Larry Lawrence | May 23, 2018
Archives: Metzger’s Surprise Superbike Podium
Back in the mid-1990s it was a tough row to hoe for privateers in AMA Superbike racing. Factory and factory support teams were abundant and just to be able to crack the top 10 of an AMA Superbike Championship race was a major accomplishment. Knowing that makes it even more impressive to learn that a low-budget privateer from Connecticut named Brett Metzger, stunned road racing fans when he not only finished inside the top-10, but actually earned a podium finish in the 1996 AMA Superbike race at the Mid-Ohio Sports Car Course in Lexington, Ohio.
I would like to be able to tell you a storybook ending with Metzger’s podium giving him new opportunities and sometime later we find our gritty privateer enjoying the privileges of a factory ride, but it never happened. And perhaps that’s what makes this story even more compelling. Metzger rose up to have this one colossally amazing result, but then fell right back into obscurity and was rarely heard from again after his amazing ride in the rain at Mid-Ohio in June of ’96.
Brett Metzger was a hard-working, club-racer who showed promise by winning some CCS National titles in the early 1990s. By 1994 Metzger was doing well enough in club racing to give some AMA Pro events a shot. He raced a Honda CBR600 in both 600 and even moved up a class to 750 Supersport on the little Honda.
In his first pro outing in the 1994 Daytona 600 Supersport race Metzger finished 28th. The first half of the field, not bad for a debut. Like many road racers, Laguna Seca was one race he had to experience at least once, so a couple of months after his Daytona pro debut, he loaded up and drove cross country to race Laguna. He took 29th in the 750 Supersport class on his Honda. Nothing to write home about, but at least he’d scratched racing Laguna off the bucket list.
Then came his home race at Loudon in June of ’94, and Metzger had an encouraging outing, finishing in the top-10 (ninth) in both the 600 and 750 Supersport Nationals on his Honda in a very talented field of riders. Ahh, a small taste of glory!
These kinds of finishes are the nectar that feed the dreams of young road racers. At Loudon, Metzger had bettered some nationally known racers and if he could do it once, he could do it again, right? So in ’95 Metzger added a Suzuki GSX-R750 to his racing stable and along with his trusty Honda he loaded up his van and hit the pro circuit with visions of glory. Then the reality hit home of just how loaded AMA Pro races were. 30th, 29th, 24th, 16th – those were his 750 Supersport finishes on his new Suzuki. And things weren’t much better in the 600 class were he also topped out with a 16th at Gateway International near St. Louis.
So that was it. Stark reality. Metzger had given it his best shot in the pro game in ’95 and come up short. No shame in that. It’s ultimately the fate of most privateers who spend big money chasing big dreams. So, while his visions of being a big-time pro were pretty much out the window, he still loved road racing and would be happy doing it on the club level. And if he had some extra time, he might even still hit a nearby pro race or two. You never know, another top 10 could happen. Hope springs eternal.
So, in ’96 Metzger regrouped and set his sights on more realistic local goals.
He went to Daytona ’96, because it’s Daytona and he’d had success there winning national club titles as he was coming up. He entered his first Superbike race on his nearly stock Suzuki and in the Daytona 200 he finished 38th.
The next pro race he’d hit would be Mid-Ohio, but in the mean time he was doing club racing and he raced several weekends in the rain, trying several tire combos, and had gotten a good feel for racing in the wet.
The AMA Pro weekend at Mid-Ohio rolled around in early June. Metzger was at his peak having raced a good club schedule leading up to the weekend and should it rain he was ready. He was racing 750 Supersport but entered Superbike just for the extra cash he could make. For the Superbike race he qualified near the back of the field, in fact Metzger recalls it being the last row (upon research, he actually qualified 32nd in a 42-rider field). Then it rained on race day.
He used a well-worn Dunlop rain rear and new rain front. At the start Metzger was delighted to find he was slicing through the field at a pretty good clip. “I was just racing, having a good time and really didn’t know where I was running,” Metzger remembers.
Brett Metzger (119) battled with Miguel Duhamel for a podium spot at the Mid-Ohio AMA Superbike race in 1996. Metzger took the spot, making him perhaps the most surprising podium finisher in the history of the championship. For years his buddies introduced him as the “Guy who beat Duhamel.” (Henny Ray Abrams photo)
Then Mike Smith crashed bringing out the red flag. Metzger pulled into the pits and his buddy and fellow racer Jim Leslie came running up to him excited and said.“Hey, do you need anything? You’re doing really well!”
Turns out Metzger had passed 21 other riders and was up to 11th-place after only seven laps!Leslie had a new rain tire mounted on one of his wheels and offered to mount it on Metzger’s bike, but then Dunlop’s Jim Allen walked by, with clipboard in hand, looked at Metzger’s work rear tire just as Leslie was arriving with a new rear and Allen surprisingly said to Brett, “You’re running pretty good. I’d say just run what you got.”
Metzger was just having fun racing in the first segment, but on the restart, he got a great launch and was quickly up to fifth place. “Now I’m paying attention.” Metzger laughs.
“I noted going into the Keyhole that Miguel (Duhamel) was slowing down way more than I was. So I made a note that it I was close enough I would pass him there the next lap.”
Sure enough he was there and zipped underneath Duhamel to take fourth the next lap. “Then he blows by me on the back straight so fast,” Metzger said of Duhamel and his factory Honda. Surprisingly, even though Duhamel got by him one more time or two on the long straight, Metzger was feeling it in the rain and held off Duhamel for third when the race was red flagged again and stopped.
“I was so excited and nervous and everything, that I was tongue tied when they came to me for the TV interview,” Metzger admits. “I was packing up, one of the last guys out and Jim Leslie and the New England gang comes up and ask me what I was doing and I told them just getting back on the road heading home. ‘No,’ they said. ‘You’re coming out to dinner with us.’”
That night Metzger went back to being a privateer, an invited guest of the New England crew meant sleeping on the bathroom floor of a packed hotel room with a group of other racers and their crew.
Metzger raced for another couple of years, but never again duplicated the success he had at Mid-Ohio.
“For years guys wouldn’t introduce me as Brett Metzger, but as, ‘Hey, here’s the guy who beat Duhamel!’” Metzger laughs.
And while his dreams of becoming a factory racer never came to pass, Metzger will always have that shining moment at Mid-Ohio to look back on and reminisce at accomplishing something only a rare few privateers before or since ever did.
You can read the digital edition of this story by clicking: http://magazine.cyclenews.com/i/985130-cycle-news-issue-20-may-22/132
