Lil' John Hateley
LIL' JOHN HATELEY
FUN LOVING OR SERIOUS, NATIONAL NUMBER 98 KNOWS HE CAN MAKE IT
D. RANDY RIGGS
DURING THE 45-min. "crunch" break at the Ontario National last year, John Hateley was in the pits sporting a huge grin. Anyone not keeping tabs on the first segment of the 250-miler would have surely thought by the look on John’s face that he was doing well. If anything, the opposite was true. Number 98 was a ways back in the standings, but you’d never get a clue by looking at Hateley.
He was tickled by a spill he had just taken in one of the fast right handers. I asked him what happened. John replied, grinning, “Slid it out in that big right hander. Didn’t lose a position, never stopped the motor.” With some sound effects and some body movement he dramatized the incident. Even though he had ground a hole in the cases, he still thought it was pretty neat how things happened. Not too many people can smile after spilling a 350-lb. road racer at about 80 mph. But John Hateley is that kind of guy. It takes a lot to LU’ John.
A similar situation occurred at the Indianapolis Road Race National earlier last season—and on the same machine. That time the bike left its wheels in one of the turns and again slid briefly on the fairing. This time, though, John got it back on its wheels without falling! He said it scared the rider following worse than it did him. Of course, every pro rider has his share of close calls, and in four years of professional racing Hateley has received his quota.
Looking at John it’s almost hard to imagine that he’s been hanging his neck out on the AMA professional circuit for four long years. Now 22, he has a long way to go before burning himself out, as the saying goes. But then again, he’s been racing quite a bit longer than four years. Like many racers, Hateley has been riding motorcycles for the greater part of his life.
Several years ago his dad, Jack, put him on a 250 Velocette Single with a rigid frame. It was just a play bikesomething to learn on. The trouble was that John was a bit too young to fire up the thumper. His dad would get it running, put him on, and he’d ride away! About that time (1964) Jack bought Triumph of Burbank in Burbank, Calif.
Jack Hateley was no newcomer to motorcycling, either. Jack had been racing desert events and scrambling for about 20 years. He even tried speedway back then, when the sliding JAPs and Crockers were on their way out of the scene. Though they didn’t know it at the time, the purchase of Triumph of Burbank was the biggest factor in getting John into pro racing.
Even today Hateley can’t really put his finger on the reason he started racing. He says, “I guess for me it was there, and I took advantage of it.” He seems happy that he did.
Jack Hateley got lots of wrenching experience when he sponsored Eddie Mulder for a few years. He really didn’t need the experience, but he sure got a taste of the hectic difficulty involved in maintaining a racing stable of motorcycles. Today, Jack does the majority of the work on each of John’s machines, and it’s no picnic. John looked sympathetic when he thought about this for a moment. “All those years he tuned for Eddie has kind of burned him out. He could live without it right now.” Keeping up a road racer, half miler, TT bike,
short tracker and what have you is a full-time job all right. No one knows better than Jack Hateley. But as long as John needs him, he’ll be there.
Hateley’s first actual professional ride came on, of all things, a speedway machine. This was back in 1968 when Dude Criswell started the sport up again at Whiteman Stadium in California. According to John, Dude had been coming in their shop for about six months telling everyone that he was going to get a track for speedway racing started. No one knew if they should believe him or not.
Finally one day he let them all know that the track was ready and there would be an open practice for any rider interested. Homer Knapp, the man that does all of Jack’s machine work at the shop, happened to have an old Crocker to take out there. John’s dad told him to go out to the track with Homer, which he did, and Homer asked him to ride it.
I asked John what his first ride on a speedway bike was like. “I just threw a leg over it, turned it wide open, and went around in a big circle. It was really
neat.” The following week they had their first race and John was there, this time on a JAP.
“That was my first professional race. It pumped me up so high ’cause I raced against Sammy Tanner in my heat and I smoked him! I said, ‘Wow, I just beat a National guy.’ From then on, once I knew I could do it, that was it. It wasn’t easy, but I knew it could be done.” Hateley rode that whole speedway season and wound up 2nd in the overall points, and he was only 17. Jack O’Brien was the only rider to finish ahead of him.
After such a tremendous start in speedway racing I couldn’t help but wonder why he isn’t into that now. John smiled when I asked the question. He knew it was coming. “I was more or less brought up in AMA-type racing, being around Mulder and all. After that first season of speedway I got interested in motocross and at the same time took out my Novice AMA license. I tried a couple of speedway events at the beginning of the 1969 season, but I wasn’t enthused. What really pulled me away from it was starting my Novice year. I’ve never had any desire to go back to it again, because speedway is different than it was then.
“Today I think speedway is mostly all politics and an ego thing with everybody. It’s just different. Speedway is neat for those guys because most of their races are within 200 miles of each other, but I just didn’t want to do that. I wanted to travel on the circuit and be the kind of racer that everybody’s known from way back, not one that’s trying something different. Class ‘C’ racing is kinda like a four-stroke, I guess.”
In the off season Hateley does one thing more than anything else-and that’s motorcycle riding. Living in Van Nuys, Calif., he is fortunate to have several motorcycle parks in the area, so riding every day is possible. He has a CZ motocross racer that he races occasionally, and is building a play bike with a Cheney frame and a 500 Triumph en-
gine. One of his favorite toys is a Triumph Cub short tracker converted into a motocrosser. You could turn his garage into a motorcycle dealership and no one would know the difference. That’s how many bikes he has parked in there.
As a Novice, Ascot Park was his home track, and he did well there. Right from the start Hateley had a reputation for charging, and the fans loved him. His main competition in the half-miles came from Don Emde and Yamaha speedster Freddy Edwards. His main downfall seemed to be equipment, and by the time he got his Suzuki Twin running right after an initial bout with a Kawasaki, it was too late. John wound up 3rd in the half-mile standings, behind Edwards and Emde.
His early experience with TT scrambles on AMA District 37 tracks no doubt helped him as a professional Novice aboard his Montesa Cappra TT machine. With it, he nearly clinched the TT Novice championship in 1969. He was only one point behind Tod Sloan when the final point count was tallied. “Losing by one point was a big thing to me then, but now I look back and see that it really didn’t matter too much.”
Moving to the Junior (then Amateur) ránks and the big bikes was a natural step for John. Most Juniors find that it’s the first experience they’ve ever had with a large displacement four-stroke. Not so for Hateley. As the son of a Triumph dealer he’d already had plenty
of time in on the big ones, having ridden both desert and local scrambles aboard a 650.
“I didn’t realize until one of the last TTs at Ascot that year what the real difference is between a big bike and a 250. I hit a hole in practice and that 650 threw me into the ground so hard—it’s like the difference between getting hit with a rubber hammer or getting hit with a brass hammer. That really shook me up...people just don’t realize how much damage a big bike can do to you!”
Campaigning two machines as an Amateur, Hateley wound up 2nd overall that year, behind Harley’s Rex Beauchamp. It’s possible that he might have made the first position overall if he had run the Nationals back East in the early part of the season. But he was attending high school, and that came first, even though he hated it. John has no patience with books and schoolwork.
Hateley doesn’t like to get involved with the politics of AMA racing, but he is outspoken on a few items. “I have yet to go to an AMA rider’s meeting where they weren’t arguing about something, and it’s always the same guys that are doing the arguing. The same questions always come up, but I never say anything. Let them argue and do what they want, but there’s only one way to win a race, no matter what kind of crazy rules they have.”
Like a majority of people, Hateley feels that the National numbering systern would be fairer if the riders got the same number as the position they finished in. Even though he could have had a very low number assigned after his first Expert year, he picked National Number 98. “If it was good enough for Joe Leonard, it’s good enough for me.” That first Expert year in 1971 was a very satisfying season for John Hateley. Winding up in the Top Ten in National points was kind of like the icing on the cake. He did well in most of the Nationals but felt he was cheated out of a win at Castle Rock where he crossed the line with Sonny Burres in an almost even finish. Burres was given the win, but to this day Hateley feels he won. “If it happened today I would file a protest. I only wish I had done it then.”
Last season John started with a win in the Astrodome TT, his favorite race track. “There’s nothing like sitting on the line at Houston. That whole atmosphere is something else. I even think Dick Mann probably has the same feeling there—the fans are great.”
The early part of the year was good, but around June John’s luck began to change. By the time the San Jose, Salem, Castle Rock, and Laguna Seca races were over with, Hateley had enough of the National circuit. He felt jinxed and discouraged, having more equipment failures in one month than he had in two years of racing. Some racers would have laughed it off, but not Lil* John. If there is one weak link in his quest for the Number One plate,
this has to be it. Hateley was down in the ring and the referee was counting, but he didn’t get up. He could have. John just wasn’t ready for Number One this year, and this proved it.
Instead of taking in the Nationals, he contested the weekly Ascot half-miles near his home. Bingo. John went away with four-in-a-row. This pumped him back up somewhat, enough to make him go back East for Talledega and Atlanta. His jinx still prevailed, even at the Ascot National, the last point paying dirt event on the calendar for 1972. Winding up in the number 13 position in the final standings and out of the Top Ten will probably make Hateley work that much harder next year.
His plans for the future are anything but definite—like most guys his age. “Even if I quit racing and go into something else, I know I can make it. If I ever became Number One I would ride out my year as the champion and then quit the AMA circuit. Then I’d probably head for Europe and go motocrossing— on a serious basis.” Somehow his plans always include motorcycles.
John is usually accompanied to the races by his girlfriend, Dee. Did he have any plans to get married? “Heck,” says John, “I almost am now! When I’m ready I’ll let everyone know-but that won’t be for awhile.” He adds, “Marriage is like a tatoo-its always there.” Then he comes across with that grin of his.
The grin changes to seriousness when
the subject of other sports comes up, namely golf. “I hate people that play golf—the pros, ’cause I’m just jealous. They go out and hit a little white ball around and endanger themselves to no real degree at all and get ten times the money that we get. It makes me sick— they’re always in the newspapers and always getting publicity, them and those flimsy basketball players. I feel we deserve a lot more.”
One thing that really had me puzzled about Hateley, and that was his nickname—Little John. John is not little, nor is he extremely big, both ample reasons to have a nickname like he has. The name really doesn’t fit a guy that stands 5 ft. 11 in.
Turns out that there used to be a guy named John working at Triumph of Burbank a few years ago. This guy, John Carter, rode a Gold Star for Jack Hateley several times. He was bigger than Hateley, and whenever they were in the shop together it was easier to call “Little John” or “John” so they both wouldn’t come running. The name just sort of stuck. Hateley, grinning, says, “The name really doesn’t appeal to me, but everyone picks it up and uses it—not that I care. It’s just a weird thing. Sometimes I wish they’d just quit it, but a lot of people become famous just by having a nickname.” If John’s nickname doesn’t make him famous, his riding will. Lil’ John is just at the threshold of a career that will keep him smiling for quite some time.... 0
