Cycle News

CN III ARCHIVES BY LARRY LAWRENCE A fter the success Rob Muzzy had with both Kawasaki's and Honda's racing programs, you would think he could write his own ticket. The only problem was each time Muzzy helped a manufacturer establish a winning program in AMA Superbike, the company promptly left the series. It happened at Ka- wasaki after the 1983 season and again with Honda in '87. Thanks to prompting by his wife, Muzzy decided to re-open Muzzy's as a business. So he opened the company that this time would last for 28 years. After winning championships with Kawasaki and Honda, Muzzy had established credentials in the racing world second to none. That reputation Chandler's first AMA Superbike victory at the Mid-Ohio Sports Car Course in '89, completed the AMA Grand Slam for him by winning nationals on all forms of flat track racing tracks and a road race national. Only Dick Mann, Kenny Roberts and Bubba Shobert had managed the feat before Chan- dler. No one has done it since. Chandler came back and won the 1990 AMA Superbike Championship. Muzzy also hired a young up-and-coming rider named Scott Russell, who promptly won the AMA 750 Supersport title that same year. Also key was the fact that Muzzy proved his machines were capable of winning at the high- est levels when Chandler scored victory in FIM World Superbike races at Brainerd, Minnesota and Sugo, Japan. The wins just kept rolling in un- der Muzzy's leadership—Russell defending his AMA 750 Supers- port title in '91 and then scoring the AMA Superbike Champion- ship in 1992. Those results resonated all the way back to the upper echelons at Kawasaki. In the middle of the night Muzzy heard his fax machine printing. Kawasaki's Misao "Lyn- don" Yurikusa was asking Muzzy to head Kawasaki's world super- P108 helped his company rapidly become a leading aftermarket seller of performance parts, best known for Muzzy exhaust systems. By 1989, with his company up and running, Muzzy felt the itch to get back into racing and he approached Kawasa- ki. The company was launch- ing its ZX-7 sport bike, so the timing was perfect. "They said okay and gave me a small budget," Muzzy recalls. "And that's when I hired Doug Chandler and that was the open- ing stage of my next 10 years that would result in something like 18 championships." Muzzy Kawasaki suffered through teething problems developing the new ZX-7 into a superbike during the '89 AMA Superbike campaign. But, once again, Muzzy and Chandler pa- tiently worked through the issues, developing the motorcycle into a winner. Chandler finished with a flourish in '89, winning the last two races and becoming the only rider in the series that season to win more than one race. MUZZY'S MIDAS TOUCH: PART 2 Rob Muzzy was just as much a legend as many of his riders.

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