Cycle News is a weekly magazine that covers all aspects of motorcycling including Supercross, Motocross and MotoGP as well as new motorcycles
Issue link: https://magazine.cyclenews.com/i/1545725
JULY 19, 2006 • C Y C L E N E W S 88 W hat is it about Texas road racing? The Lone Star State is right up there with Ca l i f o r n i a i n p r o d u c i n g t h e t o p motorcycle road racers in America, with current AMA Superbike Cham- pionship leader Ben Spies just the latest in a long line of champions who learned to drag knees on tracks in Texas, and neighboring Oklahoma. How's this for a racing all-star roster? Freddie Spencer, John Kocinski, Kevin Schwantz, Doug Polen and Colin Edwards. Every one of them a World Champion, and all of them growing up racing in Texas. And that's just the start- ing lineup. Coming off the bench you have the likes of Spies, Hugh Humble, Jamie James, Sam McDonald, Mike Hale, Bubba Shobert, Britt Turkington, Larry Schwarzbach and Steve Wise! Try filling out that lineup card. The common thread that runs through this Texas pipeline of (with the exception of Hale, Shobert and Wise, who came up in dirt track and motocross before turning to road racing) is the Central Motorcycle Roadracing Association (CMRA). The Texas road-racing organization (formerly called the Central Road Racing Club - CRRC) held races on some of the most diverse road courses in America - from the stop-and-go karting track of Oak Hill Raceway to the wide-open Texas World Speedway, with several in between. If you made it out of the CMRA/CRRC, one thing was certain: you'd learned it all and you could go fast on tight, twisty courses as well as high-speed sweeping courses. CRRC was founded in the mid-1970s at a time when Superbike production racing was really beginning to kick in, with bikes such as Honda's 750F, Kawasaki's KZ1000, Suzuki's GS750 and a few other European models such as BMW, Ducati and Triumph. The early heroes of Texas road racing were men such as Jon Minonno, out of Dallas, and Paul "Hogman" Stephenson, from neighboring Fort Worth. Minonno is best known for racing sweet-handling Triumph twins, while Hogman went for the horsepower of Honda fours. Together they matched up and battled bitterly. "Some of the battles between Minonno and Hogman were legendary," said Bill Syfan, former CRRC racer and current PR man for the organization. "Those guys really brought the whole level of the club up. Plus they've had endurance races down here for years and that helped a lot of riders hone their skills with hour-long stints on the bike." The year of 1976 was a landmark one for Texas road racing. In December of '76, the newly formed WERA brought its first Grand National Final to Texas World Speedway. Billed by the motorcycling press as "East Meets West," the first WERA GNF was well hyped. But most of the races ended up being dominated by the local Texans. Freddie Spencer, who came from Louisiana, but honed his racing skills in Texas, burst on to the scene that year with three wins at the GNF. Riding Yamaha RD400s, the 15-year-old Spencer was dubbed Wonder Boy for his outstanding performance. Hugh Humble also beat National rider David Emde in the GNF Formula One final that year, proving that Spencer wasn't the only young star coming out of the Texas club scene. The GNF returned to Texas World in 1978 and Midland's Joe Patton won two production races in that one. In the Open Production race, Patton proved to be a man of no fear, manhandling a stock Honda CBX around the super speedway's intimidating high banking. By the late 1970s a young, lanky kid out of Denton was beginning to make his mark in Texas road racing. That'd be one Doug Polen, who started out riding an ex- Freddie Spencer Yamaha RD400, but began challenging in the Superbike classes on a highly modified Suzuki GS550. A frequent sight in Texas was Polen using the lit- tle 550 to humble riders on 750 and 900cc Superbikes. Polen has his own theory on why the Texas series produced so many champions. "The tracks we raced on were junk," he says flatly. "Grass was growing out from the cracks, they were bumpy and not the safest tracks in the world. Oak Hill was built on a cow pasture and the rancher kept the cat- tle out there when races weren't going on. They'd have to clear off the cow chips so we could race. We had one track - Green Valley - that was not much more than a tattered old drag strip with a return road. "With those kinds of tracks you had to learn to impro- vise in riding and bike setup. And we had to go against guys like Stephenson and Minonno, who'd been doing it a lot longer than anyone else. When we'd travel to the Nationals and hit smoother tracks you could let her rip. We'd show up and people would wonder where in the world we came from." Another track the Texan contingent raced on was a street course in Austin held during that city's Aqua Fest. The race was a free for all, pitting Superbikes against con- verted motocross bikes, and just about anything else you could throw your leg over. And they were all set loose on a track that wound its way through the city's streets and parking lots. That's where a skinny little blond-headed kid named Kevin Schwantz got his first taste of road racing, riding his uncle's Yamaha short-track bike. "When I started road racing, I just used to ride like I was on the dirt," Schwantz said. "It wasn't pretty. I just used to lock up the rear brake going into the corner, trying to get it stopped with the bike hopping and skittering all over the place. That was the way I thought you did it." Even though he was raw, Schwantz showed serious potential. It was at an endurance race at Texas World in 1984 that John Ulrich, then editor of Cycle News and rider/owner of the Team Hammer Endurance Team, wit- nessed Schwantz running at speed through a flooded racetrack, his Yamaha FJ600 throwing massive tidal waves in its wake as he raced through the small rivers that ran through the lower parts of the track. Impressed with Schwantz' fearless talent, Ulrich arranged a tryout with Yoshimura Suzuki and the rest is history. About the time Schwantz started flying around on a Yosh Superbike, a snot-nosed flat tracker from Arkansas came down to compete in Texas road races on an RD250. The kid, whose name was John Kocinski, was so short that his dad had to hold his Yamaha up so John could get it rolling. And get it rolling he did. The 1980s saw riders flying out of CMRA races into the Nationals at an alarming rate. It was almost as if they were being mass-produced in Texas... kids coming out of the womb with knee pucks. There was Sam McDonald, Mike Harth, Meril Moen and Ottis Lance. Then came future AMA champs Jamie James and Britt Turkington. And then, in the early 1990s, it was Conroe's Colin Edwards bursting onto the scene on his 250cc Grand Prix bikes. A couple of the best Texas riders had their lives cut short before they had a chance to reach their potential. Larry Schwartzbach died tragically in the Mid-Ohio Superbike race in 1992, just hours after winning his first Supersport race. And that was almost 10 years after the promising Hugh Humble, along with Mark Jones, died in a pit-exit incident at Brainerd. CMRA promises to continue to churn out future champs, especially since it has embraced mini-bike racing in a big way since the early 1990s. The Hayden brothers all raced the Texas mini series, as did Spies and Danny Eslick. Right now future generations of racers are learning the tricks of the trade in Texas, hoping to carry on the rich tradition of champions coming out of the state - rid- ers such as the Hayden brothers' cousins, the Gillim brothers (Frankie Lee, Ethan and Hayden), along with young Derek Wagnon. Spies summed it up best when he was asked about all the fast riders who came out of his home state: "If you can go fast in Texas, you can go fast anywhere." CN Texas Pipeline BY LARRY LAWRENCE A young Ben Spies started his career with the CMRA in Texas. Paul "Hogman" Stephenson leads Doug Polen and Ronnie Lunsford at Texas World Speedway, circa 1980.