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/126513
.... ... ....-4 ~ < Steve Martin makes the French connection By Tom Mueller I t started out as a vacation of sorts for Steve Martin when he, LOP owner Laurens Offner and teammate Marty Moates headed over to France. Canada Dry had put up some bucks for Steve and Marty to ride the End ro To quet in Le T et u u ,ouqu on February, 15. ~nd It looked to be a fun tlme m Europe for 24 Martin after ~ disappointing second overall in the Ftorida Winter-AMA MX Series I25cc class. Martin took second overall in France also, but the situation and competition were a bit diffetTDt. Instead of an entry list of about 50, 1200 riden competed, Thirty minute plus two lap motos? No way. The fint moto was two hours and the second three houn long on a ten mile course. A fine turnout for an outdoor National MX in The States is around 5,000. 250,000 persons attended the Enduro Touquet. The competition was also stiffer than Martin contended with in Ftorida. Jean Paul Mingels of Luxemborg won the race, and Martin's main dicing partner was World Championship MXer Gerard Rond. Replace a reverse drop starting gate with a ditch on a beach and you have the makings of the Enduro Touquet. "It was crazyl" said Martin concerning the start of the race. "They just dug a big rut down the beach and everyone got behind it. There ~ere people three and four bikes deep. Then they shot this cannon off and eve.rybody just took off. There were spectaton caught in the middle of the beach and 1200 bikes were going right by them, They just stopped and stood there and we blew by. "In the fint moto I didn't get a very good start. What happened was the cannon never went off. Some guy just took off and everybody went. Marty and ( were sitting there talking. They couldn't stop everybody. (took off and got going pretty well and then Gerard Rond and I were dicin'. ( had gotten away from him and was in a pretty stable third and the pipe (on his borrowed Kawasaki KX 420) just totally split all the way in half. Then it really got slow, really low on power. It was never that fast to begin with. Then Gerard got by and I ended up fourth. "The course was really sandy, even more sandy than it is in Florida. They call it an enduro, but it's really like a hare scrambles. They had a straightaway down the beach that was four miles long. That was really crazy. "I did better in the second moto. I got a pretty good start. Marty got a really good start, he was second into the fint tum. That's really fine out of 1200 peoplel I caught up and got into the lead a couple laps into the race. There were so many lappen your luck really counted a lot. It was constant people except for the fint lap. I came around a comer and hit somebody and fell, and eventually ended up third. "The big thing was it was so sandy that the skills I learned in Ftorida really helped out. The conditions were even.worse there. "It was like 1 became an instant hero. The whole town was behind me. We went far away from the race out to dinner and still everybody stood up and clapped. Racing is so big over there. Everything is so professional. We were going to press meetings all the time." Things came easy and went smoothly for Martin, easier and smoother than he's used to. Was all that glory in a few days easy to walk away from? "It's kind of tempting to go back. Brad (Lackey) was telling me they get really big start money just to go. He said after how I did in the Enduro Touquet I could get some pretty good start money in International races." LOP has gained the reputation for building some of the finest production based racen on the National MX circuit today. After mediocre finishes last season on the finest LOP had to offer, Martin got hot on a stock Kawasaki. "Winning on that thing was hard. Sometimes you think these (LOP's) bikes aren't that good but you hop on something like a stock bike and you learn to appreciate LOP's bikes." Now it's time for Martin to get back to business in America, and the course of business has been far from easy. LOP wasn't included in Yamaha's budget in 1981, so the search began for team bikes. A deal with Honda didn't work out, so an arrangement with Suzuki was made. Still, no bikes have arrived and Martin has rdied on loan bikes from Cycle Springs Yamaha in Florida through the Winter Series aDd Daytona Supercross. "It's something I wish we could have straightened out and we could have gotten our bikes earlier. Laying off