Cycle News - Archive Issues - 1980's

he 's ca pable of. So I'm not saying that this year or that year I' m goi ng . to hang it u p. We talked about your Springfield win in '84. Aside from that, what do yo u consider the high points and the low points of your career? I don 't know. I guess the first year I rode Da ytona as a n Expert, running around seeing m yself up there on the scoreboard . .. that was pretty impressive. ' And winning Ascot, so mep lace I never, ever figured I'd win in m y whole life. The first thing I did was went to a phone and ca lled Bart. He figured if yo u co uld win Boody drove this BMW-powered two-liter Can-Am car t o an impressive fifth place finish at Hallet. Oklahoma. Only six-liter ~ars topped him. and th is guys says, '.'T ed Bood y, right? Do you remember me?" It was Bob Ge nt ilozzi;who had th e Ol dsmobile factory car in the GTO class. Wh en my da d ra n a moto rcycle s ho p in L an sin g , P aul bou gh t motorcy cles a nd snowmobiles fro m him. He said, " What wo u ld it tak e to get you in one o f these things?" T hat was all it too k. I drove his car at the 24 H ours o f Da ytona last Feb ruary. We -were run ni ng good, ru nni ng third, a nd he crashed the car. T hen , at Sebri ng, I drove his Camel Light car, a nd we were doin g good there, running fifth, but wh ile I was dr ivin !$" th e radiator bro ke and ove rhea ted It, so we had to q uit there too. So as far as maki ng a ny big splashes, it didn 't happen like I'd have liked it too. My next attempt was driving a 2.0 li ter Ca n -Am BMW at H a llet, O klahoma. I qualified sixth and ran fifth in the main against the six-li ter ears and the Frisbee Ca n-A m car and a ll. It was pretty impressive. I was th e highest two-liter car, the closest to a ll the big cars, so tha t was p robably the best thing I' ve done so far. How do the car guys compare with the motorcycle racers? .r You 've go t your group of real racers th at are o ut th ere to race and do business, but the biggest group are the , guys with th e money who just like to go out and race on the weekends. In some respects; th at's hard to tak e when you 're wa nting to go out th ere a nd be so me thing a nd can ' t, but a g uy who's got a mill ion dollars is going out there just to pl ay. ICs hard to tak e, bu t that's the way it is. I'd put Camel Pro raci ng in th e sam e ca tegory as Ca mel GTO racing IMSA. T hose guys are go ugers, they go out there and drive hard an d the top guys have to take wha t they wa nt. In the GTP class and the Formula classes, the Indy type cars, they 're more like motorcycle road racers more specialized - and if you wad up one of those cars, you 're talking a bout big money. You can tear the fenders off a GTO car, and even if you tear u p the chassis, it may cost you $10 ,000. T he tab for a GTP car is $70,000 or $80,000. What kinds of things have you learned about the car racing business in your limited exposure to it? . Well , Gen tilozzi did some things for me just as a friend. H e he lpe d me o u t, helped me ge t so me recognition. It 's just like th e motorcycle world, there's 10 cars ou t there a nd 100 guys who want to drive them, so what it comes down to is wh o has th e most money. It costs a n avera ge o f $10 ,000 per weekend to ru n one o f th ose cars, so whoever can come up with the most expense money to help fund the thing is the one wh o usually gets in the car: As much as Paul would like to be a friend, he still has to be a businessman about it too . So until I can get the sponsorship I need , or maybe win a couple of these $10 ,000 Camel challengeraces .. . I don't know. It 's just like bike raci ng exce pt there are more opportunities o ut there. Here, if you do n't ride for H onda - or at least for H arley, wi th their sma ller program - you don ' t ha ve a paycheck. With th e car racing there's mo re opportu nities o ut there if you can get the sea t time a nd show them you 're worth having. What are your immedi at e plans as far as four' wheels is concerned? I have the schedules on my wa ll a t home for every kind of car racing I'm interested in, and every time a race comes around tha t doesn 't conflict. wi th one of the dirt lacks, I do everything I can to find some way togo race there. As far as what exactly I want to do , I don't know. I've got a bunch of different things. I've bought some com mercial property in Tulsa and I fixed up o ne side of the build ing for Terry, my wife, to teach Jazzercise. I want to put a weight room and stuff in the other ha lf. We call it the Boody Fitness. And I' ve got anothe r building in fro nt of'tha t, that I' m renti ng, b ut I'm thi nk ing of so me thing to do with th at too . I've got a lot of things I co uld do, and it's just a ma tter o f whichever one ends u p going the way I wa nt ' it to. I don' t want to get really set o n o ne thing because I' ve gone through a lo t of ti mes doing that, picki ng o u t o ne thing and directin g all m y efforts toward it, and when it doesn 't work out, that 's hard to take. So I try to spread myse lf out and not get too wo und u p in one thing. Is Boody fitness a reflection of yo u r lifestyle? Are you a health nut? I' ve always tried to do as much as I can to stay in shape. I've tried a lot of different programs. I don't lift weights every da y because I don 't think that's the kind of training a racer needs, but I do everything I feel I can. I' m not so tired when I get off the bike that I'm falli ng off of it. ' You can 't ride 20 laps a nd not be tired , but I try to stay in p retty good shape. What about diet? It 's hard to eat right on the road. I thi nk the main thing is to be co nsis tent. If you eat McDo nald 's at home every day; whe n you go to th e races you should eat McDonald 's. I th in k the biggest m istake you ca n make is eati ng ju n k food a ll week then going to the track and ea ting fru it s a nd th inking you' re goi ng to be a ll ene rgize d. It'll do nothing but screw you up. Bein g consistent is the main thing. You 're 28 years old. Any thoughts about retiring and about what comes after racing? Who knows? Everybody has to figure th a t o ut for the mselves. If I had a n in e-to- five job, I' d sure get to spend (Left to right) Father-in -law Norm McDonald. Ted and Bob Gentilozzi who gave Boody his start in car racing at Daytona last February. more time ' with my kids than I do now. It's like Terry an d I were talking about. on the way up here; most people work a ll week and ge t th ings a ll screwed u p an d then they've got the weekend to sort thi ngs out, go to the lake, wha tever. We spend a ll week getti ng everythi ng screwed up and then we 're gone raci ng a ll wee kend! It' s hard to ever get caught u p. T his last year has been th e hardest year I' ve had. I've got more bill s now with two kid s, a nd two horses, a nd th e commercial property in Tu lsa , so it 's been harder to mak e ends meet. I' ve been doing mor e side work this year to keep the bill s paid than I' ve ha d to a t a ny o ther time in m y ca reer, but holdin g down a job is p rett y m uc h impossible for so me body's . who's rea lly trying to d o the racing, I cou ld work for N o r m in h is motorcycle shop if I wanted to co m m it to a six-day-a-week job, bu t I obv iously can't do that, and I wou ldn 't feel right saying, " Look just let me come in and work when I want to," because then he can't count on anything. Bu t I do go down and put bikes together for him and work on race bikes fo the g uys around there and so forth. As far as reti rement, it comes righ t back around to the car racing. If something could go there to where I' d feel comfortable doing that, I'd probably cha nge it over to racing cars fu ll time a nd doing this part-tim e. I'll keep doing th is as long as I feel I'm competitive. As long as I can &,0 and honestl y have a chance to wm it, I' ll be here. I enj oy it , I like to do it. Bu t I wo n' t go a nd be a hind ran ce. I' ve seen a lot of racers go through that; they still wan t to do it, but physically and men tall y it's just not th ere any mor e. And I do n' t kn ow what .tha t age is. Wh en Sonny Burres a t ag e 40 can go win Peoria, you ca n ' t say a guy 28 or 30 is too old to race any more. It 's a ll in the individ ua l, what he feels, what Ascot , you were just about as bad as anybody could ever expect to be, because he never won it and he was probab ly the baddest racer ever . And in '83 or '84, I won a race for Skip Eakin , who 's now Bubba 's factory H onda mechanic. Tha t was h is first National wi n and that was rea l special. It was th e o ld story, you hook u p with a new guy a nd it tak es a long tim e to get th in gs sorted ou t a nd start working well to&,ethe r. We had two bikes and I told h im , " Skip, if you co uld just put th is bike a nd that bike together, we'd have it mad e." We got to H amburg, New York , a nd it was just that, he put both o f them .together and we went out and won it. That was pretty wild. As far as low poin ts, every time I don ' t win a race it 's a lo w poi nt. Runnin g seco nd in the poin ts like I did in '85, a nd kn o wing tha t even if I busted my ass and did everything exactly rig h t that all I could get was second . .. that was hard to take. Bubba wo n the championship on the factory H onda . H e's the best rider and he was on the best equipment a nd it 's hard to beat a combination like that. I'd go to the m iles knowing that if I did everyt hing perfect, - I cou ld get seco nd. I couldn't begi n to cou nt the n u m ber of la p s I fo llowed him, a nd if I did everythi ng perfectl y, I could just stay with him. If I screwed up , I dropped back and I could never make it u p . But I th ink th e worst thi ng about raci ng is th e drivin g. I enjoy seeing differen t parts o f th e cou ntry. West Virginia here is beautifu l - com ing across Kentucky and T ennessee was really pretty - but it 's that cons tant grind; drive 12 hours or 15 hours, ge t to the race and have six or eigh t hours of fun, and th en back in the truck to run 15 hours home. That's p robably the worst of it. Us ua lly somebo dy co mes with me but so metimes I go alone. Then it 's just a matter of figuring out life. You go for 15 hours figurin g o ut how to do it a bett er wa y! • 35

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