Cycle News - Archive Issues - 2000's

AUGUST 9, 2006 • C Y C L E N E W S 84 A MA Superbike racing came up to speed gradually, starting with a few events on the West Coast that were non-points-paying races that were part of the AMA Nationals. Then Daytona started to host the Super- bike production class in 1975, and by '76 the AMA Superbike Series got under way with races at all of that year's AMA Road Race Nationals. In the early days, Kawasaki was chipping away at the dominance of the nimble-handling Ducatis, Moto Guzzis and BMWs. And Reg Pridmore gave the Japanese their first AMA Superbike victory in August of 1977 on the horsepower-hungry Pocono Raceway riding a Racecrafters Kawasaki KZ1000, its engine punched out to the legal limit of 1015cc. While the big Kawasaki could shine on a wide-open circuit like Pocono, the hitch was always with the handling of the KZ. Chassis guru Pierre desRoches could make the KZs and Z-1s handle at acceptable limits, but all of the extra bracing added near- ly 10 pounds of extra weight. Pops Yoshimura became frustrated with trying to make their powerful Kawasaki's handle well enough to win con- sistently so he turned to Suzuki, who was late to the four- stroke streetbike game. Suzuki came out with its GS750 and was keen to get it on track, so in July of 1977 the man- ufacturer struck up a deal with Yoshimura. Yoshimura brought together Suzuki frame engineers to work along- side suspension experts from Kayaba in testing the Suzuki, and its development was suddenly on track. While the frame and suspension was being tested and modified, Pops and his son Fujio were hard at work bumping up the stock 750cc displacement to 944cc. Pops had to use all of his engine-building instincts to come up with horsepower increases, since the Yoshimura dynamometer was destroyed in a shop fire six months earlier. Pops hand-shaped racing pistons built for Honda Civics, reshaping and polishing the ports and designing high-lift, short-duration camshafts. The Yosh team hit a bit of a glitch making the switch from Kawasaki to Suzuki. Turns out their number-one rider Steve McLaughlin had signed a personal contin- gency deal with Kawasaki. "Pops came to me and said, 'You ride Suzuki now,' " McLaughlin recalls. "I said, 'Wait a minute, we may have a problem here.' " Yoshimura worked a deal with Suzuki to compensate McLaughlin for the loss of his Kawasaki contract. After the negotiations were done, McLaughlin found himself pleasantly surprised by the new GS. In just three weeks after Yoshimura started on the Suzuki GS750 project, the bike was ready for testing. McLaughlin rode the bike in a club race at Ontario Motor Speedway and reported that the power was nearly equal to the team's Kawasaki. More importantly, the handling was vastly improved. "Many of the chassis secrets we'd found with the Kawasaki were used on the Suzuki, so it had somewhat of a head start," McLaughlin explained. "But there's no doubt Suzuki had studied many of the issues Kawasaki had with its frame and suspension and came up with workable solutions for the GS750." Superbike riders had expressed their dissatisfaction with prize money after the Sears Point race and Craig Vetter, of motorcycle-fairing fame, stepped in at Laguna to add $2500 to the purse. That brought the total pay- out to $4500 - the best purse in the country for Superbikes at that time. By the time the new Yoshimura Suzuki was ready for its AMA Superbike debut on September 11, 1977 at Laguna Seca, McLaughlin knew he had a winner on his hands. "In my typical 'braggadocios' manner, I spouted off over the Laguna PA while being interviewed, telling them, 'They might as well sign the check over to me now,' " McLaughlin said. Such was the confidence he had in the bike after practice. "It was the only time in my life that I had a motorcy- cle that had dramatically more power than the others." McLaughlin said the Suzuki was perfect in Saturday practice and asked only that the crew clean up the bike for Sunday's race. To his horror, when he arrived at the track on Sunday morning, the Suzuki's engine was com- pletely apart and Pops was sitting at a bench hand grinding the cams. McLaughlin protested to Pops saying that the bike was perfect the day before. "Pops looked up at me and said, 'Steve, I dream last night and we will have 10 more horsepower today,' " McLaughlin says with a laugh. The race started with McLaughlin blasting off to a comfortable lead in two laps of racing. Wes Cooley, rid- ing the former McLaughlin's Yoshimura Kawasaki, ran second ahead of Pridmore on the Racecrafters Kawasaki. Within a few laps Cook Neilson, on his Phil-Schilling-built Ducati, passed both Pridmore and Cooley and was in hot pursuit of McLaughlin. McLaughlin said he knew Neilson was coming, but that it was really no contest. "My bike was so much better, but I wanted to give the crowd a show," he said. Neilson remembered it a bit differently, saying in a Cycle Magazine report that McLaughlin repeatedly banged the Suzuki's alternator cover off the ground in any and all of Laguna's seven left-handers, and finally scraped through and struck oil late in the race. According to Neilson, oil coated the left side of McLaughlin's Suzuki as well as his own face shield. In spite of the problems, McLaughlin went on to win by 13 seconds over Neilson. Pridmore made a late-race charge and nearly caught Neilson, but went too hot into turn nine (now turn 11) and had to settle for third. The victory marked Suzuki's first victory in AMA Superbike and cemented the company's long and fruitful relationship with Yoshimura. The Laguna win also helped Suzuki shake off its image of producing heavy, under- powered two-stroke road bikes, by successfully launch- ing the four-stroke GS line of motorcycles, the predeces- sors of today's GSX-Rs. The next time Ben Spies or Mat Mladin take the vic- tory flag at an AMA Superbike race, they can thank Pops Yoshimura and Steve McLaughlin for paving the way for them nearly 30 years earlier. CN Suzuki's First BY LARRY LAWRENCE

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