Cycle News - Archive Issues - 1990's

By Scott Rousseau I Photos by Flat Trak Fotos and Cycle News archives ho's the greatest? Who's the best? Pick any sport, and a similar debate will rage almost on a daily basis. rake boxing for example: Muhammed Ali is widely acknowledged as the greate t, but a number of heavyweight fighters have better records. Larry Hohnes, for instance - the man who defeated Ali for the last time, and the man who tied Rocky Marciano's record of 48 straight title defenses - is regarded as one of the best, yet far from the greatest. The underlying principle behind such debate is simple enough. The greatest is usually determined by emotion. People will remember the way a particular personality carried himself or perhaps a defining moment in that peron's career on which the case for greatness can be based. Being the best is much more calculated and concrete. Simply turn to your favorite sports almanac, compare stats, and the results are clear cut. Dirt track racing is no d iHeren t. Depending upon the era, a race fan can skills continued to improve to the point that he wound up winning an Amateur National Championship in 1976. "From there, we decided to get into 7505," Parker said. "When I was 16 we went to Florida and bought two brandnew Harleys that we were going to use as a ovice. Dago was the type of guy that if he did it, it was first class. We used a loophole in the rules to make the switch to Junior. It said that if you were a two-year Novice, then you could go to Junior. It didn't say two full years or anything like that. So we went to Ocala in ovember and scored like 15 points, and you had to have 80 points to switch (in a single season). There weren't enough races, and they were even thinking about promoting a race so that 1 could switch. "But then March came around and we went down to Daytona and ran all those races, and I wound up needing like nine points to turn Junior," Parker said. "But there weren't any more races there, so we went to Springfield, Ohio, and I beat Bubba Shobert and won that race. I had enough points to turn, so we Parker went on to make history at the DuQuoin Mile aboard that very machine as he claimed his first Grand National win, thus becoming the youngest rider ever to do so. He went on to score another mile victory at IndianapoH later in the year, and he finished up a remarkable ninth in points, easily copping Rookie of the Year honors. Parker made a fairly easy transition through the often-jinxed sophomore season. With Tex Peel power and Klotz/Wi eco backing, he managed to grab another Grand National win - a TT at Hinsdale, IUinois - and finish up the year eighth overa II before moving on to join fellow Michiganders Jay Springsteen and Randy Goss on the HarleyDavidson factory squad in 1981. "When Jay and Randy were both there, I was the low man on the totem pole," Parker said. "Me and Al (Stangler) worked our butts off and did the best we could. To say that T got any worse parts, or anything like that, I don't think that happened. We were just the new tearn, and we were learning." Werner. But Parker was hesitant, and he rehired Peel instead. "I guess I didn't want to jump in there and try to steal Bill from Jay, because I didn't know what was going on with them," Parker said. "I don't know if Bill was maybe getting burned out a little, but I was seeing that he would work his butt off all week, and then his rider would get sick, and the motorcycles would just sit there. But since I didn't know what Jay's package wa , that's why I hired Tex." The Parker / Peel relationship was tumultuous at best. Parker recall that the pair had a difficult time reaching agreements over sev~raI facets of the program. And so it was that in April of 1985, with the season already under way, Parker broke down and gave Werner a call. The dllo struck a deal whereby Werner would take care of Parker's equipment part-time in Werner's basement. It was the call that changed his career. "Bill really wanted to do it. His major thing was to win that first (mile) National, because Harley hadn't won one in take his pick as to who might be the greatest. It might be Nixon, it might be Roberts, it might be Springsteen... Scott Parker is the best. And yet it might take a long time for him to be regarded as the greatest. Probably longer than it did for Parker, who took hi first competitive laps on a Yamaha 60 when he was 11 years old, to win hi first Grand alional race. For uccess, you see, came rather quickly. "My dad spent every spare dime he had on racing," Parker said. "He was a fireman, and we didn't have a lot of money, but whatever we had, he spent on racing. Then one time we were at the race, and this guy Rick (Dago) Toldo gave me a chance to ride one of his bikes. We were just moving from the 80cc class to the 100-125ee class, but he had this 360, and he let me ride that. It was a cheater bike. I can't remember, but I think we went out and were kicking everybody's ass, and then I fell off the thing or something. We kept going, and we did about medium on it. Then one day he came over and looked at me and said, 'Hey, we're going pro.' At that time I'd never even seen a Grand National race. I was only about 13 or 14 years old." Toldo continued to foster Parker's career with the purchase of a new Bultaco 250, which Parker rode for a year before graduating to a Bultaco 360. His called up the AMA and said, 'We want to turn Junior. We're a two-year Novice with 80 points.' They said, 'No. You can't turn. We'mean two full years.' We told them that the rules didn't say two full years, and that they'd be hearing from our lawyer, so they let us tum." Parker then finished out the remainder of 1978 as a Junior. He even remembers getting into the "right region," electing to sign up for the Eastern region on his way through Tennessee because it paid the most'money since it had the most races. "It paid like $2,000 to win the Junior title," Parker said. "I remember we rac;ed against guys like Ronnie Jones and Wayne Rainey a lot." At 17, just six years after getting his start in racing, Parker turned Expert in 1979. By then his now-patented, sideways, hard-riding, pass-'em-on-the-outside riding style was starting to attract a fair share of attention, and his career was all set to accelerate at warp speed. "Dago was building another bike for us to ride in 1979, and he sent it off to this guy named Larry Schafer," Parker recalled. "The guy was a total perfectionist, and it took him forever to get the thing ready. He was in no hurry. We'd already missed one mile without it But he got it done in time for DuQuoin. I remember that they broke it in by running it up and down 1-70." Parker had a tough year as a factory freshman in 1981. His best finish was a second behind Alex Jorgenson at the Sacramento Mile that year. He dropped to 11th in the overall series standings. It marked the only time that he had ever failed to finish in the top 10 in his Grand ational career. He rebounded in 1982 to win the Ascot Half Mile and place fifth at season's end. He was again fifth at the end of 1983 after qualifying for 21 ationals. In 1984, Parker won Grand ationals at Ascot and Lima, Ohio, fini hing fourth right behind teammate and reigning champion Randy Goss as Ricky Graham served notice that there was trouble on the horizon after earning his second Grand National title on a factory Honda in 1984. The turmoil wasn't confined to the race track either. For 1985, a financially "Strapped factory handed its riders Springsteen and Parker, as Goss had left the team to ride a Freddie Spencerbacked Honda - some bikes and some cash, and sent them off to do battle outside the factory walls without the aid of factory mechanics. Springsteen hooked up with Paul Schmeal while factory mechanic Bill Werner, a four-time Grand National Champion hip-winning wrench and the sole man left in the factory racing department after the layoffs, was a man wi thout a ridel". Parker hoped that he might be able to pick up You expected a mansion? The Parker family home i1es on 20 acres in the Filnt, Michigan, suburb of Swartz Creek. Parker built the place, doing much of the work himself, in 1986. like three years. At that time, we didn't have our own dyno. We could use the factory dyno a few times, but not like now. But we put the package together and won the Indy Mile for the first time in three years. That was our motivator. We knew we could do it. We just had to keep climbing the ladder." It was, perhaps, a tougher ladder than either man may have expected to climb as the dominance that HarleyDavidson had enjoyed in American dirt track racing was still being enjoyed - by Honda. The Japanese factory had spent the necessary bucks to put the RS750 clearly on top of the game with Graham aboard, and with Shobert a the team's new lead man, Honda claimed the Grand National throne three more years for a total of four - longer than any manufacturer had ever managed to keep the number-one plate from Harley-Davidson. The situation did not sit well with the factory, which was once again picking up financial steam throughout 1985-86, and the team benefited greatly by a return to in-house status for 1987. With l:'-. 0\ 0\ T'""'i

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