Cycle News - Archive Issues - 1970's

Leading the AMA · ICamel Pro trail to Daytona By Dale Brown , Steve Eklund got the 1978 AMA Grand National Cha mpionship/Camel Pro Series season offto a very good start. As a matter offact , he got the season off to a better start than anyone else in recent history by winning the first two series events the TT and short track held in the Houston A strodome. Eklund, ;"ho was th e top AMA Junior in 1975 and Rookie of the Year in 1976, has placed in the top five of th e Camel Pro Series in the two years he 's been Expert-ranked. Known as the fa vorit e in short track and TT competition , he is also respected on the miles and half miles th e Cam el Pr? circuit, and this year has added a Yamaha TZ750E t o his arsenal. He IS sponsored by Mario Zanotti, a Stanford Univ ersity mathematics professor. 0 / How did you get started in motorcyling? I've been riding motorcycles since I was 12. My father had a motorcycle , which got me enthused. I never gave much thought about ra cing but I had this friend that was into it , and I wanted to get .into it. So , finally I got around to going to my first Sportsman race with him. How did you do in that first race? I don't think I did too well. Well, as a matter of fact , I 'd id pretty good . I made the main event , anywa y. I think I got a th ird or fourth . I had a 250cc Ossa - kind of obsolete now. At the time it was a pretty good bike. How long did you ride Sportsman? I rod e Sportsman for three yea rs. Novice, Junior and Expert - I did it all in one season. However , I broke my leg in my third Expert ra ce. I was ou t for a whole yea r. After I got healed up aga in , I got back into it. That's th e reason for sta rt ing so lat e. I'd be right around the younger age of most other ra cers. Then after I rode a half yea r as an Expert in Sportsman, I got int o m y first Novice race - Class C Novic e . I think I was 18 . What were the hig memories from your Novice and Junior years? My Novice years were really good . Ascot was my favorite track. We had one of those 250cc twins - T A250s . Those things were really the hot set ·up for a Novice. At Ascot I was the overall Novice point leader, and also as a Junior . I was the top Junior in th e nation and I was the regional points leader. I raced all the regionals and got top regional honors. I got a nice check and it helped me out a lot . As a Junior you can't make anything. Your first year as an Expert - was Houston your first race? My first race was at Dallas - th ey still had Dallas then . That was m y first short track. I did really well there, set fast time. Then the rest of the day didn't turn out so well . I won my he at race , but in the first lap of th e main I got knocked down and that caused th e spark plug to foul and I pulled off. What was your first National win at Pontiac like? It was prett y ne at. I rod e the 750c c twin on that track . The tra ck was pretty sma ll bu t th e co ndi tions were p rett y d ecent. It was fa ir ly tacky. T ha t was the yea r that the 500cc singles cam e out and jus t abou t everyone had one . I was kind of worried beca use I figured the 500cc sing le was th e wa y to go . but a t the time we d idn't have one . Bu t . shoo t, the 750 wor ked rea lly well . Did you lead the race all th e wa y? Yeah . I go t ou t in fr ont a nd led the whole race. Randy Cleek - at that time he was doing really well also - he got second. What happened the next night? Well , things wer e going pretty good , I ended up seventh. The short track was pretty bad . It was slippery, just a groove - a narrow groove inside. If you didn't ha ve. a fa irl y good spot .on t he lin e , you 'd ge t stu ck in th e ba ck of the pack. You couldn't do any good passing at all . I didn't get a very good sta rt and kind of go t stuck in the pack. Your rookie Expert year was also the year you got into road racing? Yeah. About halfway through th e season. How did you work into that? What got you interested? W ell , m y sponsor , he's always liked road ra cing. Being that he's from Ital y, that 's ki nd of his th ing . He liked road ra ci ng, a nd t ho ugh never a champi on , he raced on e or two road races. It 's a little m or e so ph isticated type of ra cing . T h a t's why he was involved in It al y, beca use th ere are no d irt tracks in Ital y. Did you have any difficulty making the transition from dirt tracks to road race? It 's so different , tho ugh it's j ust like d irt tra ck in th at you have to have a lot of expe rien ce . I didn't have any ex perience at all when I first hopped on it, but I did fairly well . Of course the things, unfortunatel y, seize all th e time. I fell off three or four times in the past two yea rs. It kind of destroys you r confidence. And when you ride one of those things , you gotta have a lot of confidence. If you don't have a lot of confidence, you can't do very well it bre aks ·d own yo u r concentration. Did you start with club events or AMA Novice events? AMA Novice. My first ra ce was at Laguna Seca. I wanted to ride in practice , but my sp onsor built th e thing up from scratch a nd it was a long project building. I rode the Laguna Sec a he at ra ce and was third , but in th e main event we had trouble with th e front brake a nd didn't get a chance to finish th e full main event. W e took a bo u t four or five laps, a nd it was ov er. T ha t year we went to a n AFM event at Riverside a nd rode that. T he bike seized and ' sp it m e off. I broke m y collarbon e . Tha t was at t he en d of the season - I d idn't miss a ny races. About a mont h or two la ter afte r th a t, it was a ll hea led up . T he beginn ing of the next year we went to Daytona . I was d oing reall y we ll. W e pra cti ced the whole wee k long a nd the th ing h ad a n ign ition prob lem on the line j ust befor e the start of the hea t race. That was it. I didn't get a chance to go out and qualify. You have to finish the heat ra ce in order to qualify for the main . What other road races did you' run last year? Last yea r we hit all the road race Nationals on the west coast. Which was Sears Point , where I got a fourth and Riverside where I got a fifth . What about the dirt track Nationals last year? You dropped from fourth to fifth. Well , my rookie year I won three Nationals (Pontiac TT , Santa Fe short track and Peoria TT), although last year I was more consistent on the half miles and m iles. In my rookie year we had a little bit of trouble with the Harleys. We weren't averaging too well on the half mil es at all because we had too many troubles. And it just so ha ppened last year - the points between Sp ringer a nd Boody, they were doing so well . They just did way better than they did th e year before. You finished behind Scott and Roberts. , Yeah , well Ga ry Scott , Kenny, Boody and Springer are usually the main co n tenders. They were the ones that were finishing j ust a bou t all th e Nationals, except Kenny , who was having a lot of p roblems. But he pi cked up a ll th e points in road racing . Scott, Boody and Sp ringer , man, they m anaged to make j ust about all th e Nationals and do really well. How many Nationals did you win last year? I only won one National - the Santa Fe sho rt track - b ut I was more consistent on the half mi les and mil es than my roo kie year. You led the spring San Jose Mile going into the last lap, didn't you? Yes. Come t he white flag, I was leading , a nd going d own the back stra igh ta way towards th e checkered flag . I had some ignition trou b les, and Ga ry Scott just managed to scoot right in the re. . What about this year's equipment? 'We'll have 250cc Yamahas with a Boss frame for short tra ck . I'm going to ha ve a 500cc single for smaller-track TTs and as a back-up machine. And we'II have a 750cc twin. Then , we'll have the Harley-Davidsons for half mi les and miles and then we'll have the TZ750 for road races . What are you, Mario and Tom going to do to get ready for this year? Right now , we're in the process of doing a lot of improvements for the Harleys. My sponsor ha s ideas for more horsepower which we need on th e miles - not so much on the half m iles. We ca n ge t by on the half miles. Bu t , for the miles we ho pe for more horsepower. Mario's looking into that. W e've go t the short tra cker and th e TTers pretty much set up for th e seaso n . R ight no w we're worki ng on the road race r. so that takes up all our tim e. It 's a new thi ng for us. Once we ge t done with Da ytona , we'll prett y m u ch get in vo lved with th e d irt tra ckers. al though Sears Point is the next N at io na l after Daytona so we won 't be having much done on the d irt trackers . Af ter Sears Point we'll park t he road racer a nd devote all to the d irt trackers. We're behind sched u le as fa r l!') ~ ...c:: U ~ ~ ~ 19

• Cover