The Long-Term Review: Best. Ride. Ever.

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A Retrospective Analysis

"I’d been enthralled with endurance racing since I was a child... They fed the desire, and gave me no outlet."

My first Solo 20-lapper ended in pain. I completed only 18 of the 20 laps, having been lapped twice on my SV500, and I was so sore and nauseous that I had to be lifted from the bike, legs cramping. Maybe Buttonwillow Raceway Park in August wasn't the best time and place to start, but I was 45 and time to start endurance racing was running out. And besides, AMA Superbike Champion Doug Chandler was older than I, he was pitted next to me, and after his Solo race he looked fine. After mine, I would have punched him if I could have gotten off my chair.

If that was my first experience, why the hell did I go back for more? I'd been enthralled with endurance racing since I was a child and my parents took me to see "Le Mans" at a drive-in. (I blame my folks for my racing addiction, they took me to see races and movies about racing, let me watch Indy, but never let me get a bike. They fed the desire, and gave me no outlet.) The howl of the 12-cylinder Ferrari 512s and Porsche 917s - music of the angels.

So I kept at it, running Solo 20-lap races with Willow Springs Motorcycle Club and WERA in California and Nevada. I noticed that as I did more of them, I wasn't as worn out as the first time, and that my lap times stayed consistent throughout entire races. Then, in 2009, I actually won the April Solo GT-Lights race at Willow, finishing ahead of a small pack of SV650s on my SV500. Clear track = fast laps for the 500; it's all about keeping up 23 momentum and corner speed on that bike. I got in front and just pounded away, and it worked. I took a second, a pair of thirds and a fourth en route to second in the championship that year. And all I was thinking was, man, if I could just get close to them in horsepower...

Long story short, a friend sold me her stock-motored SV650 early in 2010, West Coast GP Cycles swapped that motor into the SV500 chassis that I was intimately familiar with and loved, and I focused on the longest, hardest races on the 2010 WSMC calendar. Not only are the races 50 miles, as compared to the usual 20-mile sprints, but they take place in the heat of the summer of the high desert. At least once or twice during the season, the races are flagged off in triple-digit temperatures. Oh, and my Pilot leathers, gloves, Alpinestars boots and Shoei helmet are black. It's not easy looking as stylish as I do...

April rolled around, and I practiced on Friday with TrackDaz, getting used to a motor with some torque. GPS data showed that the 650 wasn't that much faster in a straight line than the 500, it just got up to speed a lot more quickly. I rode all day long, and got more and more comfortable with my new mount. I couldn't wait for Saturday's Solo race.

The start wasn't terrible, but I found myself in fourth place behind three of the West Coast riders after the first turn, and I wasn't happy. I started talking to myself in the helmet; "You don't have to win this on the first lap, you don't have to pass everyone on the first lap." I followed for a lap, and no one was going away, so I tried to be patient.

"The howl of the 12-cylinder Ferrari 512s and Porsche 917s—music of the angels."

Then, at the end of the second lap, Tony Moniz tried an around-the-outside pass on Pete Esquivel coming out of the fast, decreasing radius Turn Nine and onto the front straight. Esquivel went wide, Moniz kicked up a little dirt as he was pushed to the very edge of the track, and I thought, screw this, I want nothing to do with these lunatics. I am a disciple of Le Mans 24-Hour veteran Vic Elford's religion of endurance racing; "The last thing you want to be doing in an endurance race," Elford, a factory Porsche 917 sports car driver, once said, "is actually racing."

I got a massive draft from the three bikes - Moniz, Esquivel and Charles Fathy - immediately in front of me, went around all three of them on the front straight, cut back across in front of them going into Turn One, and ran as hard as I could. The next few laps were deeply rewarding; four of them were personal best laps for me at Willow.

A few laps of panic followed as I got stuck behind a 600 racing in one of the other classes, but I'd put enough of a lead on the others that they couldn't make my life interesting. (I like boring when I'm racing, a nice, big, fat, dull-towatch lead.) After that, it was just grinding out lap after lap, faster and faster, Lap 18 was my fastest, 7/10ths quicker than I'd gone on the 500 in four years of racing it, and I had a margin of more than 20 seconds over Esquivel.

That race was everything I wanted from endurance racing: Powering out lap after lap with a neat, tidy riding style, hitting every braking and corner marker, carrying as much mid-corner speed as I dared, smoothly rolling on the throttle at the exits to preserve the tires. I really felt like I'd experienced The Zone, where every movement of the body is effortless and precise, every input on the bike is accurate, and the more I just let everything flow, the faster I go.

The next month, in May, an old friend showed up. Chris Speights had been building a Kawasaki 650R into a race bike, and he had a beast with a Carry Andrew-built motor. It cranked out at least 10 horses more than mine did, and it didn't help my confidence that Speights had won several of the 650 twins sprints at Willow in a row. I should probably mention here that Speights beat me by one point to win the Battle Of The Twins Lightweight championship at Willow in 2006, and I've been stuffing needles into a voodoo doll painted to look like him ever since. Yes, I have issues. "Well-balanced" is not a phrase people often use when describing me.

I got a better start this time, slotting in behind Speights as we went through Turn One - he started two rows behind me and was in front of me 10 yards after the start. Andrew had done his job - the Kawasaki was a rocket in a straight line at full throttle, and Speights pulled out a lead. But my Dunlops performed better than his Bridgestones, and Speights was having trouble with his motor on part-throttle.

I slowly reeled him back in, and on the sixth lap passed him around the outside of Willow's long Turn Two. It was unnerving - it's a fast fifth-gear corner, I'm a foot away from him, both of us with our knees on the ground, I can hear his engine popping and snapping, and I'm just thinking, "Man, if he high-sides, he's gonna take us both out." I held the lead through Turn Two; he out-braked me and came across my front wheel going into Turn Three. I went around him again in Turn Two on the next lap, dropped my bike across his front wheel and in front of him, and this time held the spot into the next corner. We each got around two slower 600s on that lap, but I was in front, and I'm at my best with clear track in front of me. I pulled away, lap after lap. Once again, late in the race, on Lap 17, I threw a 1:30.577, a second quicker than I'd gone the month before, and my personal best at Willow. took my second win in a row, and Speights finished second - more than 28 seconds back.

That felt good.

June brought a new track, the tight, twisty Streets of Willow. It's not my favorite track - there are some areas that I think are borderline in terms of safety, and some areas where the pavement is just trashed. I go well in highspeed turns; this track has only one turn in anything other than second gear. I feared that if I got stuck behind someone, I'd be there the whole race. If there was one race in my career where I needed to be into the first turn in the lead, this was it.

Depending on who you ask, I either.

A) anticipated the drop of the flag perfectly, or

B) blatantly cheated.

I led halfway through the first lap, then Andy Palmer came past on his dirt bike (dirt bike suspension is probably an advantage at the bumpy, rutted Streets). I didn't stress too much, because I didn't think he could go the distance without a fuel stop. I tried to stay close, and just ground out the laps. I was right; Palmer stopped for fuel, and at the end I was 15 seconds ahead of Esquivel. Thankfully, Esquivel, Moniz and Al Garcia battled among themselves much of the race, giving me the breathing space I needed at the front. Afterward, they came to my pits en mass to give me s**t over jumping the start. In my defense, I will quote a teammate whose name I will not disclose: "We were all trying to jump the start," he said. "You just did it better than we did."

"We all wanted to jump the start. You just did it better than we did."

July was back at the big track, and the Solo race was pretty uneventful. It was scorching hot, well over 100 degrees when the race began. Esquivel led Palmer and me for the first couple of laps, then I got around them both coming out of Turn One. It is an excellent spot for me to pass, because I can get through Turn Two pretty well and get a gap on the rider behind. I was a little slower than I wanted to be, but I was 35 seconds ahead of Esquivel at the end, and we were the only two riders still on the lead lap.

All I had to do was finish in August to seal the title. So I was extremely cautious off the line. Then, at about the fourth lap, one rider's Suzuki seized and stranded him at the apex of Turn Three, just off the track. It was an unsafe place for someone to stand, so the corner worker told the rider to lay the bike down and move to safely. The douchebag refused; he was later heard in the pits saying that his forks were too valuable for him to set the bike on its side. So, of course, the red flag is thrown and everyone else has to stop to accommodate this guy. Talk about self-centered.

Anyway, I've got something stuck in a carb, and the thing is flooding. So when the signal comes to re-start, I hit the starter button and the bike goes chug-chug-chug. The field pulls away, and I'm just sitting there, grinding the starter and battery away. I'm sitting there thinking, there goes my championship! Finally, it catches, but it's running like crap. I haul ass on the warmup lap and make the grid. Once again, I get a very cautious start and finish the first lap in 12th. The bike (and rider!) slowly regain composure, and as the field strings out, I pick up speed and start picking off my competitors.

Palmer has shown up on a bike that's more powerful than mine, he's got a trick swingarm, and he's a lap record holder. Great. And Esquivel is hauling ass, too. But after a couple of laps, I catch and pass him. Palmer is gone, five places up the scoring sheets, nowhere in sight. I just slip into endurance mode, the body on autopilot, hitting my marks, enjoying the torque of the full 650 motor as it pulls me out of corners, enjoying the feel of the bike underneath me as I flow past the apex and pull myself up into the saddle, chest pressed against the tank, elbows tucked in, just riding...

And suddenly, Palmer was right in front of me, a small mechanical glitch slowing him on one lap enough for me to catch up. My lap times started coming down further, and I was on his tail going down the back straight with a lap to go. He looked back, I waved at him. We railed through Turns Eight and Nine, nose to tail, and he looked back again as we ran up the front straight toward the white flag. I waved again.

Coming out of Turn One, he had difficulty shifting, and I swept past. I burned through Two and took a tighter line through the twisty bits; I didn't know where Esquivel was, and I didn't want to get involved in any actual racing with anyone. I led onto the front straight, and with the throttle pinned, sat up and started pumping my fist in the air. This was a mistake, as Palmer was stillon my rear wheel, and closed to 0.114 seconds at the line. All I knew was that at that point, I couldn't stop myself from celebrating. I could push the bike across the line if it broke, and I had secured the title. The win was icing on the cake.

Five long, grueling races. Five wins. Five fastest race laps.

I'd come a long way from the nearly-puking wreck that was picked up off the bike at Buttonwillow. Academic and intellectual accomplishments have come fairly easily to me; athletic accomplishments come much, much harder. To win a single Solo race amazed me; to sweep the series, and to be fastest at each race, at 47 years old, was one of the single proudest accomplishments of my life. But to paraphrase an old saying, you don't stop racing because you get old. You get old because you stop racing.

"I hit the starter button and the bike goes chug-chug-chug... I'm sitting there thinking, there goes my championship!"

"...you don't stop racing because you get old. You get old because you stop racing."

The race-by-race story of MotoGP Legend Marc Marquez' record-breaking 2019 World Championship season. Includes full-color photos from 2019 through 2024.

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