Cycle News

CN III ARCHIVES BY LARRY LAWRENCE W hile researching a story a while back I came across a photo of Dave Damron on his way to winning a West Coast road race. I knew a Dave Damron, the guy who founded and owns one of the biggest dealerships and motorcycle acces- sory catalog companies in the country—Chaparral Motorsports. But I never knew of Damron's racing background. So I made the call. "Yeah, a lot of people are surprised to hear I was a road racer," Damron says. Turns out Damron's always tried to keep a low profile, putting the focus on making his company the star rather than himself. But it was fun to find out that Damron was once a Kawasaki factory-backed road racer, won West Coast club racing championships, was there in the middle of what would become Superbike racing as it was taking shape on the road courses of Southern California and raced with and beat some of the big-name racers most fans would recognize from the early 1970s. Damron was a racer from as far back as he could remember. It was a family hobby. His father grew up in the Midwest racing sprint cars. Damron and his brother started racing quarter-midgets out of their hometown of San Bernardino when they were kids. As the boys progressed in racing, his father decided to build a low-cost sports car utilizing Honda motorcycle engines. That ultimately led to Damron's dad becoming a motorcycle dealer. "He built a few of these sports cars, but never really got that going," Damron said of his dad's small cottage shop. "But when some of the early management of Honda, like Jack McCormack and Walt Fulton, left Honda to go to Suzuki, they asked my dad to become a dealer. My father said, 'Why not,' and he became the very first Suzuki dealer in the United States." With that Damron made the transition to motor- cycle racer. At first he was racing dirt bikes, but an accident during his junior year in high school, injured his knee. "They didn't really have good knee braces back then and I didn't want to hurt it again," he recalls. "So I looked over and noticed road racing and thought that would be easier on my knee and still allow me to race." Damron got involved in road racing at a time when the sport was on a rapid upswing, not only in Southern California, but nationwide as clubs formed to race the ever increasingly capable motor- cycles of that era. Damron honed his skills racing Suzukis in the 1960s, but when those machines were no longer competitive he got a deal in the late '60s with Kawasaki to race production H1s and eventually H1Rs—Kawasaki's 500cc GP machine. One of the biggest West Coast road races of 1969 was the Willow Springs 12-Hour Endurance race. Damron teamed with Art Baumann on a factory-prepped Kawasaki H1. The two domi- nated the race. "We had a three-lap lead in the race," Damron explained "When at the 11-hour, 40 minute mark we punched a rod through the front of the H1." Rusty Bradley won the race with partner Virgil Davenport on a Triumph Trident, which helped launch Bradley as one of the country's leading up-and-coming road racers. Damron raced alongside Bradley as Juniors in DISCOVERING DAMRON P180

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