating healthy and walking with her and their laidback husky. That's how she keeps him fit. He's in his early 60s now but looks younger. "Things are good now," Heino says. "I got lucky. I got a house— I've worked hard for everything I have. I'd like to get my vintage bikes together, take some time for us to travel, go hiking and camp- ing, ride dirt bikes and just do whatever we want to do." CN Subscribe to nearly 50 years of Cycle News Archive issues: www.CycleNews.com/Archives

• Cover