and his teammate, Broc Glover.
Describing the world of
1977s AMA motocross could be
summed up in two-word phrase:
chaotic transition. A massive turn
-
over of riders had taken place in
just a few short years. Fun-loving
riders who loved dirt bikes had
either left or had been pushed out
by serious racers, laser-focused
on winning championships and
garnering the spoils that came
with those titles. Only a handful of
riders had survived and could lay
claim to knowing both the days of
splendor and the days of thunder,
facing mounting pressures to
win—or else.
And the motorcycles? Walk
the line at any AMA starting
gate to see motocross' techno
-
logical history—in action! Europe's
established brands, with their
proven twin-shocked, air-cooled
machines taking on experimental
Japanese ideas, like monoshocks
and liquid cooling. The term "R&D"
could have stood for "racing and
development" because the factory
riders for the Big Four were often
sacrificing their championship
seasons to help design the race
bike your dealer would sell you
next year. Exotic and amazing, the
works machines were frequently
motorized lab mice. "They were
always trick," said former factory
rider Warren Reid, "They weren't
always good."
Bob Hannah's 1977 season
saw him compete on a mixed
bag of bikes. He rode production-
based stockers to wins early
in the season before switching
to the works bikes for the rest
of the year. Sometimes, they
"works'ed" and sometimes they
didn't, and Hannah suffered
various breakdowns on all of the
different sized machines. But
on August 7, Hannah's big-bore
Yamaha stayed together long
enough for him to capture the
500cc class win at Charlotte,
North Carolina. Maico rider Gay
-
lon Mosier was a surprise winner
in the first moto but was taken
down in a pileup in moto two,
leaving Hannah to nail down an
easy second moto win and the
overall on the day, thus slamming
his way to the grandest of mo
-
tocross slams, with victories in
all three classes. The Hurricane
would add to that sweet season
wins in both the Supercross and
Trans-AMA series, giving him a
victory in every variation of AMA
motocross in 1977.
The following season, the AMA
changed the rules of the game,
limiting a rider to just one class
for the year of racing. Eventually,
they would send the fun and com
-
petitive 125cc class to the grave,
thus ensuring that Bob Hannah's
feat would remain in the books.
Records, they say, are made to be
broken. Not even another Hurri
-
cane can topple this one.
CN
VOLUME ISSUE AUGUST , P141
Subscribe to nearly 60 years of Cycle News Archive issues: www.CycleNews.com/Archives
GRAND SLAM
"Hurricane" Hannah consults
with his mechanic, Keith McCarty,
at the North Carolina 500cc National,
which was the round that sealed
the Grand Slam.
The AMA National
in Nebraska was
where Hannah
took his sole
250cc win in '77
on his Yamaha
OW25 factory
machine.
