Cycle News - Archive Issues - 2000's

AReHTvES Castro Man I ust as Warren Reid was to the world of motocross, I Don C".t.o is to the world of dirt track. lf ever ! there was a single National event winner deserving I of a 'presence' award, Castro s your man. ln his I sho.t'ti-. as a pro, Castro came from out of J nowhere - actually. Hollster, Cahfornra - and dis- -played enough ralent to hold factory rrdes wrth two dif- ferent teams. "l came from the streets. Castro, now 55, says. "l bought a motorcycle to get to and from work at age 16, and then I sBrted racing around the streers, so my dad put me on the racetrack. He had always wanted to race, but he always worked. He and my grandfather were really behind me once I did start racing." Even though home was closer to San Jose, Castro says that the first Mile race he ever attended was actually fur- ther nofth, an Sacramento. "l went there and saw George Roeder back it in," Castro remembers. "That was all it took. I wanted to do it right after that. I was hooked." Starting at 16, Castro worked the amateur ranks before acquiring his Pro card at age 18, in 1968. He staft- ed out riding a Montesa single for George Hall before graduating to Erv Kanemoto's Kawasaki twin. "We did some winning on that one," Castro recalls. "Mainly I raced at Ascot and on the indoors.'' Castro then hit the National trail in 1959. 'lim Rice was one year ahead of me, and we traveled togethel" Castro says. ''f4y rookie year. lwon seven Junior Nationals, and he won several Expert Nationals - at the same events." Already a Triumph man, Castro got the attention of Triumph's Pete Colman, and Colman signed Castro as a member of the factory team for the I 970 season. Castro would race two seasons for Triumph before the com- pany went bankrupt, but he would prove his wonh by landing fifth in the '70 Al'4A Grand National Championship and back that up with a ninth-place finish in '71 . When the Triumph deal went away, no other offers fell his way. "l was a privateer again," Castro recalls, "but then, mid- way through the season, I got hooked up with Norm McDonald at K&N Motorcycles in Tulsa, Oklahoma. I was on my way to New York, and my van broke, and I was stranded, so I called Norm. He told me that he had a Yamaha harEing out in the comer of his shop and that it a lot of work, but we did it, and I ended up going to the race in New York and got fourth. That stafted me off on the Yamaha, though I still raced my Triumphs toward the Don €qsaro ls end of the year." Apparently Castro was the right guy, in the right place, at the right time in 1973. Yarnaha was putting together a factory Grand National team around racing prodigy Kenny Roberts, and Castro became the second man on the team, "Shell Thuett had the dirt-track bikes, and Kel Carruthers had the road-race bikes," Casro says. "l remember that we started road racing on the TZ350s, and then the following year they came out with the TZ700s, and then the following year after that we had the TZ750s. Kenny and I had it really made because before we had to transport all our own bikes and work on them. Yamaha made it so easy for us. All we had to do was show up with our helmet and leathers, and they paid us a nice salary" Castro describes his teamingwith Roberts as "allright," "Kenny wasn't 'King'yet," Castro says. "He always impressed me, but he was always a year behind me, and you know how you feel when yoLr're the older one. We had a lot of good races together." Surprisingly or not, while Roberts did go on to become "The King," Castro didn't make the same impact. A perennial contender, he can only lay claim to a single Grand National dirt-track win - and a bittersweet one at that - the San Jose Half Mile of May 20, 1973. Castro qualified lifth fastest that day, but then went on to win the fastest heat race, the second heat, a race in which tragedy would strike. After the finish of the race, Grand National number-79 Lloyd Houchirs and Grand National number-48 Pat McCaul locked handlebars 20- feet past the linish line and crathed to the ground. McCaul walked away, but Houchins was fatally iniured. "Lloyd was a friend of mine," Castro says. "l didnt know tlat it happened at the time. I just hcrd about it later" Unencumbered by the bad news, Castro says that he really felt it was Eoing to be his day. "The on, competition was Gary Scott and Kenny," Castro says. "l lust felt really good, and everything came together." Roberts took the lead, followed by Castro and Rex Beauchamp, only to drop out with a mechanical prob- lem. That left Castro in the lead, and he made the most of it, pulling away and leaving the rest of the field to bat- de for second place. Scon would eventually come from within the field to pass Beauchamp for second. "That was kind of nice because there were a lot of times that I felt that good at San.lose but ended up breaking," Castro says, "l won that one, and then the fol- lowing year, I won the 250cc flntemational Lightweight l00kl race at Dapona." again in the championship standings, Castro remained on the factory Yamaha team for '74, but a bad crash at a Cal Rayborn lYemorial race in Chula Vista, California, nearly cost him his left leg. Castro missed three months o{ the season and compounded the prob- lem by trying to come back too soon. "The very first race that I came back, I iniured it again," Castro says. "l tried to race the rest of the sea- son anyway, but I had a lot of problems with it. Released by Yamaha, Castro went back to being a pri- vateer for '75, right as the short-lived, whiz-bang, two- stroke, dirt-track era commenced. Rekindling his associ- ation with Kanemoto, Castro got a ride on Kanemoto's three-cylinder Kawasaki two-stroke, "That thing was beautiful," Castro says. "lf we'd a had the rear tires like they do nowadays, that's all anybody would have been riding, the two-strokes. They just made awesome power. We ran them that one year, and then they [Af'lA] outlawed them after all the research we put into them. A lot of us went broke doing that. lf the two-strokes had been allowed to stay, I think that Harley would have been out of the picture altogether. I think maybe that's why it happened like that." Castro left the circuit in 1977 in order to have an oper- ation to help repair his gimped leg. He never returned- ''l was going to take the year off, but then it tumed irto a couple years, and then I just never made it back," Casfo says. "lt was hard because I really wanted to be .acing. I struggled with it for a long time, but then I got a iob at a motorcycle park, and that made it easier. I taught ttrc park rangers how to ride, and I had to go out every day and

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