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/126501
By Greg Guerinello • , roc Bo O'BTochta is the /anley, beaTded pilot of the woTld's quicleest motoTcycle. Though he has been Tacing some SOTt of vehicle OT another fOT the past 26 seasons, 1980 was faT and aWGY his best yeaT. Racing in the Top Fuel class wheTe domination is neaTly impossible, Bo toole on all comers and emerged on top. While Tacing talees up almost aU his WGlcing hOUTS, we weTe able to pin him down briefly fOT the foUowing inteTview. Here's the man who lenows the joy of tTaveling down the quaTter mile quicleer than any peTson in history. 22 When 1980 started did you really think that you could have the IUc:cc:II that you did? . In the back of my head Iltnew I'd be Number One. If you look in the back of my camper there's a little window and when you ride down the road and look in the mirror you can see the number one. David (Mobberley) and I made it when we first put the camper together. I watched that thing in the mirror all year long. I never knew that we could dominate like we did, but that was my goal. I knew that if everything went right I could do it. Early in the _IOn you started out with a set-up where you had a movable motor, what was wrong with thedaign? It worked, as long as we were making small amounts of honepower. When we turned the bike into a Top Fueler, instantly it was flexing. The chaasis wasn't flexing, the motor was flexing. That's why we were breaking those (drive) belts. If we had had the motor plates like we have now to stiffen it up we probably would not have needed the gear drive we tried. Whe- idea was the gear drive? Were you afraid that the belt would not handle the horsepower? Mike (Grey) more or less. We got to wotJiing more about the width of the motore:ydeo. -We· wanted to keep ·the- profile down the sides as narrow as we could'. We looked at Ronnie Teson's and it was working very good for him so we decided that we could build a gear drive. It would be a little more work than Teson's because his only uses two gears and ours would have to use three. It would have worked if it had a motor plate on the right side, because the only reason it broke was the motor twisted and broke the right side front motor mount and totally destroyed the gear drive. You changed the gear drive to a 5 ~ inch belt drive right around the 4th of July. From that point on, until the end of the season, you won 87.5% of the races you attended. Do you feel that the change had a lot to do with it? Whewll Obviously. The design was from Jim Longo and Mike Grey. The execution was Jim Longo's but the design and basically the engineering pan was Mike Grey. Mike knew what he wanted and Jimmy knew what would work so they got together and figured it out. It made the chlUSis 1000% better handling and eliminated all the problems we had with clutch breakage and chain breakage. Nothing's flexing; it's probably the most solid motorcycle out there. .. Did itc:haDF yoar ridin.style?· ... Motorcycling's quick~st rQc~r' It's hard to explain. The bike now goes so straight that you almost don't have to ride it. I had to work at riding it before. A lot of the problem had to do with the fairing (since removed) and the flelli.ng. The only thing I do now is make slight corrections going down the track. I used to have to hang off with my head almost touching the pavement sometimes, but that was a . combination of the fairing being on the front and me trying to see around the fairing, the bike staying on the wheelie bars for so long and the fairing being in my field of vision. It was right there and I'd have to try to see over the top of it. The elimination of the flexing of the chassis makes it an easy motorcycle to ride. I looked at video tapes of it and I don't do half the work on the motorcycle that I see everybody else doing to ride theirs. ''In the back of my head, I knew I'd ,be Number One. " Obvioualy you're at ease with the handling c:haraaaiItia of the _ _ cycle. Oh, yeah. I'm totally happy with the motorcycle. Since you picked up 10 much in the ET department and the mph department, has the motorcycle _red you any? What makes your hean beat faster than anything else riding that motorcycle is the shut·down at 75% of the tracks we run at. Most shut-off ateas jU'C bumpy and holey, wavy. They're not made for motorcycles. They're made for cars...four wheels... parachutes. We have to rely on brakes and one little bitty tire on the front. It weighs five hundred pounds and it leaves the ground most of the time at those b\llJlpy tracks. The actual run is usually so smooth and so quick and it's over so quicltly that it's just easy... the shut-off is hard! How much control do you have over the motorcycle when you are riding it for 10 long.a distance on the rear wheel and wheelie bar? Just with your body. You have a certain amount that you can correct, but if the bike is pointed in one direction it tends to go in that direction. Can you judge when you're riding, how quick you're going? Oh yeah, you can tell whether it's an 8 second plUS or a 7.50 or a 7.50 or better than that. 180 mph and 190 mph you can tell the diffeence. A seven twenty and a seven zero, you can tell the diffeence. But, you just know when you made a good plUS...you just feel it. All year 10Iig you were in a tough poinu chae with Frog Thacker and Sam Willa in the rwo orpnizatimu. Aftr:r b..t p e r f _ at Cinc:imUlti and Indy you were in a tough aitaation, at any point did it get you down? I don't think so. Maybe disappointed that the motorcycle k~ breaking. Not that 1 felt liIte JIving up or anything, we just tried harder. We Itnew what we had to do, it was just a matter of did we have enough time berween events to finish doing what we had to do? We didn't have a whole lot of ti.Jne to test anything. The first run·