Cycle News - Archive Issues - 2000's

ilMES Milestones with Hank Scott s privateers go, they don't come much tougher than Hank Scott. ln fact, up until the time that he retired in 1986, Scott, the younger brother of 1975 AMA Grand onal Champion Gary Scott, had collect- ed 17 AHA Grand National Championship wins, more than any other rider who hadn't earned the Grand National number-one plate. And of those wins, Haok Scott scored l2 of them on Mile racetrack. There's no question that whe. the tracks got big and the racing got scary fast, Scott was one of the men to beat, "You know, I don't look at it as me beinS any better on Miles than I was on Half Miles," Scott now says. "lf you look at Half Miles, natu|.ally, it's a lot tougher because you've got so many guys who are good on Half Miles. I dont think that I lacked anything on the Half Miles, because I won so many non-Nationals that were Half Miles, but when you went to a Half lvlile National, everphing got tougher. The races were shorter and the track were smaller: On the Miles, there were a few that I just got a good start and ran away, but a lot of them I had to work my way through the pack. lt seemed as if there were a lot of guys who were good for the first half of the race. They could get their minds straiSht for the lirst half, but then they would fall off in the second hali I don't know if I was any faster in the second half of the race, but I was more consistent." Scott was Fost and consistent. For proof of this, you need to look no further tian the feat that he accom- plished on the big Mile at Du Quoin, lllinois, on luly 30, 1978. On that day, riding a Carl Patrick-tuned Harley- Davidson XR750, Scott cut a single lap tine of 35.956 seconds and became the first man in AMA l4ile racing history ever to record a 100 mph during qualirying. Of course, nowadays, 100-mph laps are turned with monotonous regularity, but in 1978, going that fast real- ly meant something. "l had 82 horsepower,35mm fork tubes and iust some'ol S&W twin shock on the back," Scott says with a chuckle, "Back then we didn't have all the trick stuff, like the big single shocks and the really trick Irames. People that tried to do that stuff we.e not very successful with it. "The track was nice and acky, and it was a cushion," Scott rememberc. "!t had been overcast, and they had prepped the track really well with calcium [chloride]. l'd been there before lvhen it was a black Sroove from top to bottom, and I've won it that way, but on that day I was right on the edge of the cushion. I iust rode my bike just into the wet stuff, and I never blipped the throttle." Not ont did he qualit eight-tenths faster than the next closest man that day at Du Quoin, Scott proceeded to win the race as well. "l didn't 8et that good of a start - I think that I was about sixth or seventh - but Carl had really done his homework with [Jerry] Branch, and he had some Sood heads on the thing and came up with a good set of cams," Scott recalls, "lt was a hard-hitting combination, and we were running a really all gear. Of course, nowa- days they buzz them a whole lot more, but back then, with no restrictors, you could really coum on brque and gear them up a bit more. "l remember that I went thraugh the first corner, and everybody was down a little bit, and I was up above all of them, and I got a really good drive onto the back straightawq/ and drafted by everyone on the outside, between the pack and the guardrail." Fast forward to five yeafs later - to the day - and that's when Scott became the first rider ever to win an AMA Grand National Mile on a Honda when he stormed to victory on a Honda RS750, giving that model its first GNC race win as well, even though he was never an offi- cial member of the Honda factory team. "The flrst time I rode a Honda, it was an NS750. when Jerry Grifflth called me after lYike Kidd got hurt,'' Scoft says, "That was in '82, and it was kind of my comeback year from when I got hurt so bad at fucot in September of '81 . For most of '82, I struggled to get it all back, and I did about halfinay through the season. Just before the National at Hamburg, New York, Jerry called, and he needed a rider. I went to Hamburg and rode for them [Honda] because what they agreed to pay me was as good as if I got fifth place, and when you're a privateeq that's money in the bank. I rode the thing and got seventh in the National with it. Then I went to Syracuse, New York and finished lourth with it, which is the best it had ever done on the mile to that point. Then the following weekend I went to San Jose and was running second when Ricky Gmham got by me. I went on to finish third, and that was the flrst time that thing had ever been in the winner's circle. "They had been wortinS on the RS750, and Griffith really wanted me to ride it, but they wound up going with Terry Poovey and l"like Kidd at the beginning of the season, but that didn't work out so good," Scott says. "Poovey tried it at San Jose, and I rode the NS at San Jose and got sixth or seventh, and Poovey and Kidd rode the RS and finished way, way back. Poovey decided that he wanted to get back on an NS, so me being an optional rider, they Saye the NS back to Terry and they gave me his RS. I led at Spring{ield for I 3 or 14 laps and wound up third. I was down on power, and lwas havinS to draft my ass off, but me and Randy Goss ended up having a hell of a race for second place. Randy just had more motor than me, and I couldn't get by him at the finish line, so lgot third. But you'd have thought that those Japanese guys had won the feature. They were that happy." Prior to Du Quoin, Scott says that he directed Grifllth to get to work on an improved chassis for the RS, as Scott felt the Springfield version was too much of a Flexi-flyer. "We also staned working on heads and carburetors and stuff, and that's basically what I used at Du Quoin" Scott says. ln what was described by Cycle News reporter Gary Van Voorhis, as a "cat and mouse" game, Scott used all his Mile sawy to iust edge Bubba Shobert and Doug Chandler at the linish line and eam his lSth career Grand National win. "l kept tellinS everyone it was iust a matter of time before Honda won a Mile," Scott told Cycle News back then. "l knew wE could do it. I knew I could do it." Cat and mouse. Sounds like Mile racing. Scott won't disagree, but he sars that there's really no such thing as race stratery on the Mile. "You can't really plan for the last couple laps, because everything that you do is determined by what the other .- --s!----r Jore ltile guy does," kott says. "You just try to position yourself to where you're in the front pack, and whatever is going to happen is Eoing to happen." Scott won his first r-ace, the Syracuse Mile, as a rookie on September 8, 1974, while riding for Pate's Harley- Davidson of Chattanooga, Gnnessee. Almost l0 years late6 he won his last race, also on a Harley-Davidson and also on a Mile, at Du Quoin, on August 25, I 884. He would race for two more seasons before finally calling it quits. "l just wasn't the racer that I once was," Scott says. "l was still going fast, but the big thing was that I was still having to build and maintain all my own equipment and haul it all to the racetrack. lt just bumed me out. Vvhen I was on the racetrack, lwas fine and having fun, but I had already made my mind up that the end ofthe season was going to be it-" These days, Scott runs his own racing engine and race- car-building service in Concord, North Carolina, where he has lived since the ear! '90s. By his count, Scott has built over 4500 engines for Legends cars alone, and he has receftly iumped imo the hot USAC Ford Focus Midget Series, for which he is an autho.ized dealer for the pro- duction-based spec engines and complete cars. Scott is extremely successful, and while his method of motorcycle racing eventually burned him out, he readily admiB that it jnstilled a valuable work ethic that drives him to this day, "lt [dirt track] taught me a trade," Scoft says. "There's a lot of guys who don't learn anything while they're racing. They iust race and race and race, and don't leam a thing. Working with Jerry Branch, Shell, Carl htrick and Sal Acosta in the engine part ofthe busi- ness, I gleaned a lot of information from them. Jerry Branch was a huge influence on nry life. but lappreciate what all of them did for me." Hard work, attitude and a pair of unique career mib- stgnes can iust about sum up the motorqfcle-racing career of Hank Scott. Of course, like anything else, Scott himself can do it better. "When I was on my game in '80 and '81, lwould go to the racetrack with the attitude that everyone else was going to be racing for second," Scott says. "ln my mind, there was nobody I couldn't beat. I raced with the facto- ry on bikes I built myself out of a one-car garage. Goliath [the factory teams] always wound up beating me, but I got my lick in while was there." CX I 92 APR[- t2, 2006 . cYcLE NEWS BY Scorr RoussEAU t!-- -*!},, I I I rE

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