Cycle News

Cycle News 2017 Issue 08 February 28

Cycle News is a weekly magazine that covers all aspects of motorcycling including Supercross, Motocross and MotoGP as well as new motorcycles

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CN III ARCHIVES BY LARRY LAWRENCE G raeme Crosby emerged from the highly com- petitive production road racing of his native New Zealand and neighboring Australia, made his name at the prestigious Suzuka 8 Hours and rose to the highest levels of grand prix road racing. Along the way "Croz" won iconic events like the Isle of Man TT, the Daytona 200, the Imola 200 and the Suzuka 8 Hour. Crosby even scored a pair of world championships in the old Formula One TT Series. Crosby raced three seasons in 500cc Grand Prix (MotoGP World Championships) and got better every year, ultimately finishing runner-up to Franco Uncini in 1982. But after that outstand- ing campaign, and at the peak of his career, Croz left the racing world stunned when he walked away from the sport. Crosby is considered by many pundits as one of the best riders to never win a Grand Prix, but the aggressive-riding, hard-drinking and fun- loving Kiwi certainly made a major impact on the sport in spite of missing that particular milestone. Crosby came up early in the production-racing craze that arose in the 1970s. His early rides on Kawasaki Triples and later on Z1s eventually caught the eye of an Australian team owner who brought him on board to race in the burgeoning Australian road racing championships. Endurance racing was popular there and Crosby rapidly gained hundreds of racing miles in those competitions. The team owner he raced for happened to be a Yoshimura importer and that led to Crosby getting the call to race with Pop's Yoshimura's son-in-law Mamoru Moriwaki, of Moriwaki Engineering in Japan, to race in the first Suzuka 8 Hour in 1978. Suzuka almost instantly became one of the most prestigious road races in the world and Crosby was one of the event's top riders. (He and Wes Cooley teamed up to win the race on a Yoshimura Suzuki in 1980.) Moriwaki rewarded his exciting new find by sponsoring him to race select British contests and World TTF1 events. In the late 1970s Crosby was racing at so many tracks for the first time his catchphrase became: "Which way does the track go and what's the lap record?" Croz notes that phrase, full of bluster, garnered a rather scornful look from one stodgy British track marshal. Daytona 1980 was part of Crosby's world- hopping racing schedule. Of course, before he'd even made it to the track, Croz found some Irish fans who'd had come over for Bike Week and together they hit the bars. He and his rowdy new friends got his Mustang rental stuck on the beach at 3:00 am and they watched with nervous laugh- ter as waves broke over the car by the time a tow truck arrived. On the track at Daytona for the first time, the stress of watching his rental car drown was quickly outdone by his terror at racing full-speed around Daytona's high banks. THE CROZ! P106

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