Cycle News - Archive Issues - 1970's

The Second Cominq of the Lumberjack (Left) Rick Burgett. the newly crowned 500cc MX National Champion. tuner Bill West and physical fitneu Instructor Mike Vogele present the winning comblnatlon.lAbove) Burgett prepares to go to war. T he first time I met Rick Burgett, I also me t Bob Hannah. Then Yamaha fac tory tuner Bill Buchka introduced me to the twosome at the opening race of the Florida W inter-AMA Series in 1976. It was the first race of the season and Yamaha was to debut its all -new rookie team in the Series' 500cc class. . My first accounts of the two were nothing short of highly favorable. Really nea t kids , good natured and courteous, slightly wild and craz y as an y teen agers in the ir situation would be . . Their first race together for Yamaha was at Orlando Sports Stadium where they bounced and careened off each other in both 50-minute motos as they ran away from the rest of the class. Both were wild in their styles and they looked like the were trying to kill one another as they jammed the ir way inside each other's front wheel at every tum. . Hannah's style would become his trademark. Flapping off the handlebars like a w~t rag.. .feet never on the pegs.. .Bob somehow managed to stay on top of the explosive and bouncing OW400 works Yamaha to win nearly ~~ry moto in Florida that winter. vas well as on other bikes in the many other races and championships which would follow. Burgett, on the ~. hand, would go as fast as his teammate at times , but the results would always be crashes. Wh~n he did stay up on two wheels it seemed Rick was lacking the incentive to go fast and would generally finish w~1I down in the pack of factory riders. It wasn't long before Rick's losing would be more than overshadowed by Bob 's winning. No one paid much attention to the muscular, blond-haired kid from Sandy, Oregon, nicknamed Lumberjack, Talking to Rick , one got the impression that motocross racing was .just a job and there w~~ more important things in his life. Today, some two and a half y~an after his debut with Team Yamaha, Rick Burgett is more than honest in regards to his past riding performances. "I tried to .race in the past. I tried really hard. But I also wasn't going for it as hard as I should. "The first y~ar I rode for Yamaha I had a one y~ar contract. Though I didn't do the winning the factories like to see, Yamaha figured I had a lot of potential and needed to develop it. At the beginning of 1977 they signed me to a two year contract. This is the second y~ar of that contract." The revamping of theAMA/Mr. PiBB National MX Championships for the 1978 season saw Yamaha's Ken Clark put Rick in the 500cc class along with Mike ~1I. More .than likely it was ~1I who Yamaha expected to tum in the best perfor- mance on the team , but when ho!ike injured his knee in the second race of the 500cc Championship at Sears Point the entire responsibility for doing well fell on Rick's shoulders. Adding to the weight he had to carry was the fact that his other Yamaha teammates were doing so well. Bob Hannah had run away with the 250cc Nationals and the Supercross Series , while Broc Glover was doing the same in the 125cc Nationals. If Yamaha was to make a clean sw~p of the opposition in 1978, Rick had to win the 500cc Nationals as well. "It Was getting close to contract time. I only had six months to prove myself or I'd probably have to . go back to cutting down trees for a living . . "When I really decided to go for it , though, well that happened right after the first race in Texas. I came in from the first moto and almost passed out. I felt I had the ability to win , but not the endurance , "1 decided right there to move to Florida in order to get used to the heat or get in shape. But then I ruled out moving to Florida because I didn't want to lose all my friends at home in Sandy. "I started working out at home by myself. It was a real drag. I approached this friend , Mike Vogele , about being a workout partner with me and now he travels with me all the time to help me train. " There were other factors which convinced Rick he could finally do well. "Besides finally getting serious about racing, also helping me was the new class split which kept riders in just one class. The eompetidon isn't.as hard as it could be if guys like Hannah and Ellis were in the Open class. There's less competition this year, combined together with more races. It let me get higher up in the standings and made me feel I could do well." What competition .there was for Rick certainly wasn't as intense as it should have been. Team Suzuki was having more problems this season ...mechanical, mental and physical... than th~ knew how to cope with. And Team Honda should have been running away with the 500cc National Championship rather than treating it like a mid-week practice session. , "Marty Stnith seems really ~gy on the race . track. Tommy Croft is inconsistent.. .hot one week and cold the next. That and the fact they're always testing. / " Plus the new Yamahas are 100 percent better. They handle and they really work well." Motocross is a sport more biased toward human ' performance than machine when it comes to ob taining results , but in the big league Nationals any slight mechanical advantage, no matter how small, can have a huge physical advantage when it comes to reaching the finish line , Rick had the "unbeatable" OW39 works Yamaha which H~ikki Mikkola was winning his 'second 500cc World Championship with in Europe. The works RC450 Hondas we~ probably just as good as the Yamahas, as proven by Brad Lackey's ~rfonnan ces against Mikkola, but Brad's Amencan teammates may never have taken the time or the trouble to work with their tuners in dialing-in their bikes to their own riding styles. Every w~k Stnithand Croft were seen riding with a different brand of rear shock, while Marty even went to the extent of having his frame reworked for the third race of the series at St. Louis. Testing at the race is not conducive to winning championships. Where Smith and Croft were making the wrong moves, Rick Burgett had learned to make the right moves. Championships are partially won in the pits. "I've been learning more about suspensions and dialing-in the bike to suit me. Bill West. my mechanic. knows a lot about the bike as well and how to set it up. "W inning has clued me in to some of its own incentives for doing well. Besides the additional bonuses from Yamaha and the purse money. th~'~ also all the contingency money, Like $400 a race if I win with a Preston Petty front fender. The con tingencies alone can add up to more than the purse mon~. something I never realized before." Now don't go thinking that Rick Burgett had his fint 500cc National Championship handed to him on a silver plate. Sure the competition isn't as fierce this year with the separation of classes and all the problems the teams like Honda and Suzuki have been having. There were those times in a moto when one of the other riders did get it all together and Rick still blew their number panels off. You only had to be there to see him styling his way off a 04 jump or through a high speed turn, as one WIth the bike. to realize he's a changed rider worthy of the Championship. Those days of running back in the . pack or crashing his brains out trying to keep up with the leaden are gone. "When I fint raced local races I was well known. I felt relaxed and could go fast. My first year with Yamaha I wasn't secure against the competition and rode over my head. Now I'm more relaxed on the circuit. Funny. I get nervous at local races in stead now. "This last month or two I've been having dreams , about racing and bikes for the first time ever, That has to mean something. If I'm not winning the race in my dreams I'll wake right up. I guess I can't ac cept the thought of losing any more." • • 15

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