And the Pain Was Tremendous

and the pain was tremendous

A Look at Mert Lawwill's Incredible Injury Plagued Season

D.Randy Riggs

HURT. A world of it. Pain. By the truck loads. Frustration. In buckets. Misery. Enough to fill a tree trunk. Karma. Questionable. Bad luck. More than plenty. Good luck. Sufficient to stay alive. It's safe to say that one time Grand National Motorcycle Champion Mert Lawwill has had better years than 1974. He has had worse. But based on pure gut-level, knock-you-between-the-eyes exasperation, it had to be the season of seasons. For Mert. For his family. For his friends, fans and racing cohorts.

And yet it was planned to be anything but.

Late in 1973 Mert had gotten together with a few of his friends and set out to build the absolute fastest dirttrack machine on the National circuit. Faster than the Nortons, the Triumphs, the black and yellow Yamahas; faster even than the formidable factory team Harley-Davidsons, Lawwill's own clan. So interesting was the project that Cliff Collins (of Harmon and Collins fame), came out of retirement to lend his knowledge and helping hand. Mert also had the assistance of cam grinder Sig Erson and one of the best engine builders in the game, C.R. Axtell.

The group worked through the winter, experimenting, perfecting, finalizing. Lawwill would travel the near 1000-mile round trip from his home in Tiburón, north of San Francisco, to Los Angeles, week in and week out. Long, tiring, sometimes agonizing miles, all in search of a few extra horsepower. All for a word...fastest. To be the best, with a chance shot at Number One, despite the lack of a road race ride.

"Sig would grind up a new set of cams, I'd pick 'em up and run over to Ax's and we'd pop 'em in the motor and run it on the dyno, then call Sig up and tell him what had happened. He'd grind up another set and I'd go get them and we just kept that up until we must have had a bushel basket full of camshafts by the time it was done. And he did it all free...kind of an interest thing just to

see what we could do." Mert went through several engines by just wearing them out on the dyno with the experimentation. But by the time March had rolled around, their development efforts were bearing fruit, though by this time the many hours involved were beginning to burn Mert out. Expenses also ran high, but Lawwill got a lot of help from old-time friend and sponsor, Dud Perkins.

"Stock H-D 750 racing engines right out of the crate will pull anywhere from 69 to 71 horsepower on Axtell's chassis dyno; a prepared H-D maybe 75 to 76. We've seen 84 with ours," Mert adds with a note of pride. So the long days had at last delivered high horsepower readings, broad powerbands and engines that lived for lengthy durations; a suitable chassis built by Doug Schwerma of Champion Frames completed the package. All that remained was the trial. And the trial was set for the San Jose mile track in May, a trial that would have a very tough judge and jury.

The San Jose track was exceptionally fast that day; so was Mert's No. 7 Harley-Davidson. In qualifying he blitzed the one-lap track record for fast time of the day and had that all-important 4-5 mph edge on the top end over everyone else...just what he had worked so hard for all winter long. He won his heat race, as well, but victory in the National final eluded him when his rear tire quit working. Dismal for him was the 6th-place finish. What had happened?

"The tire was so bad that I couldn't keep my momentum up through the turns, which didn't give me a good drive down the straight, and that left my gear ratio way too high. My engine develops its extra power at high rpm ...that's where its edge is. But I wasn't able to reach those high revs because of the tire...and pulling only 5 to 7000 rpm on the straight, I was putting out the same power as the rest of the bikes. "That was one of the hardest races... mentally, for me to lose, because this was an accumulation of months of building with many people. All my good friends were in the stands watching the race, guys like Bruce Brown who were in tune to what we had been doing all winter, plus the usual fans that you don't know personally. So I felt hard for myself, but I really felt hard for them...all the people who had worked so diligently and wanted so badly for me to win."

A week later Lawwill put the Denver Half-Mile National in his sack, but the win wasn't near what it would have been at his local San Jose. "That race was another Don Brymer fiasco; the track wasn't fit to run on, the stands were empty and the trophy was a tiny little tarnished cup...I couldn't even believe it. I just turned it in to the

AMA."

By this time Mert was sitting about 5th in the National standings; and he was more than eager for a rematch with > the San Jose Mile. He had worked out the tire problems; he had convinced many that he was the man with the motor. His bike was the example for others to follow. At the second San Jose, Lawwill served notice once more that it would be his Harley setting the limit for raw speed and power. His unofficial practice lap speeds were in the 38s; he was the only rider in the 38s on a track surface that had changed drastically since May.

In fact, most of the remainder of the riders were about a second a lap slower than they had been earlier. Mert was the only one running as fast or faster. Riders were shaking their heads, "That Lawwill is really gettin' around. Man does he have some horsepower." Mert wanted to qualify early to take full advantage of the track while it was in fairly decent shape. He took his warm-up lap, then poured on the coal with the wave of the green flag. His Harley sounded purely beautiful winding down the long back straight...he was

really humming. The hole was maybe three inches deep, nine inches long and perhaps half a foot wide. It lay squarely in the groove of the beginning of the third turn. Lawwill and the Harley were probably traveling at about 105 mph when the sliding front tire hit it. Mert never saw the hole and the tire bit in and whapped the handlebars straight and right out of his hands. It was truly the bump that changed the outcome of Mert Lawwill's 14th professional racing season.

The resulting tank-slapper pitched Mert's now helpless body high into the air and off the right side of the motorcycle. "It caught me by surprise...the track wasn't bumpy to speak of, so I really didn't expect anything like that. I remember thinking that it really wasn't happening...it was so much like a dream."

He tumbled, bounced and slid about 300 feet, the motorcycle careening next to him. His forward progress was stopped by a 4 x 4 wooden post, part of the guard rail surrounding the track. Lawwill probably contacted the post with his waist at about 20-25 mph. The

resultant "whump" ended the horrible tumble.

People rushed to his aid, reaching what they thought was a gravely injured man. He was unconscious briefly, then too dazed to know for a time what was happening. Blood trickled down the left side of his face...onlookers thought the blood came from his ear, perhaps indicating a serious head injury. Only later did they discover that it was an abrasion on his cheek. The scene gave you a very grim feeling in the pit of your stomach. It looked as though the stunned Lawwill was in very serious trouble. A little over an hour later, that same Mert Lawwill had changed his torn leathers, taped back on the boot sole that had been torn off in the spill, and was climbing on his spare HarleyDavidson in an attempt to qualify for the event he wanted so much to win. The crowd went stark raving crazy and bellowed out loud and long for a man who was giving more than his all. He qualified 9th fastest, despite the fact that he had pulled some muscles apart in his hip and was in such pain that he had trouble leaning forward on the motorcycle to get down out of the wind. What had made him go back out there after a crash that would have dissolved most men into pure wasted rubble?

"Momentum. We had the horsepower and I was pretty solid on my feet and I felt like I could go out there and try it. I had taken two Excedrin that my wife had given me because I had a big headache. The whole crew from L.A. was up and I just didn't want to bow out unless I just flat had to. And I've been hurt enough to tell when I'm okay or not and I felt good enough to try it...so I did."

Lawwill's heat race was anything but a piece of cake. He'd have to run against Ken Roberts and fast qualifier Chuck Palmgren, both riding exceptionally fast Yamaha 750s. Mert ran 3rd for much of the 10-lap race, then timed a perfect surge to the front and victory. Again the crowd went crazy. Even the factory Yamaha pit people wore smiles in admiration for the man with all the moxie.

Pain, however, would be a factor in the long, 25-lap main event. His shoulder and arm ached terribly, his hip burned and he questioned the possibility of his lasting through such a grueling pace. But he needn't have worried, because Mert's second San Jose National of the year was to be of short duration. On the second lap, Jim Rice was knocked down by another rider, but irony would have it that Rice would fall directly in front of Mert. Here speeds were even faster than in the earlier crash, and when Lawwill tried to maneuver around Rice, he caught a haybale and went on his second 100-mphplus tumble of the day. The fans saw the bike catapult over the crash wall and off the race track, but they couldn't tell who it was.

Riders came around for a restart, but No. 7 was missing. The awful looking spill had again been Mert's. This time, though, he was in the ambulance and through for the day. No one could believe a man could survive two such accidents in such a short period of time. But he did. Severely tweaked. Severely bruised. Thoroughly pummeled. It was time to sit out a few Nationals and regroup, but Lady Luck was not yet through with her curse. After Mert had relaxed around his beautiful Tiburón home for a few days, he decided it was time for some fresh air. He walked into the yard and stepped on a hornet's nest and got stung about 10 or 12 times.

While recovering from that episode, he fell asleep in the sun and got a heck of a burn, prolonging his recuperation even more. When would it end? Not at the Santa Fe Short Track National, that's for sure. After a month off from racing, trying to get back into shape fighting off hornets and sun and scabs and aches and pains and bruises and bumps, Mert Lawwill's return to the National circuit was nearly as spectacular as his exit. Locking handlebars with another rider, he was sent straight into the crash wall and sprawling onto the track. A trailing rider cut a swath across his middle, running him clean over. An observer remarked, "It looked really bad...I thought he'd been cut in two."

Back to Tiburón for more recuperation. He missed still more Nationals, now that he had redislocated his shoulder, reinjured his elbow, and cracked two ribs. The couple of events he had managed to get to and complete, he had not done well in. Mert was out of shape from not racing. His standing on the National points tally dropped. He was now fighting just to stay in the top ten. Only one other time (1971 ) in ten years of professional racing has Mert finished out of the top ten, and that, too, was a year plagued with injuries. The straw that broke the camel's back, and Lawwill's ankle, was the Syracuse, New York, Mile. Another tangle with another rider and another injury. He sat out a few more races, hoping to make the final Nationals of the year at Albany and Ascot back in California. He did, but once again he was not in the best of shape to do business.

Mert Lawwill wound up 11th in the standings, winning one National event during the year, one that he wasn't even that proud of winning. Mert was getting encouragement from his many fans and friends; at Peoria, an event he had to pass up due to his hurts, a bunch of people got together and filled the program—with his picture on the cover—from end to end with well-wishes and greetings. That's gotta make a guy feel better, knowing that he's missed. But Mert also was realizing at this point in time just how much he was missing his long-time super close friend, Cal Rayborn. They were very close, and each picked up the other's spirits when things were not going so well. The loss of Rayborn meant very much to many people, especially close friends like Mert. Mert faired poorly at the mile tracks, for one reason or another, in spite of having the fastest motorcycles. All the effort he'd put in during the off-season, all the work...the only result seemed to be frustration and one setback after another. When Lady Luck is against you...that's gotta be the biggest pain of all. Mert Lawwill maybe knows that better than anybody.