Cycle News is a weekly magazine that covers all aspects of motorcycling including Supercross, Motocross and MotoGP as well as new motorcycles
Issue link: https://magazine.cyclenews.com/i/1102141
VOL. 56 ISSUE 14 APRIL 9, 2019 P117 the idea of someone else telling him when and where and on what bike he was going to race. "From that point on he decided to do it everything on his own," Scott said. Pummell was undoubtedly talented, but he raced on his own dime, resulting in a relatively limited schedule of pro races. His best AMA Superbike result came at Mid-Ohio in 1988 when he fin- ished 14th on his Honda VFR750. Pummell excelled on the club level. In 1988 he beat a slew of talented riders like Fritz Kling, Scott Zampach, Jim Knipp and Dave Knapp to win the Michigan Gran Prix, a season-long WERA Championship held at Grattan Raceway in Grattan, Michigan. "I think that his proudest mo- ment was winning that series," Scott says of the Michigan Gran Prix. "He had all the clippings from the coverage of those races in Cycle News and American Roadracing. He beat some really good racers in the series, guys who went on to be winners and champions at the pro level. And he did it on a bike that was a couple of years old." Like many racers who worked full time as well as raced, Phil was often running on very little sleep. "I think my favorite quote from dad was, one time he'd driven all night to get to a track and was sleeping in the back of the van when in the morning another racer started pounding on the door. My dad looked out the guy told him the first practice session was getting ready to go out. My dad looked at him and said, 'Novices need prac- tice, Experts need sleep!'" Scott, an only child, had been hauled around to a lot of his dad's races with his mom and dad as a kid, and it was his dad who got him into motocross, something Scott loved because they did it together as a family. When the spells starting hap- pening for Phil, Scott said his dad just ignored it. "He was one of those guys who just never went to the doctor," Scott said. "Finally, he started having seizures, and it couldn't be ignored anymore." It was in 1996 when doctors finally told Phil of his brain cancer. After an operation doctors said the cancer was so advanced at that point, they only gave him about six months to live, "but he lived another 12 or 13 years," Scott said. Scott said even though his dad battled fiercely, cancer changed his dad's personality. He grins and says not all of it was bad though. "My dad came from a fam- ily where there was no affection shown," Scott said. "I remember when I was a kid, I would go to hug my dad and he would stop me and tell me, 'Men don't hug other men.' "But during the height of treat- ments I was off to college, and I remember every time I came home, he'd open the door and look me right in the eye and say, "Son! Come here and give me a hug!" I was like, 'What the hell is going on?'" Scott said his dad tried to keep his motorcycle service shop going through his illness, but in the final years, he would just get out old motorcycle magazines to read and would only get bits and pieces of work done. After Phil passed away in 2011, Scott said the most heartbreaking thing was to see the condition his dad's shop was in. "He was the kind of guy where nothing was out of place," Scott said. "When he was teaching me to work on bikes if I put one tool in the wrong place, I'd hear about it for days. After he died, I went into the shop, and things were just piled up everywhere. It was sort of heartbreaking." Today Scott said his dad's old Honda racebike is still in the shop, just as it was after it rolled off the track at his final race nearly 30 years ago. "This company came around a few years ago to buy whatever they could from the shop, and they were like, 'How much for the VFR?' And I told them that was one thing that wasn't for sale." When Phil passed away, Scott not only lost his dad but a friend and a mentor as well. "I still get a little emotional thinking about it today," Scott says. Phil Pummell was a solid racer who made it happen by way of his own skills and hard work. And while Phil was never a national star in motorcycle racing, to at least one racing kid from a small town in Ohio, Phil Pummell was the hero of all heroes. CN Subscribe to nearly 50 years of Cycle News Archive issues: www.CycleNews.com/Archives