A Vintage Victory
A VINTAGE VICTORY
The Old Crocks Return to Laguna Seca
Allan Girdler
We were sitting on the false grid, waiting for the signal to begin our, uh, exhibition, when the AMA official noticed Martin Vogel. Martin is a typical motocross kid; long hair, surfer style, etc. He was slouched on his Harley KR750 with his borrowed leathers making a perfect match, as the KR is what one would have to call unrestored; paint by brush, solid rear end with disc front brake and bars that would do justice to a Texas longhorn.
So this AMA guy. a grizzled old coot in immaculate whites, stalks over to the longhair kid just like a scene in a drive-in movie, and he says .. .
“I think I’ve got a transmission left over from my KR. If you can use it, I’ll give it to you.”
Welcome to Laguna Seca’s second almost-annual vintage race, and farewell to the generation gap, the haves vs. have-nots, east vs. west and every other rivalry you ever heard of. When the old bikes run, nothing else matters.
Persistent readers will recall that two years ago guys with old racing macines put on a show as part of the annual 750 round. The crowd loved it, but last year the track didn’t get proper requests in time to stage another show, so they said to come back earlier for 1979.
Which we did, we being an informal collection of owners and fans known as VROOM, short for Vintage Racers Of Old Motorcycles. A public appeal brought in scores of interested fans. We also got a president, in the form of Mike Lewis, who in real life is national service manager for Triumph’s American branch. Mike owns something like nine BSA Gold Stars, a couple Triumphs and a Yamaha TD-1, plus he did all the grunt work of writing letters and making lists and preparing a proposal for the club that puts on the Laguna Seca races. Let us run, we promised, and we’ll bring at least 25 vintage motorcycles, with riders in leathers and good helmets. We’ll do the rules and the inspection and the whole thing.
It worked. We got most of the guys who ran the club’s first event, and we got more people to haul the dusty old campaigners out of the back of the garage.
And we got the real vintage crowd. The Classic and Antique Motorcycle Association was having its annual meeting on the same weekend as VROOM’s first race. An accident discovered too late. So for Laguna Seca CAMA president Frank Conley enlisted club members and his own collection.
Our reserved parking spaces, at the back of the paddock, were a show by themselves. American, Italian, English, Japanese and Spanish, with Harley, Bultaco, Honda, Excelsior, Norton, Ducati, BSA, Gilera, Vincent and Yamaha, all lined up for display. The paddock was semipublic, and we drew a good crowd. You could hardly hear the Nortons idling for the click of cameras.
We got practice on Saturday, then we went to a pizza parlor for the official banquet, then we had five hot laps on Sunday. What actually happened during the event I’m not sure, as me and Red Rooster were in the pack and all I could see was a couple hundred feet in either direction. One of the Norton riders said “That thing of yours is faster than I thought. I had to pass you in the corners,” which puts me in my place. And I had a good dice with John Weed on a genuine production Honda racer, one of the CR125 Twins. I’d pass him on the straights, he’d get back in the twisty parts, etc.
Weeks later I asked Jody Nicholas about the unofficial results. “Was that John Player Norton in the race?”
“Oh, no, that guy showed up so we figured heck, let him run even if the bike is too new.”
“Well then,” Jody said, “I passed Don Vesco just before the last turn, so if the Norton wasn’t eligible, I won.”
So did we all. For fear of jinxing the project I won’t say vintage bike racing is here to stay.
But old racing bikes are the wave of the future. H
