Cycle News - Archive Issues - 1970's

!The.c~ntroversia1hillbilly ; ae e e By Jim Gianatsis B .. 36 y the end of the 1977 racing season Mjckey Boone was the fastest privateer motocross rid- er in America. And at the same time the Japanese factory teams were hiring new riders in wholesale quantities . They were looking everywhere for new talent to fill their ranks because of the AMA's new National Motocross Championship program for 1978 which only allows a rider to enter only one class. The bucks-up Japanese . companies knew they needed at least two riders in a class if they expected half a chance at winning a title. But even though the Japanese firms were taking on more riders than they ever had before , none of them wanted to hire Mickey Boone. Flashback to the summer of 1976 ... a little known privateer attacks the Japanese factories and leaves them shaking in fear. It didn't happen on the race track , but in the pits after a 125cc National. Mickey Boone, a local hotdogger from Winston -Salem, North Carolina, invoked the AMA's never-before-used motocross claiming rule to try and buy Bob Hannah's multi-thousand dollar watercooled works Yamaha for a mere $2 ,000. Quick thinking on the part of the Japanese teams had them banding together to post counter claims for the bike with Yamaha luckily retaining their bike after a drawing. In the weeks that followed, Mickey Boone kept the major Japanese teams terrified as he threatened' to claim their bikes at each race. To keep their good works bikes from being claimed, Yamaha and Honda actually entered their riders on tired year-old factory machines. Team Suzuki played the old switch ploy, changing their bikes from works to production immediately after their riders pulled off the track and into the back of the Suzuki vans . Mickey said he was trying to prove a point. That privateers needed equal equipment to be competitive against the factory riders . He never did get to claim a bike, but things sure have changed since the summer of 1976 . The AMA raised the claiming price. Bob Hannah proved he didn't need a works bike to win . And Mickey Boone learned how to ride fast enough that he could beat factory riders and their works bikes with a produ ction machine. So here was Mickey . The 1977 motocross season had just drawn to a close , but it wouldn't be long before the 1978 season would be in swing. He had proven himself as the fastest privateer in America on his nearly box stock RM Suzukis, but none of the Japanese companies wanted to talk to him about riding their bikes. Had the claiming controversy affected him ? Obviously it had, but nobody knew how much it had more than Mickey himself. "The claiming controversy certainly has affected me . I didn't know what I was getting into when I did try to claim Hannah 's bike. It was never done . It was something new. I thought, 'What the heck. ' "But now, I can see it was a mistake toward theJapanese factories trying to claim one of their bikes . I don't think it was in anybody's favor - mine or theirs - to do what I did. If I had it to do all over again I'd just let it ride . It may have been no big thing, but it 'hurt me more than it helped me . From the prioateer's point of view it may have been the thing to do, but not from the factories' point ofview . " Did Mickey still feel the factories had better equipment available to their riders and that the privateers needed to be equal when it came down to the bikes they used on the race track? "I'm sure that factory bikes are still a little bit better than production bikes. I'm sure the factory bikes are a little bit lighter and handle a little bit better, but that isn 't as important anymore. Hannah proved a point that he could win on a stocker, but I also think he's the only one that could win on a stocker. I'm the only one who did really well on a stocker as a privateer. I do think that a factory machines does have an edge over a production machine. It 's no big deal though. If you set your heart to riding a stocker, you can do it. I don't think I'd get as tired on a factory bike - the travel is longer and they are lighter. " Mickey was a little off base here, because European companies like Husky and Maico have been successful racing production bikes. No Japanese team's factory riders - other than Bob Hannah have won on production bikes because none have tried. All the companies, Japanese and European , now produce competitive production bikes, including Honda with their just-released CR250R. Other privateers had done well on production bikes. Chuck Sun, Mark Barnett and Steve Wise used production bikes to beat factory riders during the 1977 sea on and land factory contracts for 1978. Mickey discussed the rumors that Team Suzuki had offered him some sort of bribe to keep him from claiming their bikes. "I know what you 're talk ing about . I wasn 't going to claim any more bik es and I was talking to Suzuki to see if they could give me some help. I want ed some front forks or anything. Suzuki must have been frightened that I was going to claim one of their bik es so they gave me a set of works f orks f or the 1976 Trans-AMA Series. I th ought that was fin e, though the works f orks they gave me were so worn out they weren't as good as the stock forks I was using. I used them half the series before I figured out th ey weren't any good. Keith McCarty rebuilt th em for me , but he said they were pretty well worn and bent. Suzuki had told me they were pretty well used wh en they gave them to me . But I don't really think they gave them to me because they thought I was going to claim one of t~eir bikes, but they might have, too. The claiming controversy drew a lot of response from Cycle News readers back during the summer of 1976 and was probably the most controversial topic that had ever hit the National motocross circuit. Many Mickey Boone ~ • • • 1 •• • , •• , • • fans took offense over a related editorial I did at the time which described Mickey as a "second level" privateer thinking he deserved equal equipment to the factory riders. They thought I was calling Mickey second rate when I said "second level. " What "second level" meant was that riders like Hannah, Smith, DiStefano and Weinert (who won Nationals) had to be considered "first level" riders, while the riders who rounded out the top 20 finishing positions at a National, but didn't . yet have the ability to win. '.. like Mickey ... were considered "second level." "It did hurt me at the time to have it come out in Cycle News that I was being called a second string rider. I knew I was no Marty Smith or Bob Hannah at that time, or still now . Then again, I think it helped me a lot because it gave me more desire to do better. I guess you can see that. I went out and worked harder. I'm glad that we 're able to sit down now and talk things over. "I'm trying now to get out of that second level and into that first level. I'm getting pretty quick, but I could be in a little better shape when it comes to that JO-minute mark in the mota. But, maybe if my production bike wasn 't so heavy I wouldn 't get as t"ed. "I do feel I was the fastest prioateer on tee 1977 circuit. It was difficult, but it alsofelt good. I could look at the results of a race and see there wasn 't any guy in front of me that wasn't factory-backed . "It's hard being a privateer. If it wasn 't for my dad I wouldn't have been out there. He helps me a lot . He put up all the money to send me to the races and he worked as my mechanic. .He's got me where I am today. He's a very good mechanic, and I never broke . If I didn't finish a race , it was my own fault . If I didn't do good one week, well, he 'd just pat me onthe back and said, 'There'll always be another race. ' That 's really good because you need all the encouragement you can get when you're out on the road. "I've been getting help from MotoX Fox, too . It 's not th e full help they give their other riders becaus e I had my own m echanic and van , but th ey did help me out and I wore th eir team uniform. S8IM Cycles in WinstonSalem has been giving me my bikes and parts. I've been riding for S8IM Cycl es ever since I've been racing. They 've always given me a bike and parts , even when I was racing Hondas. I did well on Honda with factory support, but then they wanted me to ride production stuff I did for a year and did really well, but then all the other brands got so much better. I figured. then that if I'm going to race stock machinery I better use the best available. " Though he seems older , Mickey is still plenty young at 20 . He has a girlfriend , Drew, and they've been go ing together for five years . She usually travels with Mickey and his dad to ,!II the Eastern races. They would like to get married, but Mickey explained he's had a hard enough time supporting himself, and that , • • • I marriage, at least for the time being, is out of the question. Despite the fact that Mickey and the Japanese teams hardly have the best possible rapport, his riding performance this past year , especially during the 500cc Nationals where he came close to winning in North Carolina and Georgia, had probably won back much of the respect that he lost during the claiming controversy. And as time heals poor relationships, Mickey might have been one of the first rider choices by the Japanese teams for 1978, but the 1977 Trans-AMA"Series proved to be his undoing. At the first race of the series, MidOhio, Mickey was running up in third place in the opening moto when his chain guide came adrift and punctured a hole in his engine case . Two weeks later at Unadilla, Mickey fell down and broke his finger on a rock, putting him out of the series for two more weeks. The worst piece of luck occurred at Anaheim Stadium: one week before the Trans-AMA Series concluded, where Mickey crashed going into a turn during practice for the Supercross Series race. The result was a foot broken in three places and a subsequent operation to pin the bones back together. If luck had been with him, Mickey might have been able to finish out the Trans-AMA Series with as good a showing as he turned in during the Nationals and perhaps the Japanese teams might have forgotten past differences. But neither did happen . Mickey returned home to WinstonSalem to let his foot heal. At the time of our interview Mickey was still on privateer status. There was an offer from Moto-X Fox for additional support during the 1978 racing season, but not the kind of full sponsorship he was looking for. In addition , his father was going to retire from being Mickey's mechanic and go back up into the Carolina hills to take back over the family's bootlegging business. Mickey would be on his own, but those hillbillies are plenty tough . He would have gone back out to tackle the Japanese giants on his own. Just when things seemed bleakest the telephone rang. Long distance from Milwaukee . Harley -Davidson had just fired their entire motocross team . . . they would support one rider in the 250cc class for 1978 . .. would Mickey be that rider? The response was, "Yesl" Mickey Boone has now joined the ranks of the factory riders he once envied and attacked . It 's not a Japanese team , but a factory team nonetheless. Is he a traitor to his own cause? Probably so , if he races a bike that contains parts unavailable to privateers. But he probably isn 't a traitor if the bike is stock. Or if he admits to himself that it's the rider that wins the race in ' motocross and not the bike. Sure, a decent bike helps, but every motorcycle shop in town sells decent bikes. And it was Mickey Boone the rider that Harley-Davidson hired, not Mickey Boone the kid who two years ago thought he had to have more than the best bike in town. •

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