Cycle News

VOLUME 57 ISSUE 11 MARCH 17, 2020 P107 crets because the traveling mechan- ics were all such good friends. "We'd be in the hotel parking lots working on the bikes with a bunch of the other teams," Alexander recalls. "And we'd all talk back and forth and find out what each other was doing to their bikes. It was really pleasant and a lot of fun." The biggest issue in those early two-stroke days was trying to keep the bikes from seizing. "The gas we were using, we didn't know," Alexander says. "We were mixing av [aviation] with regular gas to try to come up with a combination that would be reasonable. It was kind of rudimentary. We didn't have any- way to test fuel and we were getting regular gas from gas stations." In January of 1977 Alexander was hired by Suzuki. His first task with Su- zuki's racing team was an eye opener. "My first week there, I was just a young kid who just showed up and they told me to go crush a bunch of factory engines and Ollie Petersen's beautiful RH works bike, that he'd never even ridden. That was my in- troduction to Suzuki. I was heartbro- ken, but that's what all the factories did in those days." It was a time of unobtainable works machinery in motocross coming directly from the factory. At some points the deadlines were so tight, the team might first see the bike when they arrived for a race and picked it up from an airport. "That's why they called them works bikes, because we always worked on them," Alexander only halfway jokes, before adding that when they got a works machine from the factory, it was like kids gathering around the tree on Christmas morning. "I almost don't know how to ex- plain it," he says. "We were in such awe of what the Japanese created for us to go race with. It was just a beautiful thing." Alexander was Danny LaPorte's mechanic in 1977, when LaPorte would have won the AMA 125cc Moto- cross Championship except for the in- famous "Let Broc Bye" incident where Yamaha ordered Bob Hannah to allow Broc Glover to pass him on the final lap at the series finale, so Glover (and Yamaha) could win the title. During his days as a Suzuki moto- cross racing mechanic, Alexander, along with fellow mechanic Chris Haines, developed a chain guide that eventually found its way to the production Suzukis. In 1982, Alexander became man- ager of Suzuki's motocross team. In 1986 came the end of the works era in motocross. Alexander remembers it as a sad time. "We were devastated," he says of no longer experiencing the annual thrill of getting the trick machines from Japan. "We had to re-engage with production bikes. It was difficult for Suzuki, because we had such long success with works bikes. It was a learning experience. The thing about that era is, the stuff we used on the works bikes usually made it to produc- tion bikes two to four years later." Suzuki then pegged Alexander to help build its amateur and support racing programs in the 1990s. He became involved with Suzuki's road racing efforts in 2000, just as Yo- shimura Suzuki was entering a period of domination in AMA Superbike with Mat Mladin and Ben Spies. "I kind of rode on some people's coattails on that one," he adds with a grin. Alexander loves so many things about his job with Suzuki, the one thing he admits finding tough is trying not to become too close to the riders. You could see the emotion in Alexan- der's eyes when talking about this. "As hard as it is, I tend to try to keep a little distance in my relation- ships with our riders," Alexander admits. "If something happens and our contracts didn't work out, I didn't want to hurt my heart. You hire these guys, sometimes giving them their start, and you work so closely with them and sometimes when they go, it tears you up." Parting ways with guys you've gone into battle with is always one the cruelest parts of racing. And talk with the riders Alexander has worked with over the years and you can tell the admiration is mutual. Case in point: When Roger Hayden retired from road racing, he made a point of mentioning Alexander, along with Yoshimura Suzuki's Don Sakakura, to the media. "Don and Pat are more like friends to me than a boss. We talk about life, sports, you name it, and it's just been a plea- sure to be part of the team." It's been 43 years and counting at Suzuki for Alexander, and he's still going strong, working every day to help his teams and riders reach their full potential. CN Subscribe to nearly 50 years of Cycle News Archive issues: www.CycleNews.com/Archives

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