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Stories of the Daytona 200 and 50 years of Superbike Racing!
Stories of the Daytona 200 and 50 years of Superbike Racing!
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About this episode
Mark Hoyer and technical editor Kevin Cameron trade Daytona 200 memories and the 50-year arc of American superbike racing, from loose early rules and BMW’s 1976 campaign to the two-stroke dominance and eventual four-stroke era. They dig into how bikes built for street use were reshaped for racing, why tires and fuel stops define Daytona, and how rider confidence beats pure engineering. Modern highlights include Josh Herron’s win, plus Kayla Ackov’s dramatic podium run as a young woman in a tough paddock. The conversation blends history, technical anecdotes, and race-day realities.
Topics:
daytona 200 history
1976 bmw superbike campaign
rules shaping race bikes
two-stroke era dominance
tire failures and tire pressure rules
fuel stop rituals and fuel starvation
rider confidence vs engineering data
kayla ackov podium story
women in motorcycle racing and legal battles
aero and fairings impact
Find us on Patreon! https://www.patreon.com/cw/CycleWorldPodcastThe Daytona 200 has been the national motorcyclist's rite of spring, but it's more than just the 200--for much of the country it's the first sign that riding weather returns! Kevin and Mark talk about Daytona from early days at the beach, moving to the Speedway, and with lots of anecdotes thrown in. Mark was there for the race weekend this year, celebrating 50 years of AMA Superbike racing with BMW, which won the first superbike race at Daytona in 1976 and won the first championship that year, with its R 90 S, built by Butler & Smith. History was also made in the 200, as Kayla Yaakov became the first woman to finish on the podium, and she rode an absolutely excellent race to do it.
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Jensen Interceptor
"...e bikes work and evolve to what we got in 83 with interceptors and stuff where it was actually handling became"
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Saab 900
"and he just started messing with them and then it became time to do 900's and that for BMW saved the company"
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"... beautiful sunny climbs and slightly humid spring air of Daytona beach remember Phil Shilling the late ..."
Select text to request an explanation
Welcome to the PsychoWorld podcast. I'm Mark Hoyer. I'm with Kevin Cameron, our technical editor.
Right out of the gate, you can find us on Patreon. Thanks for all the new subscribers.
We've been up a week and we've got a bunch of folks in there doing $5 or doing supporter tier,
which is less than that, but $5 gets you everything that we do without commercials,
plus the additional content that we do for Patreon subscribers only.
So there's a link in the description. You can go check that out, see if it suits you.
And we'll be adding more content there. I'm going to convince Kevin to grab one of his sons with a smartphone
and make a video tour of his shop and show us the UO blade.
I'm doing that on camera, Kevin, to make that promise to our Patreon subscribers.
So thanks for that. This is, of course, YouTube and we're doing it for everybody.
But if you don't like those commercials, by all means, join us over on the other side. Thank you.
Today, we're going to talk about the Daytona 200. I just got back from the Daytona 200,
had quite an experience there with BMW.
Superbike racing in America is 50 years old.
The rules are written on the floor of an empty apartment by Steve McLaughlin and John Orich.
John Orich recently told this story to a large assemblage of BMW fans who were gathered for the three BMWs campaign
by Udo Giedel and Butler and Smith in the 1976 race.
And that was Gary Fisher, Steve McLaughlin, tuned by Udo Giedel and Reg Pridmore, of course.
And Steve McLaughlin barely took it at the line by six inches, they said,
after they developed the film of the photo finish, which took 45 minutes, and there was no podium.
But 50 years of superbike racing, it kind of all started there.
It reminded me very much of bagger racing because street bikes of the time were absolutely unfit for purpose.
They were not made to race. And everything that got changed had to get changed.
The rules were written suitably loose to allow for things to happen.
Repositioning of the shocks, for example, and the Butler and Smith BMWs, two of those bikes, not Reg's.
Reg preferred the twin shock. I think someone said he didn't want to be protested.
And he was sort of like, no, I'm going to keep those shocks. I like them.
But the other ones were converted to single shock.
And Udo's joke was, I repositioned one of them to the shelf in the shop because the rules were repositioning was allowed.
So there was a lot of interpretation. It was pretty good stuff.
Kevin's seen a few Daytona 200s and, of course, it evolved from beach racing and the dirt track.
There was a dirt track, a 200-miler that was somewhere local down there.
But it finally made it to the Speedway and turned into 200 miles.
There was a contingent at the beach who really wanted to stay at the beach, but they moved it into the Speedway to some protest.
But after a few years, it caught on and it became huge.
So you should transition here. I've set the stage probably too much, as usual.
Tell us about your Daytona days, Kevin.
Well, the early times were the period in which flathead or side valve engines were given 750cc displacement
because they were less able on a specific basis than overhead valve engines which were given 500cc.
So the Triumphs won Daytona in 66 and 67, I think.
And Harley-Davidson replied in a big way.
And it was quite an accident, really, because there was a group of people in Axel, CR Axel shop in SoCal,
and they were shooting the breeze and they were talking about flatheads.
And it turned out that there was one belonging to a rider whose name is not of record.
And they said, why don't we have a look at this?
So they took off a cylinder head and two of the guys are looking in there and they say,
one of them had worked with Hudson's, which were big straight-eight flatheads when the NASCAR first started.
300 cubic inch sixes.
And he said, well, it's nothing like what was developed by Hudson.
And the other fellow chimed in and he said, well, I've seen the Auburns and it's nothing like them either.
And so there's more conversation.
Finally, somebody said, really, what's going on here is that the roof, the head is too close to the cylinder deck
where the valve pocket feeds across to the cylinder and then down.
Well, why don't we make a quarter-inch head gasket for this and test it?
Well, Axel's bandsaw welder didn't work right then.
So one of them gets in the car and drives us off to somebody whose bandsaw welder is working.
He takes a couple of these blanks that they'd made with holes drilled
so they could feed the end of the saw blade through there and then weld it together,
put the blade on the big bandsaw wheels and then they'd be able to saw out the inside shape of the piston
and the two valves in the side valve pocket.
Well, they get the head on there and it made as much horsepower as the engine
with much higher compression ratio.
Imagine what a quarter of an inch spacing the head up towards space.
A quarter of an inch means like no compression.
Hardly puffing at all.
Yes, but because they had increased that slot where the flow went from the side pocket to the cylinder,
they gained as much as they lost from compression.
And at that point, they thought they sort of looked at each other like,
we got something here. This is something.
And so they put in a call to Dick O'Brien at Harley.
He had been the race manager since 57 and he got on a plane with the foreman of the race shop.
Harley not only had a race shop, but the race shop had a foreman.
Now that's real 1940 stuff right there.
So they get there and they make a lot of changes.
They find out they go to Daytona with 58 horsepower versus Triumph's 49 point something.
Well, it's a bigger motorcycle, but not 10 horsepower bigger.
And well, Calvin just left them for dead.
It was clear that the Triumph was stuffy material.
So far as Daytona was concerned, lots of people loved their Daytona 500 twins.
But there's nothing as old as last year's bike.
And I mean vintage bikes are new in our minds.
They're gleaming with dealer fresh surface finishes.
But in this case or the or the promise that's that's what that's what seduces us to buy them when they're crusty is like, oh, but it's how wonderful it could be.
And soon. So in a few years.
The new motorcycle, they took the thing to the Caltech wind tunnel.
They developed the the infamous whale.
That's what Buell's customers called it when he put that highly effective faring.
This is a faring that made two fifties faster than the little narrow fairings where the riders knees bulged out on the two sides.
Every just about every motorcycle that fairing was ever put on went faster.
So Calvin just blew them away.
And that was the end of an era because at the 68 pro comp board meeting, Triumph said, we want a 650 cc formula same for everyone.
You do.
Harley guys stood up and he said, well, you've got a 650, but we've got a 750.
So let's make it 750 while we're at it.
And they voted and it went through.
And what happened because of this was that because bigger motorcycles were just catching on in the US.
And I mean really bigger.
That what happened next was it was the fastest motorcycles in the world on the fastest racetrack in the world, written by an international field of the fastest riders in the world.
And that happened in 1972 when Suzuki and Kawasaki brought their three cylinder two strokes to town.
And in 1970 Honda with a CP 750 based racer won the event by the narrowest margin because the motors were eating camp chain tensioners and turning them into friction reducing powder in the oil.
Well, I had dinner with John Long and a bunch of these other retired road racers who were there.
And John was regaling us with stories about how they did rebuild that.
They were the ones who rebuilt that engine and the other guys who were running it didn't.
Yeah.
And suffered the consequences.
They suffered the consequences.
But they, you know what?
There's no asterisk like barely made it, right?
You won.
That's it.
History says you won.
Because because Dick Mann was a money rider.
He had grown up in that whole money situation where if you didn't finish in the money, you are going to have to borrow something from people you're going to be racing against next weekend.
And they probably would lend it to you.
But how does it feel?
So then he won again in 71 this time on a BSA three cylinder four stroke.
And in this case, they told him this is an 8250 RPM engine and in his own mind he thought it feels like a 7800 RPM engine.
And that's how he wrote it.
And one by one, the great names fell by the wayside with all the ills of the internal combustion engine.
And he wanted a second time for what could be better.
So then next year, the 750s are there, but they couldn't win because the tires all flew to bits.
The race was won by little Tiki 350 Yamaha's both years.
And then the 750 era, the TZ751 in 1974 and it went on winning until 1982, which was the last, the last time.
But that was from from 72 onward was the two stroke era Daytona.
And remember this, it was not the TZ750 that sent the four strokes home.
It was little 350 twins.
Not only were they easy on tires, they were also easy on riders.
So that was a first time I went to Daytona was 1969.
My rider was a junior and I was not eligible to be in the speedway on Sunday to watch the 200.
So that meant that I crept under the sleeping platform and pretended to be a toolbox.
A toolbox was pushed up against me so that it was assumed that there were other toolboxes and so forth in the space I was occupying.
And as soon as we got past the geyser guards, we were in and I was free to walk about.
Now, it is of note that Kayla was third after putting a move on another rider on the last lap in classic do Hamel fashion.
Well, that was really remarkable.
Kayleigh Ackov is 18. She's riding a Ray Hall Ducati.
And she hooked up with the lead group in the beginning of the race.
Six riders blanket over him, as they say.
But slowly, you know, some of those folks lost the draft. She was one of them.
There was a lot of drama at the race.
No, Josh Herron won again.
But it was Herron and Jacobson were pitted, you know, one, I think it was one slot apart.
Jacobson is is leading Herron comes in.
They both pit at the same time.
They're filming Jacobson leaving the pit and the Moto America film crew is on the hot side of the pit.
And as PJ's pulling out, the cameraman starts stepping back and Herron is exiting the pit.
And suddenly a cameraman is backing into his life leaving the pit.
He lifted the back wheel, hit the brakes, did not saw, did not crash, and I was able to rejoin.
But obviously frustrated and he lost something like at least four seconds, maybe more.
PJ crashed out of the lead passing in a lapper as you might be rushed,
because you feel like an angry Josh Herron might be coming.
But all the while it was Darren Binder and Kayleigh Ackov in the third and fourth.
Ackov was fourth and she closed the gap and caught up and then passed the lap before the finish
and drafted and I think got the line.
Everyone was cheering, but it wasn't over.
And you would think that Binder could have witnessed what happened on that lap
and done something about it the next lap, but didn't.
And it was, Kayla just did a freely expert professional draft pass to take third and get the podium
as a first woman on a Daytona 200 podium and in wonderful fashion.
And I think actually seeing her on the interview, it was great because she was, you know,
being a female in the paddock at all, I think historically may have been somewhat challenging
because she was up in Leathers and Race, like there's a lot of supportive people,
but there's plenty who are not.
And so to be an 18 year old in that situation and she's still, she's trying to not,
I think she was really trying to not be emotional because she just didn't want to be emotional, right?
She didn't want to be, you know, the 18 year old crying.
And then she teared up.
She's like, oh, I've been trying so hard to, you know, keep it together.
And I'm like, she had to cry.
I mean, I'd cry.
Like, if I could get the podium, watch me weep, buddy.
So it was cool.
It was really, it was really neat.
And she just did it out of pure grit talent and determination.
And, you know, she's had an incredible support, support crew like Ben Spees has been helping
with Ray All, of course, as the manager.
Well, she did it right.
She did it right.
She did the things she knew were effective at that racetrack.
Yeah.
Be second off the chicane.
Yeah.
And then do it to him.
Right.
Yeah.
Being thoughtful about it really.
Well, relevant to this is after Daytona in 69, I went to the AMA National in Annapolis
and I brought a woman with me and she was not allowed in the paddock.
She had to go and sit in the spectator seating and read a book.
Well, it wasn't too long after that, that a woman in the state of New York had applied
for a license.
AMA license and it was sent to her.
She showed up at the races and she was told, oh, you're a woman.
You can't do this.
Go out of here.
She went straight to the legal profession and said, do you fellows want to join
me in an easy one?
And the AMA was summoned.
Sit right here.
We will now read you the law which basically said, yes, you can create a private club
and so forth and so on.
But if you're going to exclude women from this sport, you will not do it in the
state of New York because it's not legal here to do that.
So just think about it.
So there was an important precursor and I'm sorry that I don't know her name.
But somebody did what Americans have done when they are wronged.
They took it to law.
And the law updated the interpretation rather than saying, well, I'm a man.
These are all other men.
We live in a society of men.
And this is the way it's always been.
So get back to the kitchen and mind the kids.
And I'll see you in church Sunday.
What is it?
Kinderkuchen und Küche.
So that was a good thing back then.
And I'm a person whose mother, when I was 10, was called upon by circumstances
to put a roof on the porch.
Three sides of a big old 1826 house.
She put the roof on there.
The flooring in the bridge had been there too long
and the boards were starting to go.
So she organized that there should be trees sawn in the woods,
that they should be sawn into planks.
And she and another person were down there with saw horses,
including all this stuff to put a new floor in the bridge.
So I am accustomed to capable women.
People getting done, yeah.
Yes.
My mom was like that too.
Get it done.
So hats off, so to speak, to Kayla.
No, it was awesome.
It was very cool to be there.
I was sitting with, watching a race with Thad Wolf,
who's a retired racer.
He was around quite a bit in the 80s.
Oh, he phoned yesterday.
Yeah, he was at Cycle.
And he did racing and he was around Cycle and all that stuff
and came up and raced TZ 750s and all that.
We were watching that with Curtis Adams,
who is my hometown is Whittier.
And I always admired Curtis because he was six foot four,
six foot six, really tall guy.
He saw he was tall and I'm six too, but I was like, oh wait,
I got a chance.
Curtis can road race and win.
So I was covering him when I was at Cycle and he was back
at Willow Springs and he was racing Chuck Graves on a 7-11.
We just watched, we were watching the 200 and we're like,
well PJ's raced to lose at this point and he did.
And then we watched Kayla hunt down Darren Bender.
He was racing on the MotoGP stage fairly recently.
So Daytona is a unique track and it was really something.
Well, Daytona is a place where the advice is don't run your new bike.
You don't know much about your new bike and you know last year's bike
really well.
So you might have a chance at Daytona because a lot of people
called it Daytona because a lot of people had to reduce their
compression ratio there because the engine holds a high note
second after second after second.
It just keeps on singing.
And so in that sense, it is like a destructive dynamometer test.
And once you've got your engine right, you know how to make
it run at Daytona.
That is a valuable piece of information.
And that's why they say don't run your new bike at Daytona.
But of course that doesn't apply today because we have computers
so that we can analyze everything and know the future in advance.
Good luck.
All right.
Good luck.
Ask AI.
60% chance of being right.
Maybe.
Yeah.
Never know.
So that is race there.
And I think everyone, Ella Dreyer, young road racer coming up,
she is 16 and she's the youngest racer to participate in the
200.
And Tad knowingly went over and said, you know, I think, you
know, the best advice I can give you is just finish the
race.
And everybody else said everybody already told her that.
But finish the race, you know, get experience it, get
across the line that she did.
So it's pretty neat.
Definitely.
And Heron, you know, Heron, that's four in a row for Heron,
which is Dan and Mark will own five totals.
So he's joining Russell on the Mr. Daytona list.
Scott Russell did it five times.
Do homo was always really good.
There's that epic win back in the day when he was fairly
injured and they had to kind of lever him onto the bike
off of his cane and put him in the saddle.
And then he went off and rode 200 miles and finished and
won his amazing drive up to the wall.
I don't know if that was the same year.
It's a little foggy, but that was amazing how hard he
stayed in the throttle as he was drifting up toward the
wall and you just thought, oh man, he's going to
splat and he didn't splat.
It was really impressive.
That's the thing about Daytona is over the years
you it is such an interesting and unique track.
And then we had international folks for so long.
And I think, you know, there's been the lull.
They didn't want super bikes to be doing, you know,
213 miles an hour or whatever.
So now we're we're doing next gen super sport,
which you're running, you know, mid 180s.
Baggers are running mid 180s, by the way.
185 at five, 186.
I don't know.
I had breakfast with Kyle Weiman.
He mentioned offhandedly that he thought they
might break 190 this year with the offseason gains,
but it looks like we stayed under under that.
That's a lot of air to crush on a bagger.
And that's a lot of air to crush.
It certainly is.
But that big refrigerator in the front,
that big obstruction that they have to push.
Yeah.
I understand the bags are not, you know,
you would think maybe the bags bags could be good
or the bags could be bad.
Only the tunnel knows.
But it turns out, you know, from what I understand from talking
to a few folks is that they aren't really hugely detrimental
and they are, they aren't a benefit.
And I don't think, you know, it'd be nice if you could sort
of fill the gap with the bags, you know,
make them a little bigger.
Try to try to enhance the continuity between the faring
over the rider and off the back of the bike,
but it's outside the rules.
Contrary to the spirit.
Another big change that occurred at Daytona in 69,
I drained the gearbox oil on the two new Yamaha's that we had,
TD2, 250 and a TR2 350.
And I'm walking around with the drain pan
and finally somebody in the AMA shirt
said, let me catch his eye.
And I said, what do we do with this?
And I showed him the oil.
And he said, well, I know what everybody else does.
See that ditch over there?
He said, you just kind of amble over there and pour it in.
So that's what I did.
And today, of course, the next thing that would happen
would be the black arrow of an environmental group
that would be sticking out between your shoulder blades.
Naughty behavior mustn't, mustn't.
So now they have little cabins, at least two little cabins,
and each cabin is staffed by an older experienced gentleman
of whom there are good many in Florida.
And there is a barrel for unwanted fuel,
a barrel for oil, a barrel for coolant,
a barrel for brake fluid.
So we're doing things right now.
Yeah, we got that out at the airport, too.
I've been going out to my local airport,
working on vintage aircraft and messing around.
And we make the run over to the big brick,
the cinderblock shed thrown by the county.
And away we go.
We've got a great big giant drain.
We can take our ashless dispersant oil
that we've just drained out of a Taylorcraft or Cub.
And put it in the right spot.
Hopefully we get it used for something else.
It was the classic old popular science.
It's an illustration from, I don't remember the year,
but it's say it's fifties-ish.
And it's, this is how you dispose of your oil,
and it showed you to dig a pit and fill the bottom with gravel.
Make it of this dimension and then you can pour your oil
in this pit that you dug in your yard.
From the earth, from the earth ye shall return.
Except when you want your groundwater to not taste like 2050.
Yes.
So I think we've done pretty well to pick that up
and put it somewhere, put it in the barrel, send it somewhere
that maybe we can do it again.
I know there's some very thrifty people who use their
use oil for the oil furnace that they've built for their garage.
And they, you know, I could see that happening in the colder climate.
Yep, it's been known to happen.
There are people that will come by and take your barrel
of unwanted liquid away.
You wonder where they're going with it.
There was one company that had an unfortunate reputation
for botched fuel stops.
And I won't mention their name out of natural restraint.
And I worked it out.
I saw them practicing one day.
And basically what the management was saying to the pay-ons
who were performing this minuet,
realized that the slightest error by any one of you
could make the difference between winning and losing.
I want you to be really tense.
I want you to be worrying about a misstep
and not paying attention to what you're doing.
So in comes Paul Smart.
I think this was Talladega.
And with decisive motions, the team manager
stepped forward with the hose.
This was overhead hose refuelers in this time.
And you had to twist lock them on.
There were three lugs on the connector.
And then you pulled a lever and a poppet valve
was pushed into your tank and the fluid rushed in.
He pulled the thing and you can imagine him counting
inwardly one and two and three.
When he got to about 15, he's looking all around.
And he's trying to, he's shut the valve by this time.
He's trying to get the thing off and it won't come off.
He put real effort into it so that the rear end of the tank
began to rise up off of its rubber cushions.
And Smarty is revving the engine as if to say,
could you snap it up where you're losing time here?
And I'm counting seconds.
I'm a bystander.
Finally, with a tremendous effort, he gets the thing,
breaks the thing off of the tank.
There's no leakage.
Paul smokes the clutch all the way down the pit lane
and loses the clutch.
And I saw one at, oh, what's that?
Paul Ricard in the south of France.
And similar business.
It could all be bad luck, of course.
And one time it definitely was.
Rider comes in, they hook up.
Nothing comes out.
Nothing is happening.
So they disconnect it, send the rider out frantically.
They're carrying draining fuel from the overhead can
and putting it into their B unit.
They had a B, a second tower.
What had happened was that the hose structure is,
it has a wire, a ground wire in it,
because you don't want to spark when you're handling fuel.
It has layers of fabric.
And it has an inner liner.
The inner liner, somehow a section of it detached
and went across the neck of the thing
and blocked the flow completely.
But because by this time, of course, they were expecting trouble.
They were expecting to drink deep at the font of bad luck.
And they were able to refuel them with the second tower.
But that's what those high-speed tracks do to you,
is they, you have to carry out these rituals.
You have to do all of these things right.
And there are people who can't get in step with that,
because what I told people when we were doing fuel stops
was the rider hates to stop.
The rider wants to stay in his rhythm.
That's the safest place for him or her.
And so making a fuel stop is a bore.
You just do it step-by-step and get it over with and get them out.
And the teams that were always successful
would run a couple of false fuel stops.
They would actually transfer fuel.
It was a live stop, but it was just practice.
And then the attitude was,
there, we can do that.
You see, it worked.
Okay, we're ready for Sunday.
And I'll, good stuff.
Daytona is not a place for experiments.
Daytona is not a place where you go to try stuff.
And when Rich Schlachter, rider, East Coast guy,
and I were given the use of a TZ250D in 1977.
In first practice, we got a baseline.
And then I pulled the ignition timing back to 1.8.
And that was better.
It tacked up.
Same thing.
Pulled it back to 1.6.
We picked up 300 revolutions on those two changes
with no change elsewhere.
Same gearing.
It's just going faster.
What Kevin means is on the top end.
Yeah.
So we're, they're in 6.
When you're on the banking and the tack is over here
and the tack, of course, is banging,
bouncing all around in its rubber mountings.
It's, it's quite a, it's, it's not exactly efficient
information transfer.
But we're not looking for, you know, we're not saying like,
oh, my top speed was 131 miles an hour when you're,
you have the bike, you have the tack.
And if you're in top gear and your gearing is the same
and you pick up 300 RPM, that's a huge positive
because you're going faster.
It's a biggie.
So that evening I widened the exhaust ports
and raised them a millimeter and polished the edges.
Another 300 revolutions.
Same gearing.
And we just kept doing stupid stuff.
We put on 36 millimeter carburetors and got them dials.
I can't believe how lucky we were.
I can't take credit for any of this because we are
two crazy guys that went to Daytona to try experiments.
Schlecher says, I'm going to go over to the AMA office
and see where we're at.
So he goes off after a while he comes back and he said,
we're third on lap time.
He said, we're third.
And that was the moment when he made the transition
from being a talented clubman to being something else,
you know, to be announced.
It was a great day.
But that's naughty.
You can't count on being that lucky.
It's a, those 250Ds they had, of course, steel tube frames
and horrible cracking tubular steel braced swing arms.
Right.
But they had certain problems.
And we just had that wonderful experience.
In 1982, Honda decided they were going to make this big push
at Daytona.
They brought 1,000 CCV4s called FWS.
And everyone is being sort of, oh, Honda's bringing a super weapon.
And Freddie Spencer on one, Mike Baldwin on the other.
And I don't know what Roberto Pietri was writing,
maybe another one.
But at any rate, they went tremendously fast
through practice.
It was just stunning.
And they were equipped to change tires during the race.
They had Suzuki eight hour stuff.
And that transformed Daytona because before that,
the tire companies were saying to themselves,
we have to make a tire that'll go 200 miles at the speed
with the extra load of the banking.
Just make something, you know, out of stone.
Well, in the race, Honda had tire trouble.
And so they were pulling in and getting a tire
and going back out, going fast, and earning their way forward
again, and then having more tire trouble.
And meanwhile, here's Graham Crosby plugging away
on a bike built at the last moment in the parts department
out of no longer wanted 0W31 parts.
And that thing was designed to win Daytona.
And it did.
It just kept chugging.
It didn't have any exceptional tire trouble.
But Freddie was second.
And Mike was in there too.
So they were, of course, horribly disappointed
because they wanted to make this big splash.
But it was a big splash, even if they didn't win
because it changed the nature of the undertaking.
And that was cool.
And of course, we knew that Daytona was going to turn
into a four stroke race eventually,
that the manufacturers were saying,
oh, AMA, you tell us what rules you want.
Then we comply.
But that wasn't really true.
It was sort of like, I'm in your country, so you rule.
And 1985, it became a super bike.
But the thing was that when super bike first came to Daytona
or when it first became a national class,
that the AMA had the good sense to make the races very short.
I'm sure that the sense was talked into them
by certain persons.
But a 50 mile race.
And the rules said that front forks
and swing arms may be altered or replaced.
And that was a good one too,
because it meant that put on real stuff.
Because as Mark noted earlier in this diatribe, duotribe,
that those bikes weren't built to be raceable.
They were built by engineers who had been told
USA has a 60 mile per hour speed limit.
Put in plenty of power, 1960s chassis,
tires and suspension, thumbs up okay.
And they weren't.
And the AMA had the sense to realize,
or it was explained to them.
And so those bikes, those first era super bikes,
the sit-up jobs had to be completely re-engineered.
All new suspension, all new wheels,
tremendous reinforcing of the chassis.
In 1978, Goodyear had had enough being told
that their tires were causing a certain other manufacturer's
motorcycle to weave.
And so Goodyear picked up the phone
and dialed Goodyear Aerospace.
And they sent over people who said,
yeah, we'll put strain gauges on this thing
and you go out and run a practice
and then we'll make a wire frame model
and we'll animate it with the motions
revealed by the strain gauges.
And they showed, on the screen,
they showed the chassis going,
it was wonderful.
Wow.
And it shut the complaints up.
The manufacturer went away
and attended to their own knitting.
Yeah.
Well those 76 BMWs, you know, I was there
in Daytona with the three that BMW
brought down the R90S's built by Udo Giedel
and it was so wonderful to talk to Udo
because you just got a lot of the back story
like what happened to Fisher
and the rear stand on the axle
goes into the axle, holds the bike,
the pipes are just above it
and Udo's like, yeah, he had gearbox problems.
Somebody bounced on the back of the bike
and bent the pipes and it jammed his linkage
and he was able to get through most of the race
but then it hung up between fourth and fifth
and it overrepped and it hurt it and ended it.
So it's just, you know, and talking to Udo
with all the changes about lifting the engine
and then moving it forward
and if you looked at the cylinder,
I think it's the left cylinder,
it's up against the frame rail,
the twin loop coming down,
it is like pushed up and forward
as far as it'll go until the cylinder
basically hits the frame.
It was remarkable and it was cool
because those early Kawasaki's
they were incredibly powerful.
They had plenty more power than the BMW R90S
but they couldn't make them turn or get off corners.
They just, they just were not working.
It took a few seasons and of course
everything changed and suddenly, you know,
ripping 10, 25cc four-cylinder
we're doing all the biz.
Well, this is the thing about handling
and that is that it,
it's like
the explanation is,
was made to BMW people
during the time of their S1000RR
when it was eating tires
and Marko Melandri said
in Formula One where BMW had tremendous
experience in Formula One
you work to censor data
but in this kind of racing
you have to work to what the rider says
because if the rider doesn't have confidence
a choir of engineers singing the praises
of their algorithm will have no effect.
And so
this kind of experimental handling
amelioration is necessary.
There is no computer that will just
give you a good one.
When Honda had to make
a proper superbike out of the
CB900F
the first thing they threw away
was that lead flywheel of a front wheel
and they put a little 16 in there
sweet little 16
and a tubeless slick tire
and lots of other changes
because riders could haul
on the bars and the whirling flywheel
Daytona really spins those flywheels
it doesn't want to steer
no I don't have to and I'm not going to
so they had to put little stuff on
they had to make huge changes
to convert a beach cruiser
into a road race bike
and this is why the baggers experience
is so wonderful because it shows
that the things that work in racing
will work on a bagger
and I think that's so wonderful
because I watched carefully
at Laguna
and those things change direction
at respectable speed they aren't
heavy and slow
like the McGrath highway in Boston at rush hour
they are nimble
and further they slide rather than high side
it's really quite a control mechanism
you instead of fearing
having the terrible fear
of the two stroke era
as it slips and grips
and one of those times you are going over the top
it just goes into this lovely slide
maybe it has something to do with
the 620 pound minimum weight
with standard road race weight
wheels and brakes and tires underneath it
good unsprung weight ratio
keep those pieces of rubber kissing
the pavement
so I think the baggers
experience has a lesson to teach us
and those McCandless brothers
in Northern Ireland who developed the feather bed frame
which was adopted by Norton
a frame that was the model
for so many frames
in the years that followed
that's how they developed that chassis
was by constant testing
and changing so that they got a feel
for what was possible with this chassis
good stuff
Kaleyakoff was talking about the banking
a police
were currently suffering about 2G
it's hard to breathe
you really got to get off the banking
and catch up on your breaths
pretty good jamming situation
the baggers in the early super bikes
76 here especially
that flexibility of rules allowing
just enough creativity
to make the bikes work and evolve to what we got
in 83 with interceptors
and stuff where it was actually handling became
a marketable trait
quarter mile and top speed
quarter mile and top speed
because one way of looking at the magazine
business is that it provides
young hot persons
with bar talk
about their favorite subject
or social media talk at this point too
that's a later development
one of the things that Daytona
you have to look out for is fuel starvation
in 1972 we brought our barn
job home made H2R
752 stroke
down there and my rider went out
and he said
the cut's dead at 8500
he said I thought it had seized but then
the tack needle went down when it got to 6
Bob it cut back in
so that told me that I had to
get rid of the fuel
no quick disconnects no filters
bigger float valve in the carburetors
and when I had fuel
flowing from taking the bull plugs
out of all three carburetors into a trough
that debouched into a jar
when I had 50%
more than what I had calculated
for fuel consumption on full throttle
it sang its song all the way up to the
let's stop here number
which was about 9200 in those days
so always something to think of
on other racetracks
your motorcycle the float bowls
might have enough fuel in them for you to do
everything without running it dry
but don't forget to a place where it has to sing
that dulcet song
for all those seconds it will pump the
bulls dry and cut
it's one of my favorite things that you've repeatedly
talked to me about over the years it's pounds
per horsepower hour
0.5 pounds per horsepower per hour
is a rule of thumb
for two strokes and 0.65
for two strokes
and
we ran our
I don't remember what year it was it was an 80s
250 Yamaha on
the dyno of the former
snowmobile expert out in
Buffalo and
the thing was working really well
its fuel consumption
was like 0.595
pound per horsepower
per hour and of course
where the rest of the fuel go out the tailpipe
I always wanted to put a spark plug in the tailpipe
it could discourage drafting
it could be a safety issue
it's common to blow a lot of fuel out the tailpipe
on a two stroke there's not
yes because when the door slams late
the mixture is innocent
it's brushing up these transfer ducts
some of it makes the turn
and it enters the cylinder where do I go
some of them go to the exhaust port because it's over there sucking away
the pipe signal from the
exhaust pipe is saying this way
this way little darling
and of course you'd like to talk
sweetly to that fuel and have it all go to the back of the cylinder
and perform the loop
but they were wasteful so
I have a question for you that's barely related
we used spark plugs that Daytona
just to confirm ok it's connected great
did you spend time
indexing spark plugs in your career
I never got to that I always had something to do
because you can buy these washers right
so indexing the spark plug is aiming
the open part of the positive and negative
toward the oncoming mixture yeah
so the spark is just unshouted
it's just pure spark here's the mixture
let me have it let's go let's light this thing up
and Paul Dean the great Paul Dean
has been involved with sprint car racing for a very long time
and he said that indexing the plugs on their
5 or 800 horsepower engine
pick them up something like maybe 5 to 10%
aiming them all at the intake
so that's a lot I mean that is a huge amount
and you just buy these washers of different thicknesses
you mark the plug where the
opening of the electrode is and you thread it in
and torque it down and just get it into that ballpark
I've considered it you know it's easy to do on a single cylinder
I could probably start with that and see how that goes
dare I say bella set I don't want to
there are plenty of other singles in the world where you could index your plug
you know I kind of want to do that on the XS650 too
well I saw that there was a
day when I saw a difference in between
ways of thinking about spark plugs
Gary Nixon was asked to ride his
1976
C&J framed
Kawasaki KR750
in a demo at Loudon
New Hampshire and I had
a box of plugs that we used then
so that's what I put in it
after practice he said
thing don't pick up real good off the corner
got some of them spark plugs stick out
yes in fact I do
because that was the last spark plugs
that we were using in TZ750s
as the 80s got underway
you could even see the insulator
sticking out and then the fine
platinum iridium wire
and the side electrode
and put a set of those in there and he
told me that was way better
yeah the P and the NGK plugs
it's the B you know you might get your B8ES
or your B7ES and your Norton or whatever
which can also get the P model where the protrudes
that stuff out and yeah
and when we started out
with TD-1s in the mid 1960s
they had we
they called out B10EN which was
a spark plug that had the cap down inside the shell
and finally
I asked
oh Bobby Strollman
Bobby Strollman who was the champion man
I showed him this
his little monocle yes
and I showed him a set of those I said this is what we used to run
he said today that's a top fuel plug
they got the plug gap down inside where it's
partly protected from the firestorm
so that projected
the tip spark plug by the way had a heat range
similar to what you'd put in a Triumph 650
if you were going on a long trip on the interstates
didn't want to burn things down
and it worked a treat
in TC 750s it was certainly better
oh yeah
well you know if we're in the 70s era
I have to bring up a story you told me about an unnamed
road racer who was
growing recreational crops such as perhaps Marijuana
on freeway interchanges yes
and so I had the audience of all these road racers
who were racing in the 60s and through the 70s and into the 80s
and I said oh yeah you know that Kevin Cameron
told me about this guy because they were all talking about how they
funded their racing and John Long is talking about
we need a race in Italy and he's driving to
the next thing and he's got to earn his money
and he's driving a van and he pulls in and he's like I don't know the difference between
Benzina and whatever else was on the side
but he's like there was fuel that was cheaper
I'm like well I'm going to get that cheap stuff and he put it in his van
and he didn't have a lot of money so he just
he just put a little bit in and he got like a mile down the road
and the van stopped because it was diesel
and he's like oh no you know it's diesel
and so he barely used it and he's like
drains it out and he gets some like
last bit of gasoline that he had for his race bike
and he gets in the van and they go back he sells the fuel that he drained out
back to the station and then he buys the right fuel
so they're trying to get money together so there are a lot of these stories
and he won this big race in Italy and he said you know he had a suitcase full of cash
millions of lira and he's like his wife Theo's like
he's like yeah you can buy whatever you want at the Gucci store
or whatever you know it's very cool to hear these stories
living in the van racing and I asked all of them
I'm like yeah do you know anybody you know who did that
who was growing weed in the freeway interchanges in Georgia and stuff
and they're like well that could have been this guy
it could have been that guy it could have been that guy
and there's that other guy who was a coke dealer
so it was pretty interesting insight into that
you're pretty cool
one time I was
at the fence
and I looked over and bought axlons there
and Nick Rikiki goes by
Nick Rikiki was a New York City
kid from Queens I think
and he
advanced really rapidly in road racing
he was spending everything that he could make
he got up at five o'clock in the morning and delivered orange juice in his van
and he was doing everything he could to scratch up the money
you know 600 bucks for cylinders
600 bucks for cranks
because the two strokes ate those things up
they lasted about 900 miles apiece
so he goes by
I think he was being timed at that point
and he went probably 183
which was good going in those times
and I could hear Bud Axlons saying something
next to me he said what he was saying was
now who is that
going about a million miles an hour
looks to me like one of those
black and scrungy east coast bikes
I think then Miles Baldwin
would get called that too
probably because he broke all the
fairing off his bike and he didn't have a lot of money
and so he raced one whole season with no lower on
didn't make any difference
pretty full behind the fairings on a TZ
John Britton
told me about testing his bike
the bike that he built including the engine
with a carbon fiber frame
on this 20 miles straight away
famous place in New Zealand where
the white helmet people
the people who tried to out do
one another in craziness
and he said let's take the lower fairing off
bike went faster
he said it only made sense because
here's the narrow engine and the foot pegs are out here
the rider's feet are here and there's this big space
just let the air through
well
might not be theoretically right but if
it goes faster isn't that what you want
because I have to remember
Daytona or any of Bonneville anywhere else
two strokes went fast
motorcycles go fast by just cramming themselves
through the air with brute force
and that's why I love the Winglets because
I know a lot of people are upset about Winglets
they wish that they would stop looking
that way
but imagine that you're nearing top speed
and the front wheels coming up
now
you don't have control are you going to go 200 miles an hour
on one wheel
you might feel caution was necessary
but the Winglets gently push the front
and back down restoring rider control
so that acceleration can continue
now
an anti-wheelie system cannot do this
because it works by closing
by squeaking the throttle towards closed
just enough to let the front wheel come down
and turn
so you're just reducing power
until the front wheel comes down
what you want is a helping hand from above
that is arrow down force
it's free well mostly free
there is lift over drag after all
and you attach all this stuff to your motorcycle
the old timers are shielding their gaze
or averting it all together
and it works
keep on accelerating
but at the same time there's a small but vocal group
in MotoGP who would like to see
what 600 cc's would be like
so
live long and learn
well if you're managing two world championship series
how do you want it to turn out
I guess who's going fast
who goes faster
production bikes are prototypes
one of the tales told to me
by Cook Nelson who was editor of
Cycle at one time
he was part of the west coast contingent
at AFM who was racing
super bike production
they were there
he was just a clever electrical engineer
who loved motorcycles
and was willing to test things
and think about them
he did not come out of Germany
tuning BMW's his entire life
father and smith said hey we got these 750's
and he just started messing with them
and then it became time to do 900's
and that for BMW saved the company
if you need spare parts
go to the warranty department
but Cook was there
that's the point
California hot rods
these production based super bikes
were and Cook and Phil are out there
trying to squeeze this new to Kati 750
into something else
proven by Paul Smart at the 1972 ML200
that it can go and that it will revs 9000
and it may not scatter
tell your Cook story
he knew that
Mike Baldwin from the uncool east coast
was making waves
and so he asked Kenny
what about this Baldwin kid
what about him
well I mean is he for real
and Kenny said I can tell you this
of the three things it takes to win races
he's got one of them
and what's that he's fast
and
this is a very important thing
Kenny is
not just playing with you when he says these things
because he knows that you have to have
a way of getting along with the people
who are paying
he knows that you have to bring your judgment
with you do not cast it to the wind
and
it's a complicated thing
that half of what's involved in racing
is getting on the starting line
with the running car
and the crazy stuff
the racing and remembering everything
about the way the tires and the pavement
and all this stuff are changing
that's essential too
so Kenny was telling it straight
well he's got one of them he's fast
just reminding everyone that
as Kevin Cameron has often said 100% doesn't make the grid
and
fiercely prioritizing what does get you to the grid
they may not be perfect but making those choices on the way
is probably part of Nicky Lott's conversation as well
one of the interesting stories from
the fellas I was eating with down in Daytona
John Long and McLaughlin and all those guys
Harry Klinsman was there
they were testing tires
for this 200 mile race
and he said they were trying to do it
without a stop I think they were looking into
whether they could get it done without a stop
but the speedway at the time
was kind of weathered so they had a lot of points on it
and he said they were throwing
tired chunks out and it was just tearing them up
and eventually it got paved
there was a lot of fun
it's really fun to hear about the paddock
hear about the life
you've talked about it so many times about being there where
you know on the fast end
and the eventual factory
and Calcarellis who were
no strangers to the Paxaw
just whatever it was cut the pipes
cut the steering head, re-angle the steering head
overnight
do and do
1976 we had a KR250
that was going pretty well
and the reason was that I'd made a little wear
around the two 4 inch gears
that joined the two crankshafts
it has two cylinders one ahead of the other
and I'd made a 1mm hole
to let oil in
so the gears were throwing it out
and the 1mm hole was letting it in
so instead of drowning in solid oil
what gears do? transmit power
run not even
so Ron Pierce qualified on pole
and Cal must have said to himself
oh shit I gotta go do it
which meant what I described
for the 250 widening raising the exhaust
port taking 20mm out of the headpipe
raise pushing compression up
there that ought to do
and my bike was out with a water pump drive shaft
failure how can a water pump drive shaft fail
anyway that's what happened
and Kenny prevailed
so
in those days
I wanted to go to Daytona and live there
and just try stuff
but I remember hearing
Gene Romero say
why do we have to be here all week
I want to just get in, race and go home
and I thought I'm not sympathetic
to this viewpoint
but
people come to Daytona for different reasons
well you know for it got popular
because it was there's so much of the country
and the death grip of arctic
fighting frost
and it's always the place where people got
to be set free it wasn't the cool west coast
all those east coast people you among them
getting in the van slogging through the slush
to the beautiful sunny climbs
and slightly humid spring air of Daytona beach
remember Phil Shilling the late Phil Shilling
arriving on a flight
from California wearing his puffy jacket
and he would wear it all week
because he was never warm
and Daytona we you know
we're basking in this wonderful sunlight
and he's in his in his puffy jacket
I always thought that was another take
on Daytona
you mentioned Ron Pierce he was down there as well
Ron was there he's got a big winery
that he makes wine at
the trailblazer's dinner is this week
and Ron always brings the wine
he's driving down with 25 cases apparently
for the trailblazers
they had signature autograph cards
at the tent where everyone was sitting around
talking to people and I picked up one because
if you look at this photo here
he's with Pops Yoshimura and that's Ron Pierce
and he's got his Team Cycle World shirt on so we had a little chat
about the days and Joe Parker's love of racing
and all that it was pretty remarkable
another thing about Daytona course is you can expect
the possibility of tire trouble
the rider comes in says
things vibrating in a funny way
the rear tire and it has pospimples that have burst
black rubber pospimples
that is blistering
components of the tire tread compound
are vaporizing at temperature
and erupting
and the other one of course is chunking
failure of the bond between the tread rubber
and the fiber carcass of the tire
Barry Sheen had his
bad accident in 75
with chunking the motorcycle
and the tire and everything about that whole episode
just disappeared in a twinkling of an eye
no nothing happened
what? and so
when Michelin tires were
being put on some bikes at Daytona
you could count on the Michelin people being there to make sure you had
some tremendous pressure like
42 pounds in your tires
because the one thing just as the AMA
wanted to avoid being criticized
in cycle news
Michelin didn't want bad Daytona luck
and so the riders responded
to these Michelin guys
stationed at the entry to Pit Lane
with air bottles and gauges
airing up every Michelin shod bike as it goes through
the riders had their men
down at the end to let that pressure back out
so they would have some grip
and Michelin carries on that tradition
to this day with the tire pressure rule in MotoGP
that you could be fined by people who work in offices
because they're going through sheets and sheets
of tire data
if your tire is below a certain pressure
for a certain percentage of the race
you are sanctioned
but the riders are tempted
to begin with a lower pressure
just because when you're drafting
other bikes your front tire pressure
will go up, up, up and your footprint
nice and healthy
will dwindle away and you'll find that the front
is locking when you're braking
so you're caught between
contrasting
goals
I picked up a bike from our office one time
and R1 had some DOT race tires
I think they were Michelin's
and I didn't know the correct pressure
and it's hard to find that info
unless you get that info from the tire person
it's not normally
it's not like on the swing arm
42 at the rear, let's go below that
and I was just like
we'll go with 32
it took three corners to figure out
that was absolutely wrong because it lit up
it spun like crazy
and so I'm like okay let's tiptoe back to the pits
I talked to a couple people
and did some more research
and I found it was meant to be 22
so I was 8 to 10 pounds over
depending on what my final decision was
it was superb
got some footprint now
well that's the Daytona 200
a little bit of this and a little bit of that
it walked down memory lane for us
recounting this year's very exciting race
and a lot of history going on
it was great to be there and see it again
be down in the spring in Daytona
we did a race lap
around the banking we did a lap
I lined up with Sad Wolf and Jason Yerebe
who's racing the Orange Cat factory backed BMW
and Moto America so he was there
on a press deal he wasn't racing
and it was fun
it was cool to check out one of those
I raced to BMW in Arma so it was a fun connection
to be honoured with Steve's bike and Steve was there
I believe he's as much Steve McLaughlin
as he ever has been
he was a little wound up because they were getting headlines
in Germany about 80 year old Steve McLaughlin
rides his old Super BMW Superbike again
because he did a parade lap himself
he's friends with Jim France and Jim France asked him to do it
Moto America said please don't cross the stripe
and if you don't have very much time go out pit lane
do the lap and don't cross the stripe come into the pit
and Steve said
you know this was Jim France's idea can you take that back
to the people telling us not to do this Jim would like me to cross the stripe
and so they took it back and said hey
this when they came back hey that worked
so he got to do his lap
well I just thought of something you know
Steve McLaughlin reminded me of a photo
one of those dim looking
black and white photos from World War II
that show the
King of England bestowing
some metal upon 19 year old
John Cunningham
an experienced night fighter pilot
who went up every night
on an engine airplane with his radar operator
kneeling on the deck plate behind him
with two scopes one for X and one for Y
and he's calling out
left a bit yeah that looks good
okay you should just about be seeing
his exhaust flames now
and there's nothing wrong with being
young and there's nothing about being young
it means that you're necessarily inexperienced
or lacking in judgment it just depends
on the path you've drawn to that age
John Cunningham later became chief
test pilots for a chess pilot I think
for to have one of the biggies
that they used to have in England making aircraft
well self-confidence
people helping you people not telling
you can't do it no or if they do
you you must be self-possessed enough to
overcome that and great confidence to someone
like Kayla who obviously would have faced
a lot of challenges to get where she is
so mad respect to
a really great and interesting
career path to follow
we have a story by Maria Gudadi on PsychoWorld.com
today at this recording
and Kayla gave a really nice
interview and she's a great read so go check it out
thanks for listening folks we'll catch you next time
definitely go check us out on Patreon we'll see you down in the comments
we love the comments somebody said do a swing arm
you guys have ever done a swing arm podcast
and I'm not kidding Kevin and I recorded it that day
or the next day so we're listening
alright thanks catch you next time
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