Cycle News

CN III ARCHIVES BY LARRY LAWRENCE O nly the most dedicated road racing fans of the 1980s would remember the name Craig Morris. Morris raced mainly AMA 250 Grand Prix (then called Formula 2) races in the eastern part of the country. Talking to Morris today it's difficult to extract details of his racing days simply because the guy is so modest. Statements like, "Eddie was in a different class from the rest of us," or "Freddie pulled away from me pretty quickly," pepper Morris' recollections of his racing days. But go back and read the stories and you'll find that Morris was much more accomplished as a racer than he'd lead you to believe. He battled wheel to wheel with the likes of Eddie Lawson, Freddie Spencer, Fred Merkel, Dave Emde and Randy Renfrow just to name a few. And on a couple of occasions Morris came out on top. Morris won AMA 250 Road Race Nationals at Talladega, Alabama in 1981 and easily his most famous victory at Elkhart Lake, Wisconsin, in '82. Even when discussing his victories Morris points to the tuning genius of brothers Bruce and Doug Teague as the source of his speed. And on this Morris may have a point. The Teagues came up with an ingenious solution to the AMA road racing rules as they were written. In the 250cc class motorcycles of 350cc dis- placement were allowed if they were air-cooled. As the Teagues saw it, a 40 percent displacement advantage was nothing to take lightly, so they took a TZ250F and melded the barrel of a 10-year-old air-cooled Yamaha TR3 and they suddenly had a race-legal 350cc ma- chine with most of the advantages of the current day TZs, sans liquid cooling. Morris recalls the 350 had more grunt out of the turns than the modern liquid-cooled 250s, and he used the Teague-built secret weapon to great advantage. Both of his national wins came on the air-cooled 350. Morris came to racing later than most. He'd gotten a job at Detroit Diesel right out of high school and it was there that he met fellow employees who were into motorcycles, one of them, a guy named Jeff Wagner, was a road racer. "Being a young kid with time on his hands, racing was kind of a cool, macho thing to do," Morris recalls. "Jeff was racing up in Canada on a 125 Maico. He had this Yamaha he was going to get rid of. I'd been racing snowmobiles and had my summers free so it seemed like a logical way to pass some time. I didn't know it was going to turn out to be involved as it was, but it was a lot of fun." Early in his career one of Morris' best races came in the AMA Amateur National Road Races at Daytona in March of 1976 where the Cycle News story said Morris led in the opening laps and battled a 14-year- old Freddie Spencer for the win in the 125cc class. "I don't quite remember it that way," Morris laughs. "I remember being up front and then Freddie coming by me going quicker than I dared to go. I knew he was a special talent." And then there was the time as a novice he gave Eddie Lawson and Lance Jones a run for their money at Daytona. MORRIS' SECRET WEAPON P98

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