Cycle News

VOL. 53 ISSUE 2 JANUARY 19, 2016 P99 One of the ways Morris gained a lot of practice was by doing endurance racing. He was one of the main cogs in GT Racing/Group Four Ducati's victory in the Nelson Ledges 24 Hour in 1977. All of his seat time paid off huge when Morris earned his first high-profile victory at the Talladega Superbike Pro-Am in April of 1980 where he won the Lightweight support race over Nobuhiro Nakamura and Ricky Ritch. In August of that year he finished on the podium with Eddie Lawson and Dan Chivington in the 250 National at Pocono. At Daytona '81 Morris was a strong fourth in the International Lightweight race behind Lawson, Jimmy Filice and 250GP world champ Anton Mang. So Morris was accustomed to racing with the elites in his class, especially at the high-speed tracks where Teague's tuning came into play. Morris followed up that strong Daytona finish with a victory in the 250 national at Talladega, his first national win. Later that year he led and then battled Lawson for the victory at Elkhart Lake, with Lawson pulling away on the closing laps aboard the factory Kawasaki. Mor- ris took second. In '82 Morris had the experience and a year of de- velopment on the 350cc air-cooled Teague motor. It all led to his most famous victory, his 250 national win at Elkhart Lake. Morris crashed in Saturday's heat race in the rain and had to start near the back of the grid. But the cool and sometimes misty weather of Sunday was perfect for his air-cooled engine and Morris passed nearly the entire field on the first lap and led across the line on lap one. From there he extended his lead. Five laps in and Morris' was already up by six seconds, but in the second half his engine gradually began to heat up and slow. "I think we were a little too aggressive with the jet- ting," Morris recalls. "I could tell the bike wasn't revving as high in the last couple of laps. I was just hoping it wouldn't ventilate the cases before the checkered flag." Mark Homchick who was running second, realized he was catching Morris. On the final lap Homchick even briefly passed Morris, but Morris was able to use lapped traffic to his advantage to hang on for the win. "I really didn't want to toss it away on the last lap of the 250 race going for the banzai move," said Hom- chick, who'd qualified second for the AMA Formula One National coming later that day and had that on his mind. "It was perfect conditions for that air-cooled 350 - cold! Doug (Teague) was brilliant and Craig's bike was a rocket." After the race Morris and Teague discovered the lean settings on the 350 pushed it to the limit. The motor likely wouldn't have made another lap. Morris took the momentum from Road America and won the pole at Pocono a couple of months later. He was even more impressive at Pocono. Morris battled with the lead group and took over the point on lap six and was pulling away. He wasn't going to be caught this time, but then three laps later he made a mistake and ran too hard into a turn, lost the front end and crashed out. Even though he went past his limits, up to that point he was pulling away from a field that included the likes of Fred Merkel, Donny Greene, Dave Emde, Randy Renfrow and Sam McDonald. It was the one outstanding performance by Morris that probably no one recalls because he pitched it away. A big crash into a wall at Sears Point later that year caused internal injuries and nearly cost Morris his life. Fortunately, he ended up in a hospital in San Fran- cisco that was on the forefront of liver repair and he recovered. "At that point I realized I had a great job and figured that was a better future, so I made the decision to notch back my racing," Morris said. "I was 32 and was too old to try to go to Europe and chase the GP circuit, even though (fellow racer) Bruce Maus told me I should've tried." Morris continued to race, but on a smaller scale in club and vintage meets. Eventually he retired from motorcycle racing and took up racing sailboats. When looking back on his racing career and his national wins he modestly credits the Teague brothers for providing him almost an unfair advantage. "I like to say riding with a bike built by Doug and Bruce was like having another gear," Morris con- cluded. "There's no question that was what helped me win races." CN Subscribe to nearly 50 years of Cycle News Archive issues: www.CycleNews.com/Archives

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