Racing and Learning

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Kevin Cameron has been writing about motorcycles for nearly 50 years, first for <em>Cycle magazine</em> and, since 1992, for <em>Cycle World</em>. (Robert Martin/)

At the 1970 Daytona 200 I had a rider injured on my 500 Kawasaki H1R triple. He was very talented but lacked big-bike experience. We rushed over to Halifax Hospital to see how he was doing, but of course there was no info and, no, we couldn’t see him.

At somewhat loose ends after, I decided to learn to fly. Yet I had also written to Cliff Carr, an experienced English rider I’d met at the speedway, asking if he’d like to come to the US to ride the H1R.

About the time that I was supposed to show up at a local airport and get serious about flying, here came a letter from Cliff. “Yes to the H1R. Arriving Boston such-and-such a day.”

That was the end of flying—back to the races!

Cliff and his wife Diane walked into our store in Arlington, Massachusetts, the week before Valentine’s Day, 1971, and we set to work preparing for Daytona.

Daytona was a bust for us that year—he’d been set for maybe fifth place when the drive chain started jumping on the sprockets. Best forgotten.

Next up: the CRRC event at Mosport, Ontario, on the weekend of May 30th. As a veteran of the European system of the time, Cliff hadn’t lost a moment sussing out all the races in the area. Prize money was close to zero, so established riders negotiated by mail with organizers for start money. An essential element was proper stationery, listing the rider’s top finishes.

With our van packed we drove the 500 miles overnight from late Friday to morning sign-in on Saturday.

Our principal competition at that track was Detroiter Duane McDaniels on a 350 Yamaha twin, the kind that would win the Daytona 200 in 1972 and ‘73 and embarrass the factory 750s. We seized a piston in the heat race but soon cleared it. Our lap times were discouraging; in our log, Cliff wrote, “Couldn’t seem to get in the groove, riding-wise. Best times around 1:46.”

While second or third in a group with McDaniels and Ginger Molloy (also on an H1R) Cliff pulled in, saying something strange had happened in the gearbox. Racers are very serious about potential gearbox problems, because if the gears lock up, pulling the clutch doesn’t free the rear wheel.

I pulled the hot engine and split the cases to see what had happened, but everything looked perfect inside; the gear oil wasn’t silvery with wear particles, all the gears had their teeth, and none of the engaging dogs had the hammered edges that come from refused shifts. I called Cliff over to have a look.

“Everything’s good here. I can’t find any problem,” I said.

“I’ve been thinking about this,” he replied. “I think I know what happened. I somehow shifted twice. Two things: One is, I’m used to bikes that are harder shifting, and then there are the bumps here.”

I reassembled and put the engine back in the frame and we continued with the weekend.

Cliff Carr in action; here in 1972 on a 750. (Cycle World Archives/)

That was a step in learning to trust one another, and in getting more from the bike. When we returned to Mosport for an event that July we had a better idea of what we were doing, and Cliff had quickly bulked up in the shoulders from wrestling that triple (we did 26 meetings that year). On gearing one tooth taller than in May, and seeing 200 more revs in fifth, Cliff won the heat, the final, and a 75-mile invitational, breaking Mike Hailwood’s 1:39.8 lap record from 1967.

To avoid feeling too good about this, I reminded myself that the track had surely been resurfaced since Hailwood’s efforts. But it was no fluke. Cliff clocked several minute-thirty-nines, with a best of 1:39.2.

We felt a certain optimism during our eight-hour drive home that night.

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