Cycle News - Archive Issues - 2000's

ARGHnMES The Consummate Privateer P rivateer New Entland road racer Dde Quar- terley may not have a ton of AMA National victories to show for his Superbike career, but he does have one, and it's probably one of the most spectacular in AMA history before being derailed by a red flag after pri\..teer rider l'lichael Fitzpatrick crashed. Once the race resumed in earnest, Quanerley barged his way past Vance & Hines Yamaha's Colin Edwards to mo/e into sec- ond place behind Edwards' teammate Jamie lames, but Yoshimura Suzuki's Thomas Stevens passed Quaterley to move into second place. The top two remained the sarne for several laps before Quarterley repassed Stevens in turn one. Muzy Kawasaki rider Miguel Duhamel then charged past everyone to lead briefly before ultimately dropping off the pace with an oil leak. Quanerley {inally made his move on James on lap 20, sneaking under the Yamaha man in turn 13, but his Cinderella story nearly came to a grinding halt one turn later, when he ran wide in tum l4 and went off the track. Quarterley never even backed out of the throtde. "l was either going to crash it or win it," Quarterley said in the race story that ran in the August 18, 1993 issue of Cycle News. "l was going to the front, and there was nothing else to it." Quarterley quickly gapped the field, running 3.3 sec- onds ahead oflames with three laps to go. His final mar- gin of victory was 5.5 seconds. "What made Quafterley's win so special was that it was in no way a 8imme," Cycie News associate editor Paul Carruthers penned. "The factor/ stars didn't fall by the wayside or retire with mechanical problems - they were just flat beaten, They were beaten by a privateer who deserves to be taken seriousb/." From then on, Quanerley was taken far more seri- ously, and though he didn't win again that year - or any other - that one win showed that an individualwith a lit- tle mone, more talent and a load of desire, could over- come the might of the factories. "We flnished second in AMA Superbike points that year," Quarterley recalls proudly. "We got beat by a small margin by Doug Polen, who had iust come back from winning two World Championships with Ducati. I beat the factory [Kawasaki team] on leased equipment that I built myself. ln 1995, we switched to Ducati, and at that point we beat Ferracci's factory team. We fin- ished fifth, and they finished seventh and ninth. The last three years of my career, when I had enough funds to rise to a competitive occasion, we did that," Which begs the question: lf Quarterley was that good, why he was neyer picked up by a factory team? 'At this point in my life I can answer that, but at that point in my life I couldn't," Quarterley says. "l have ADD [Attention Deficit Disorder]. We knew it then, but nobody did anphing about it. You could be talking to me about one subiect, and two seconds late. l'd be on another and flopping all over the place. The racing actu- ally calmed me down and made me focus, which is why I'm good at it, The other problem, if you think about it, was that if you took me out of the loop, who was left? I was the only independent guy in the country who was running up front every single week. I was someone that the factories could race and the fans could root for." Quarterley also admits that he wasn't the sharpest self-promoter in the business either. "l'd make a couple of phone calls, 'Hey, what's going Some l0 years after hir AMA Superbike debut, and only a couple more beyond the time he rode in his first motorcycle race, Quanerley scored a popular win at the 1993 Mid-Ohio AHA Superbike race. ln doing so, he beat a full lield of factoD/ stars as a privateer, Nobody has done it since. That Quarterley was able to pull such a feat off in a time when no hss than flve factories had at least two rid- ers each on their teams speaks to his abilities on a motorcycle. But there's more to the Dale Quarterley story than that. "ln '81 I ran my firct motorcycle race," Quarterley, now 44, says. "ln '82 was my first full [club] season, and I won a couple of championships. ln '83 was my lirst pro race, and it was at Mid-Ohio. I finished fifth in Superbike and was running third in Fl but didn't finish. ln '84 was my first full season in AMA Superbike, and at that point my budSet was my hther, Team D-A-D. He was sup- porting me off his used-car lot, and my budget was maybe 35 thousand bucks. Well, Honda's budget was frlggin'seven million bucks! We finished seventh in points, and we were the top independent team. The one thing that I've been able to do my whole career is to make something out of nothing, to take inferior equip- ment and, A - to build and make it go, and B - to ride it also, So if you bring that scenario up to 1993, yes, I had- n't won an AMA Superbike race, but I never once had a season where I had the money to win." That changed in 1992 when Quartedey signed a unique deal to represent the Teenage Mutam Ninia Tunles, the fierce-fighting cartoon terrapins that were all the rage with American youngsters. "The first year was a nothing deal, but we put the thing in the winner's circle twice," Quarterley recalls. "We did it at Texas and at Charlotte. The follor,ving sea- son, th€y [the Turtles sponsor] upped the purse, and so did the rest of the people who were with us, and my budget for the season was about $250,000." That's still a far cry from the $3 million budget that Quarterley figures the Muzzy Kawasaki factory team had at the time, but the frugal Qufierley knew exactly what to do widr the extra money. Rather than PamPering him- self, he put it into hir motorcycle by strikinS an engine- leasing deal with Kawi team owneT and enSine tuning wizard Rob Muzy. "The deal was that he would supply the engines, and I would do the chassis," Quarterley says. "Every week, I would practice and qudiry on an engine and then take it out and put in a fresh one to run the race on. Then I'd practice and qualiry with that one the following week, and tlren I'd take it out and put a new qne in and race. Basically, I always had a fresh engine come race time. That was the deal," It all came totether for Quarterley at round nine of the Af4A Superbike Series, at Mid-Ohio, on August 8, 1993. Quarterley found himself in the middle of an eight- rider freight train otf the stan. lt would last for thre€ l+s on next yea[ blah, blah, blah,' talk to Terry Vance or whoever to see if they were interested," Quarterley says. "They'd say, 'Keep in touch,' but a month later I might call them again, because I vi/as busting my ass, try- ing to make money to go racing agajn, not on tlrc phone every other day, or llyinS out to talk to people, or taking them to dinner. Plus, I was East Coast, and they were all West Coast. Thomas Stevens was perfect hair, perfect clothes, speaks well, talks well, and I was at the track with my panB diny, my hands dirty, rny hair dirty, and I'd stink because l'\€ been working all day." Still, you have to wonder what migtlt have been poi- sible if Quarterley's career hadn't basicalb/ come to a crashin8 end in 1995. Twice. "l was running a WERA race up in Michigan, and I broke a brake rotori" Quarterley says. "l tried to the throw the thing on the ground, but it ended up highsid- ing me, and I hit an embankment going bachr-xds at about 120 mph by myself, and then lwent another l(X) yards after I hit the hill. lwaund up with two ruptured discs in my back, and for a month I couldn't sit down, but I ran the rest of the season." Unfortunately for Quarterley, his bad luck didnt end there. He crashed aSain at Da),tona in December of '95. "l was testing for Michelin, and we broke an engine up in NASCAR one and two," Quarterley says. "The bike ended up squishing me against the wall before lslid down the track to the apron. I broke drree meacarpals in my right hand, and I decided, "'Hey, at this point I'm going to miss the first couple of races, and if I cant run for poinB, then it's not worth doin8. Let's quit while I'm ahead and go car racing instead."' Quartedey made a few cameo appearances during the 1996 season, but his focus shifted lrom two wheels to four, and it has remained there ever since. Nowadays, he is one ofthe top drivers in the NASCAR Busch Grand National North stock-car series. "ln pecking order, it goes Nextel Cup, Busch Series, Craftsman Truck, and then us," Quarterley says. "lacnr- ally started car racing in 1994. The high poim so far was actually last year. lfinished third in poinB and won two of dE three Superbowl races." With all of the work required to remain competitive at just about any level of I'.IASCAR racing, you would think that Quanerley now commands a battalion of employees who labor furiousty to get his cars ready from week to week, but then you would be forgettint who we're talking about. "l have nto employees," Quarterley says. "L6t yeai the guy who won our tour spem 800 grand to do it. I fin- ished third and spent 250 grand." By definition, then, Dale Quarterley might just be the consummate privateer. "By definition?" Quartedey quips, "My picture comes up when you look up the word priyateer," Cll 126 JANUARY ] I, 2OO5 . CYCLE NEWS Bv Scorr RoussEAU ) l .ir .l ?

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