Cycle News - Archive Issues - 1990's

cars for nothing anyho w, because they lik e to pl ay th e ga me. T hey can afford to put their patches and stickers o n. I u sed to pu t stickers on my motorcycle becau se I figu red a ll the fast gu ys did it, so it mad e me loo k like a fast gu y. That's wh at the spo rts car guys are like. Righ t now th e relati on sh ip we ha ve with the AMA is us-agains t-th em . Our mediat or guy is Art Barda and he's the g uy who cou ld possib ly pull th is who le thing together and get a good wo rking rela tionsh ip with the AMA, bu t they won 't gi ve him any horsepo wer to do anyth ing . . I'm th ankful fo r the AMA, a nd th ey've done a lo t for me. But I honestly don 't believe they've do ne a lot for mo torcycle racing itself. I do n 't ca re ab out road rid ers and I don 't care about mo tocrossers. I'm a dirt tracker; I care abou t dirt track g uys and abo u t where ou r sport is go ing. In your business, guys get tired, guys get burn ed out, guys get hurt, guys go broke ... there are more ways to get out of the sport than to get to the top of it. Yet yo u seem to have avoided most of the pitfalls. Was that luck? Are yo u smart? Is it determination? What's gotten you to this point? I like to think it 's determi na tio n becau se I'v e always had to work. I' ve never really been much of a nat ural at th is game, and I've ha d to wo rk really hard to get where I'm at. I' ve always tri ed to bu y my own equipment , to ow n my o wn mo torcycles. Sure, it' s nice to show up and ride somebody else's bike, lake your percentage and go hom e. But I' ve always tr ied to figure o u t my own situatio ns for myself as far as making the mo torcycle do wh at I w nt it to do. 1 ' o w, as fa r a s motor wor k is concerned, I don 't know any of tha t at all . .. non e what soever. But I try to take care of my chassis and gear an d the motorcycle in general and put my kn o wledge and background to good use. T wo years ag o, I had my best season ever. I had four Na tio nal win s that year and three of them came o n my own mo torcycle. Wh at I did was get team ed up with Hank Sco tt. He'd qu it ra cing the year before an d he too k care of my . ha lf m ile program. I also owe a lot to Denny Laube. I got hook ed up with him three years ' ago. He used to be th e mot or cycle dealer at hom e and he sold th e business and he's jus t basicall y been tra veling wit h me. We j us t take this thing and run it as mu ch as we possibl y can. It 's just a good working relationsh ip. I know this mo torcycle. I kn ow all of its cha rac teristics and the way it works. I kn ow when it will work and where it will wor k. For exa mp le, last year Will Davis rod e this same motor cycle a t Lima, Ohio. H e'd never stoo d a leg o n it and he went out and won a Nat ional Championship race. He hasn 't done sh it since but he jumped on this thing and did business. Hank built the motor and I was confident it would run good, and I knew the bike would work good. I knew the set up for Lima, as far as what triple clamps, the shocks, the pipes and the carburetors to run on the bike. I told Will , " J us t go ride the motorcycle .. . just ride the motorcycle. " He won the race and I fini shed fifth. I was riding a Honda and I just couldn 't herd it around the race track. But I ended up making more 'mo ney by Will Davi s riding my Harl ey and wi nn ing th an if I' d won on th at Hon da. How many races has this thing won? Over 200. Over 200 races? That's amazing! I th ink, it's o ne of the best ha ndl in g bi kes I' ve ever had. Ri ck Hocking bu ilt the mot orcycle probab ly 12 years ago. The fram e is not hi ng but an old-style Mert Lawwill ligh tweigh t tub e fram e. Does it hav e a name? J us t " 0 1' Paint." And " 0 1' Paint " ge ts new paint every year. Acutall y, it's prett y nea t . .. my wife's in the quarter horse busi ness an d she ra n a full pa ge ad that had a nice little picture of me sliding sideways at Lo uisvi lle. T he ad listed all the hor ses she had in for training, . and she had " 0 1' Paint " listed in there. It was pretty neat and it caught a lo t of eyes. Let's talk about married life. H ow ha s it changed you? Expert, we too k off! We'd go clear across the country and have a hell uva good tim e. There'd be a cara van of six or eig ht vans of racers all go ing th e same place. We'd just travel like that and the n stop at a lake and go fish in ' or camp ou t. We rea lly had fu n back the n. We were just sort of doing it for gas money and nobody was act ua lly ma king a living and payi ng tha t many bill s from it. We were a ll young kids . .. hell, we were still living a t home! So we didn 't have ho use payments or new car payments. We had one payment - a new van. H ow man y 16-year -old kids all drive new vans? Then whe n the Ca me l do llars carne Well, it's changed me a lot off the race track, bu t I think it was a chan ge that was badl y needed. I needed to settle down and just concentra te on what I was doing and what direction I was going. It reall y works good. My wife is an ins tructor for th e Findlay College eq uestrian program . She works the school year, th en she 's off all summer long working with studen ts and horse ow ners who pa y her to ride their hor se. She train s th e th in g, get' s it handling real good, then gi ves it back to the owner and th e o wner take s it ,and sho ws it. There's some compe titio n betw een her and I .. . like she ' ll take off and go o ne way for the weekend and I'll take off and go another. Then she' ll come ba ck and say, " My kids go t four fir st s ... h ow 'd yo u do thi s weekend? " What was Steve Morehead like before he settled down? I was wild. I'd go do anything . .. as mu ch as I co uld . .. whatever it took. I had fun . I had a good ch ildhood. My whole high school career I never went to schoo l on a Monday. When I was raci n g it was a kn own fact th at Mor ehead was not goi ng to be in sch ool o n Mon day. I grad uate d and did all tha t stuff, bu t when schoo l was ou t a ll I wa nted to .do was go be a profession a l racer. I was an Expert when the Spri ng steens - bo th J ay and Kenny - sta rted co ming to O hio. When J ay made in to the sport and everybod y rea lized how much mo ney th ere was, they kinda grew apa rt. I think once everybod y started wi nni ng and fig uring out, " H ey, there's actua lly some money to be made at th is. If I wa tch my Ps and Q s and I don 't j ust go off bu yin g new stereos and golf cl ub s and a ll that stu ff .. . if a guy jus t watches his expe nd it ures he cou ld maybe bu y a h ou se, mak e a li vin g a n d do so mething." In 1979, I go t a o ne-year ride wi th H arl ey-Davidson. I took that salary or contract mo ney and just put it dow n o n a house. I figured, " T h is is th e o n ly time in my life I'm goi ng to have a big chu nk of cheese to lay down on a house so I better do it now. Then I'll just wait and furnish it wh en I win so me th in g. " What's the worst you've ever been hurt? I broke my kneecap when I was a Junior , riding a water-cooled Suzuki. I had a BSA and it blowed up or som ething at Greenville, Ohio. Gary Stoltzenberg of F&S H arley-Davidson , o ne of my pr im ary spo nsors, had thi s water-cooled Suzuki tha t Rail had been riding . Well , Ronnie wasn 't riding it that day an d I got to thi nking, "Well, sh it, I used to hau l ass o n a Yamah a tw in .. . I co uld ride th at th reecylinder wa ter-coo led buffalo thing." Well , I did a nd I was hauli ng ass on it. I won my hea t race and was winning the main event, bu t it was one of those nice cushion race tracks and I didn' t realize tha t every time I ran through the corne r I was diggin big 01' trench es and ru ts and j ust tearing th e race trac k all up. I ca me down to th e last turn, last lap, and I ru n in there and hit one of my o wn ru ts that I'd been diggi ng and that thi ng caug h t , and pi tched me over a seven-foot hi gh chai n li nk fen ce. As I was pol evaulting over the top, my right kn ee hit the top of the fence and it broke the kn eecap . That put me o ut for six months. I' ve broken both my hands twice, I' ve p un ctured my left kneecap and brok en my right foo t, but th at was all whe n I was a rookie Expert and do ing all that stu pid stu ff. I don 't th ink racing really is as dan gerous as a lot of people make it seem. I think a guy grows up and learn s hi s limits and capa bilities. Plus we race wit h the Springsteens and the Parkers and the Carrs a nd th e J on eses ... peop le like that. No matter how close we're racing , everybody kind of keeps their peri pheral view o pen. You kind of kn ow who's wh o and who 's where and by all means you do n ' t try to stea l a guy's line or kn ock his han d lebar s ou t fro m u nderneath hi m. I think th e riders now real ize everybody's capaci ty, and their rid in g ability is so grea t that they don 't just run in there like ma d men and try to take each other o ut. So metimes I worry abou t the rookies, A g uy gets o n a good, fast motorcycle an d a lo t of ti mes . . . well, take me for example .. . I' d never seen a mi le race until I rode o ne ! Thank God I d idn 't have a fast motorcycle! What makes yo u th e most proud? I go tta say the way my eq uipment and my mechanics look on race day. We show up and everybody's got their race face on, th e motorcycles loo k the best we can possib ly make 'em , the guys a ll got their crew shirts o n, an d I can sit back and say, "Boy, them's some pretty surnbitches, ai n' t they?" Appearan ce can be intimi da ti ng . I line up next to Parker and see that big Number One an d tha t ti tanium steel shoe and th em p retty mo tor cycles and Will y Wern er sitti ng back there and I' m thinkin g. "T h is is the son -of-agun I gotta beat !" And I can see by looki n ' he's the cat daddy! Do yo u regret nev er having been Number one? Not a t a ll. Sure, I'd like to win it, and every body likes to say tha t's what they're into. But I' ve never rea lly sat down a nd dr eam ed of havi ng the Number One plat e. I worry more abo u t just trying to win races, survive, make m on ey a nd keep go i n g wi th my program. You have a big fan following. Why? Well, they like me as long as I'm riding a Harl ey! Actua lly, I th in k it's because I never co me in w ith a n excuse ... " Well, I would 've won but so-and-So happened. " Hey, let's face it, it might ha ve look ed like I was go nna win , but the brake parts fell o ut or the valve broke or thi s happened or that happened. I've never got up and cried in front of people saying, "I could have beat him, but " . . ". Bullshitl People don't want to hear that. If you get beat , o n race day, ackno wledge it . .. the best g uy won the race. H e wa s betterprepa red than I was. Hi s bike didn 't break. Or he just flat rode better than I did . Peopl e don 't want to hear a bunch of your excuses after the race. Also I don 't think some of those fans can believe I'v e been coming here as long as th ey ha vel T ha t's go t more to do with it than any thi ng else. " Ma n, I rem emb er th e first race I went to that son-of-a-gu n Morehead was there, a nd we come back 15, 16 an d 17 years later an d he's sti ll here!" t:l'I 7

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