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/128310
Anchors A-Weigh 30 YE4R5 AGO••• February '2, '974 A fan's-eye view of the Houston Short Track provided the ... ... illustration for t he ... ... cover of Issue # 5. Mike Gerald, riding a Honda XL,topped the 20-lap Yamaha Gold Cup National Championship Short Track inside the Astrodome. Dave Hansen, Tom Horton, Roger Crump and defending champ Kenny Roberts rounded out the to p five. Hansen came back to win the TT, over Roberts and Mike Kidd... Fo r the third time in a row, Randy Mamola (Hod) topped the 100cc Novice class at the Santa Rosa, California, indoor short track... Marty Smith (Hon) topped the 125cc Pro class at a CMCsanctioned Saddleback MX event , while Gaylon Mosier (Hon) and Rex Staten (Mai) did likewise in the 250 and 500cc events, respectively. ~ ~ ~ ._-_ ..._1_"_-..'___ , ~ 20 YEAR5 A60... February '5, '984 A few photos of the Paris- to- Da kar ~~LIl jWS rallycovered Issue ... . 4 # 5. Gaston Rahier i''' ' '., (BMW) won, over Hubert Aurio l (BMW) and Philippe Vassa rd (Hon)... Bobby Moore won the 80cc Expert class '1 . ~. ,. ~.'" ri. ~.~ at the Anahe im Amateu r Supe rcros s, over Robby Gordon. Damon Huffman won the 60cc (0-8) class, and Jimmy Button wo n the 60cc Expert event... Randy Goss (H-D) won the Grand National Seriesopening Houston Short Track, while Ricky Graham (Hon) won the TT... Jeff Ward (Kaw), Johnny O'Mara (Hon) and Phil Larson (Yam) topped the 125,250 and 500cc Pro classes, respectively, at the Sand Hill Ranch CMC Golden State round... Do n " Bubba" Shobert (Hon) topped the Cow Palace Short Track in San Francisco . to YEAR5 A 60. . • February 9, '994 The all-new Suz u· ki RF900R sat alone in front of the Alamo ,..,.,"""..,.,..,= on the cover of Issue # S. We found the bike to be quite fast, it;[i1~!t~ but Suzukiwas sure to say it wasn't a race- bike. It retailed for $8099... Jeremy McGra t h (Hon) won histhird race of the three-race-old Camel Supercross Series at Anaheim Stadium over Jeff Stanto n (Hon) and Larry Wa rd (Yam). Damon Huffman (Suz) dominated the 125ccclass over Ped ro Gonzalez (Kaw)and Craig Deck er (Hon)... Danny Hamel (Kaw) won the National Hare & Hound Series opener in Lucerne, Californ ia, over his teammate Ty Davis and Dan Richard son (Hon)... Hamel also teamed with Davis to win the Parker 400 in Parker, Arizona, over sole-man Dan Ashcraft (Hon). f not the end of an era, the start of t he 1969 AMA Grand National Ch ampionsh ip d irt t ra c k se ason wa s the beginning of the end. For it was t hen that the AMA first allow ed the use of rear brakes for dirt track racers . Befo re t hat, part of the spectacle of nat track racing lay in t he race rs' abilities to race inches apart from o ne another befo re pitching the ir machines into the corners pure ly with throttle contro l. "It all depended on the trac k, but the re were places like Sacramento where you'd ru n it in there deep and gat her it up and t hen just get right back o n the throttle w ithout eve r using a brake ," 1970 AMA Grand Natio nal Champ ion Gen e Romero remembers. "I doubt t hat t he re are many riders w ho could do it like that now." In actuality, says brake propo nent Dick Mann, who notched a tit le each in the differe nt e ras ( 1963, 197 1), t he brake ru le came abou t as the resu lt of what was happening in the short track porti on of the discipline . "Brakes came about beca use t he two st roke s were beginning to do minate the short tracks, and they neede d to make it fairer for the four-stro kes, so t hey put brakes on t hem," Mann says. "But for years, we had been in favo r of putt ing brakes on all the dirt track bikes." It so unds as if it sho uld go without saying, but t he ideology behind t he adop tio n of brakes was safety. The rub is t hat no o ne actually anticipated riders ' using the m in normal race conditions . "Let me te ll you, I had no idea t hat anybody would ever put t he brakes o n to go around a co rne r," Mann says. "In those days the straightaway speeds weren't so high, and you cou ld slide t he back w heel by just shutting the throttle off. It was supposed to be a safety feat ure for extreme conditions. We never th ought that somebody wo uld put the brake on while they I his advantage [on big bikes], and a guy who I cop ied immed iately, was Jim Rice. I learned how to use them, but I came from a time without them. If they would have said, 'No brakes,' we'd have went with it. But the racing kind of changed with the brakes." Mann agrees with Romero on that last po int. "It [a brake] never change d my riding style, but Iwas lucky because it was a transition that came abo ut very slowly. I t hink t hat it affected Mert Lawwill more than anyone. For years , he was one guy at the top of the ladde r w ho co ntinued to use that old style, and he was t he faste st guy at the races with that style. But if he got into traffic, he was in big tr ouble. Lawwill, the 1969 AMA Grand National Champion, says t hat he hated brakes. "The one thing that really hurt us is wh en t hey went to brakes ," Lawwill says. "I was against it the n, and in retr ospect, I st ill think that we sho uldn't have don e it. Even after we w ent to brakes, I never used them for a long time. " However, Romero and former BSA and Y amaha ride r Chuck Palmgren remember Laww ill's att itude as being a littl e diff erent from that . "That might be a little hypocrit ical of Mert, and t he reason that I say t hat is because the tw o biggest proponents of having brakes o n the rear was Dick Mann and Mert Lawwill," Romero recalls. "They sold that package to t he AMA." Palmgren says that Lawwill appears to have a selective memory, altho ugh he agrees with w hat Lawwill is saying now. "Mert w anted the brake s," Palmgren remembe rs. "We rea lly didn't need them. They did take away fro m the show, they didn't improve the sport, and you could no longer acciden tally run over the referee [laughs]. The brakes weren't very good or re liable anyway, and t hat was partially due to ou r inexperi ence with them at the time. I remembe r one t ime at Ascot, Dud Perkins pou red oil on Dan Haaby's brakes just to get his wheel to roll more freely. Of cou rse, I don't know how you co uld go back to not having them to day." Two-t ime AMA Grand Natio nal Champion Gary Nixon ( 1967-68) concurs with Palmgren that the brakes didn't work that we ll. "In fact, the day that I got hurt in Santa Rosa [Califo rnia] in 1969, I had taken my brakes off. I guess we needed t he m beca use it was some sort of safety thing. But it didn't rea lly affect me tha t much either way. We rode TIs with brakes, so it wasn't much diffe rent than that ." And yet it was different, somehow, especially on the big mile tracks. "It changed the show," Mann says. "In some people's minds it ruined t he show, but it is rea lly stu pid to have a ve hicle that fast without brakes. The big sticky tires and the development on the engines changed it even more than the brakes. Until t he tires got that st icky, you co uldn't use the brakes that much. Today, you see the guys passing eac h ot her many times on the straightaways, but no body really do es much passing in the turns." eN w ere racin g." But many riders did begin to use brakes to t heir advantage, racing down t he st raightaways and applying the binders, th us gaining the ability to hug the low line. Mann remembers tha t the you ng lions of the day, such as Jim Rice , Do n Castro, Do n Emde and Dave Aldana, were particularly adept at using brakes. Romero says tha t Rice was the abso lute master. "To me, it was just an added thing, but I came up in t he time when... Well, when we were Novices, we had a rea r brake, but the on ly time you used it was when you came in the pits," Ro me ro says. "T he first guy who I saw really ma ke them work to www.cydenews.com Mert Lawwill, circa 1971. Note the lever by his throttle hand, It was used to eperate the rea brakes, which came into vogue at the turn of the decade. CYCLE NEWS . FEBRUAR 11, 2004 Y lOS