Cycle News

INTERVIEW BRANDON ROBINSON P90 That's 36 years since the British maker scored victory in the historic American flat track series. A lot has happened in the interim. Triumph closed its doors in 1983 and then a new Triumph returned to the market in 1990. Triumph was a dominant force in AMA Grand National racing in the mid-to-late 1960s. In fact, in 1966 Triumph won more AMA Nationals than any other brand. Gary Nixon (1967-68) and Gene Romero (1970) won AMA num- ber one plates on Triumphs. But then in the mid-1970s Triumph faltered, being outdone by the Japanese makers and its U.S. racing efforts came to a close. A faithful few riders kept old Triumph vertical twins competi- tive on Grand National TT events into the early 1980s, but then the brand was absent from flat track racing until 2007 when Ohioan Dan Gedeon qualified an Ed Fatzinger Triumph at several nationals. Bill Gately really got the ball rolling with his Bonneville Perfor- mance Triumphs and in 2012 he picked up backing from Triumph. Then Triumph asked Gately to build bikes for longtime Joe Kopp sponsor George Latus. In a unique arrangement Latus and Gately's teams are separate squads (Brandon Robinson on the Latus side and Jake Shoe- maker with Gately), but they pit together at the nationals and share information, both factory backed. So Gately was extremely instrumental in bringing Triumph to where it is today in flat track and now Gately and Shoemaker, combined with Latus team and Robinson, Triumph fields its strongest AMA Grand National THE GATELY FACTOR All of a sudden Triumph is once again a factor in AMA Pro Grand Na- tional racing, but as much as Bran- don Robinson's early success on the Latus Motors/Castrol Triumph may have caught fans by surprise, the fact is there has been a decade of development work done by Bill Gately and his Bonneville Perfor- mance squad. Gately started development for the new generation Triumph flat tracker back in 2005. He finally put a rider in a Grand National main event when Brian Phillips put the Bonneville Performance Triumph in the field at the Bull's Gap Half-Mile in 2009. Since then Gately has had riders like Jason Tyer, Shawn Baer, Mikey Martin and now Jake Shoemaker. Triumph began backing Gately's racing efforts in 2012, and it was Gately who built the first two race bikes in 2013 for the Latus team. Now Bonneville Performance and Latus Motors are sister teams, pitting side by side and sharing data in an effort to more quickly develop the Triumph flat tracker. Owning a Grand National team was always a dream of Gately's. "My family has been involved in the sport on an amateur basis for our entire lives," Gately explained. "My first Grand National my grandad took me to was in Cumberland, Maryland, when I was seven. It was the great- est thing I'd ever seen and it never changed for me. I grew up in the Washington, DC area and Reiber Motors was the big supporter of rac- ing there. My focus when I was a kid was to find a way to get to Reiber's. I could just walk around and touch things. When I retired in 1999 I had started working on the Triumph flat tracker. It took me awhile, but by 2004, with Wiseco support—they're still with me—I'd built the first bike. I worked hard at getting Triumph to no- tice us and we picked up Triumph and Castrol as primary support in 2012." With Mikey Martin at the controls the last few year's there were flashes of brilliance, but as Gately laughingly put it, "Mikey was a head case," he said. "It depended on how it was going with his girlfriend or if his truck was running or not." Brian Phillips was the first to put a Bonneville Performance Triumph in a Grand National Main at the Bull's Gap Half-Mile back in 2009.

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