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/127370
eIN E V W T RIE Dick Mann: Part 2 - ~ G(J ,....,.-4 By Alan Cathcart "T he first year we ran th e full speedway ( 1964)," Di ck Mann recalls, "the mo tors just were n't po werful eno ug h to let us run more than 10 feet up the side of the ban kin gs: mostl y we ra n on the flat apron a t the bottom, or o nly a foot or two at mos t up th e bank, because the di stance you have to cover increases quite rapid ly th e further you move up the banking. There was no chicane, so you'd run the wh ole of the ba ck stretch flat o u t, whichat 130 mph let you get a little way up the hill on the east banking, but still no mor e than 10 feet or so. People don't realiz e even tod ay how mu ch extra ground they ha ve to cover if they in sist o n riding the bankings high up on a bike that is slo w enough to run all the way ro und th e bo ttom, pl u s th e ex tra p hysical effort you need to sto p it wanting to dr op off down o n to the apron is consi dera ble. You 're talking maybe seven bike lengths differenc e between to p and bottom a ll the way round , a n d that 's quite a lot o f distan ce, but if you h ave a faster mot orcycle it' s ab out an even trade to take the hi gh line, especially since there are some bad bumps o n the botto m coming off the east banking where the cars chewed it up ri gh t when the Speedway first ope ned and which th ey've never really smoothed o u t. Plus, o n a fast modem bike, if you try to force it down on to the shorter lin e comi ng o n to the stra ightaway, you' re ta lki ng abou t having maybe 40-50 po u nds of. torque in the wro ng direc- 18 tio n on the handlebars, just when the fro nt whee l gets all light and you want to straighte n up. It ' ll put you in a big wobble, so the best thing is to let 'er ri de an d go as high as is comfortable, bu t no higher than absolutely necessary. " I reme mber in th e lat e '60s at Da ytona rid ing the facto ry 350 Yamaha, which was very fast but had its engine in totall y the wrong pl ace, mu ch too far back so that there j us t wasn ' t enough weigh t o n the front wh eel. Coming on to the straigh taway off th e banking each lap the front wheel would graduall y start to lift off the ground, and wi th a very stro ng side wind such as you often get at Daytona, being so close to the sea, the wheel would go lock to lock every so ofte n down the back stretch : you co uld clearly hear it goi ng 'clack-clack-clack' as it hit the stops. Fort unately the speed was so great that as it touched the ground again it would straigh ten up, bu t it was pretty un nervin g, I can tell you!" Alm ost as unnervin g must have been th e prospect of racin g ro und the steep Daytona ban kin gs in th e rai n, as formerl y happened till th e AMA saw sense , so that today Daytona is the o n ly banked track in the U.S.A. wh ere wet weather raci ng for professional riders is no t permitted: curiously , it 's ap parently consi dered perfectl y okay for ama teurs to ride there in the rain, tho ug h, on the same mac hines the p ros race! "That's crazy," says Dick Man n flatl y. " I was always a pretty good rider in the rai n, and won a lot of my races on wet tracks, though I was never as good as Roger Reiman wh o in my opin ion is th e best rider I have ever seen in the rain; it wasn 't till I went to En gland and raced th ere in th e Mat ch Ra ces th at I co uld see how good he was and still is, come to that. He cou ld have made a fort une racing in Britain in th e 1960s! An yway, Ro ger won at Daytona in 1965, th e year they ran the race in the ra in , and how there was n't someo ne killed I shall never kn ow . They had the usual mass ed start with the entire first lap flat-out round the bowl before dropping down into Tum I for the first time at th e start of the second lap (a procedure that was o nly dropped in the mid-70s), and that first lap down the back stre tch, wi th everyone up to 130 mph in the rain, it was even wor se than the first lap do wn the Beach Course. There was a th ick wall of spray 20 feet high an d th ick as fog, so that even if you were ru nni ng next to the o u ter wall , you didn't kn ow it. Everyone was totall y blind, yo u didn't dare to sh u t off, and you couldn' t find either side of the race trac k, yet you a lso didn't dare to go too mu ch higher up th e steep bankings - only our second year on the m, remembe r - to avoid slower guys in case you go t in a slide and came down on them . We lost a few people, but fortunately nobod y was serio us ly hurt, tho ug h it could ha ve been a giant catastro p he: the infield section got flooded, too - there were some long puddles ha lf an inch deep which were lethal whe n you hi t them at speed. Fortunately, it dried up du rin g the course of th e race, bu t after tha t we coul d see th at Daytona was not a place to race at in the rain, so th e next time th ey tried to do so, th ere was kind of a rider's lobby - not a strike exactly, but that was next on the list - and we had our first-ever rain postponement. Strangely enough, it was the pressure from the British riders who were by th en starting to race at Daytona regu larl y that tipped th e balance: without them , I doubt the AMA would hav e listened to us. " Time for a trip round the World Center of Speed: Was the start always given with the field lined up on the pit lane? " Yes, but with the difference compared to today that you 'd have that first full lap round th e bowl. You might think that would allow the field to sp read o u t more instead of all trying to funnel together int o Tum I, which is a slow and tight left-bander onto th e infield, and pretty narrow at that, In fact, it 's safer no wada ys, because th ough you' re all bunched up, yo u 're only doing 60 mph, wh ereas in th e old da ys you'd be drafting each other in packs a t very high speed. In the F750 da ys wh en I had my two wins on the Honda and BSA, in practice people would get used to mayb e running 150 mph over the finish line before they braked and dropped down into Turn I, becau se they'd be running on their own. But o n the first lap of th e race, th e draft from 40 other motor cycles would let you run 160 mph, and, the result was always some pretty spectac- Doug Polen on the high banks of Daytona International Speedway.