Rob Pearson
Will ROB PEARSON BE THE
DID< uBUGSY' MANN OF THE
NEW MIllENNIUM?
By SCOTT ROUSSEAU
PHOTOS BY DAVE HOENIG AND SCOTT ROUSSEAU
n the pantheon of flat-track legends, Dick "Bugsy"
Mann stands out as one of the sports ' all-t ime
greats and a man whose actions on and off the
track seemed to be quite in keeping with the era in
which he raced. In a time when tubes were yielding to trans istors , black and white television was superseded by color and Vietnam was being called a bad war,
Mann was soft-spoken but firm in his view of racing's
po litics, and on the track he was as smooth as they
co me , indeed almost boring in his precision . Now,
some 30 years late r, a new "Bugs" has arrived on the
dirt track scene in a time when analog has been
replaced by digital, television is be ing superseded by the
computer monitor and Iraq is being called a bad war,
I
40
SEPTEMBER 29 , 2004 • CYCLE NEWS
like Mann. Rob "Bugs" Pearson . an IS-year-old AMA
flat-track Rookie of the Year contender from Chillicothe.
Illinois, is sort of a reflection of his time . He doesn't
share his own political views of the sport. O n the track
he is more Dave Aldana. exciting and unpredictable.
than Dick Mann but already Pearson's a force to be reckoned with among the sport's more established stars.
Also like Mann was, Pearson is a truly nice kid, trying to
make a living in the most violent, dangerous form of
motorcycle racing the re is. It's just what he does.
So what's going on with you?
O h, I just got a new extended van. and I was putti ng
some wheel cho cks in the back of it.
You dirt trackers make a good liv in g , huh ,
40th Anniversary
ge tting to buy new vehicles a ll the ti m e?
(Laughs ) Yeah, this is like a house payment fo r me . I
look at the money I make, and I wonder how many van
payments that will make.
How would you ass ess your r o o k ie se a son
thus fa r?
I'm hap py with it. We have had some bad luck. We
started off the season in Daytona, and I knew that for
[tuner] James Hart and our team owner, Paul Seliskar,
this was going to be all new for us.
How did t he team come about?
Actually. I was on my way to Salt Lake City to go
snowboarding this past winter when James called me on
my cell phone and to ld me that Paul was looking for a
