Larry Lawrence | June 27, 2018
Archives: Bryar Motorsports Park
Bryar Motorsports Park in Loudon, New Hampshire, was a legendary venue for AMA National Road Races for nearly 40 years. The tricky 1.6-mile circuit hosted a lot of club racing events, chiefly ran by the Association of American Motorcycle Road Racers (AAMRR). The result was track specialists who had hundreds, if not thousands of racing miles on the track. Those locals would give the AMA Pro regulars fits every June. Guys like Frank Camillieri, Jimmy Adamo, Rich Schlachter, Mike Baldwin, Dale Quarterley, David Sadowski and a host of others honed their skills, and in many cases, made their names by beating the big boys at their local national.
Archives: Bryar Motorsports Park
The start of an AMA Formula One heat race at Bryar Motorsports Park in 1986 at the peak of popularity of the event. Wayne Rainey (6) is starting from the pole. (Larry Lawrence photo)
The action on the track was always among the best of all AMA National road race courses. An AMA Superbike Championship was infamously decided there in a controversial manner. One of the all-time great passes in AMA Superbike history happened at the track and there was no shortage of tire marks being left on a fellow racer’s leathers from all the super-close and aggressive racing Loudon inspired.
And then there was the equally epic and infamous partying going on in the camping grounds surrounding the track. To describe Loudon in the 1980s, imagine a mix of Woodstock, Daytona and the movie Apocalypse Now. A haze of campfire smoke would lend an eerie atmosphere if you were brave enough to venture up Animal Hill.
Don Byrmer, who promoted the national in the late-1970s and ‘80s, had a security crew that would go up into the woods to try to maintain some semblance of order.
“Mainly we were just trying to keep people from killing each other or themselves,” Brymer admitted. “One time I pulled a guy out of a campfire. He was so drunk he didn’t know what was going on. His clothes were smoldering.”
But the campers weren’t the only ones partying late into the night. Brymer opened up the track’s small oval to the racers to hold what was called the “Rental Car Nationals”.
“I think Bubba Shobert drove it in a Lincoln one year,” Brymer recalls. “We had some pretty good rental car races on that little track. In one of them my car ended up on the tire wall and we had to get the front-loader out to get it down.”
Rowdy motorcyclists had been coming to the area for the annual rally for decades. The national moved 18 miles down the road from Laconia in the mid-1960s. The Laconia/Loudon Classic was one of the oldest and most popular races in America and the week-long rally, which dated back to the 1910s, drew tens of thousands of enthusiasts up from New York and Boston. Things turned ugly in 1965 when a conflict between “bikers” and cops got out of hand at Weirs Beach and a riot ensued.
The story of Bryar Motorsports Park began with an unlikely racing entrepreneur: a tire salesman, champion dog sled racer and Baptist minister named Keith Bryar. Bryar kenneled his dogs on a parcel of land near Loudon, where he also ran a small amusement park, which included a merry-go-round, a kid’s roller coaster and a go-kart track.
Bryar expanded the kart track, utilizing its front straight and encircling the rest of the course with a clay oval. He surrounded the course with bleachers and opened the doors to what became known as 106 Midway Raceway.
By 1964, Bryar decided to take the plunge and build a permanent road course on the site. Bryar Motorsports Park was born, the 1.6-mile road course followed the contours of the hillside around a small lake (where crashing bikes occasionally made splash downs). There were excellent spectator facilities for that era, with bleachers, seating 5000, overlooked the pits offering views of almost the whole course. Another 2,000 seats were available at the northern end of the site and, in total, crowds of up to 18,000 could be accommodated legally, but by the early 1970s the race overflowed with estimates of as many as 30,000.
The first AMA National was held there in 1965 and it was Californian Ralph White riding a Team Hansen Matchless G50 to victory over Jody Nicholas and Dick Mann.
In 1970 the track had been repaved resulting in dozens of crashes from pavement that had not yet cured. In 1971 one the closest road race national ever took place as Mark Brelsford held off Kel Carruthers by about a half bike length, Carruthers getting balked by a lapped rider in the last corner. It ultimately proved to Brelsford’s only national road race win. In 1972 Gary Fisher won the race, following in the footsteps of his father Ed, who’s won the Laconia National in 1953. In ’73 Gary Nixon scored his first national win in three years. A year later Nixon won his last AMA National at the circuit.
Archives: Bryar Motorsports Park
One of Loudon’s motorcycle parking lots gives you an idea of how packed Bryar Motorsports Park was during AMA Road Race Nationals there. (Larry Lawrence photo)
AMA Superbikes first visited the track in the championship’s first year 1976 and it was local hero Mike Baldwin who dominated the Loudon race on the Reno Leoni-tuned Berliner Moto Guzzi, in one of the largest margins of victory in AMA Superbike history over the factory BMWs of Gary Fisher and Reg Pridmore.
John Long lost the AMA Superbike Championship in the second of two Superbike nationals in 1978. Long went out too late for his warm-up lap. When he gridded for the start, officials told him to go to the rear of the grid. Arguments ensued, Long didn’t go back and was penalized a lap. He tied Reg Pridmore in the final standings. Had he earned those extra points at Loudon he would have been series champ.
It was in 1984 that one of the most famous passes in AMA Superbike history took place when local favorite Dale Quarterley, on a privateer Kawasaki, stuffed factory Honda’s Fred Merkel in the final turn of the qualifying heat race to win. The crowd roared and the photo of the pass was featured on the program the next year.
Wayne Rainey, Doug Polen, Sam McDonald and Jamie James all won their first AMA Superbike races at Loudon.
By the mid-1980s, Bryar Motorsport Park was still a popular local venue, but a general lack of investment had meant the course condition had deteriorated somewhat and, by 1989, only motorcycles were using the venue. Bob Bahre, purchased the facility and announced plans for a new superspeedway – the first to be constructed in the USA since 1969. The new circuit – renamed New Hampshire Motor Speedway – would feature a distinctive 1.058-mile four-turn oval, and a new road course, which used a mix of the old Bryar course and the new oval.
Much like Bryar, the new track produced local specialists, but the combination of walls that were too close and more powerful and faster racing bikes made the track obsolete for AMA Superbike events and the last AMA National was held there in 2001.
For nearly 40 years Bryar Motorsports Park was one of the best attended, most exciting and tension-filled road races on the calendar. Those who were privileged to attend those wild Loudon events still tell the stories today.
