Larry Lawrence | November 14, 2021
Cycle News Archives
COLUMN
This Cycle News Archives Column is reprinted from the May 28, 2008 issue. CN has hundreds of past Archives columns in our files, too many destined to be archives themselves. So, to prevent that from happening, in the future, we will be revisiting past Archives articles while still planning to keep fresh ones coming down the road -Editor.
Ushering In Two Eras
Yvon DuHamel’s accomplishments in motorsports are so wide-ranging that is almost hard to believe. Not only was Yvon a leading motorcycle racer for nearly 20 years, he also was a longtime snowmobile champion, and once, with little car-racing experience, DuHamel drove a NASCAR Cup car to a 10th-place finish. DuHamel has been inducted into the Canadian Motor- sports Hall of Fame, the Motorcycle Hall of Fame and the Snowmobile Hall of Fame. One thing DuHamel is not widely recognized for is his contributions in helping introduce both the two-stroke era in AMA road racing and, later, the Superbike era.
Yvon DuHamel en route to victory on the Kawasaki H1R at the Talladega 200 in 1971.
DuHamel emerged from the Canadian racing scene in the 1960s, following in the footsteps of other Canadians such as Billy Mathews, who made the move to American racing. Yvon’s friendly and outgoing personality made him a fast favorite. His aggressive win-at-all-cost riding style also endeared him to fans, but often made his fellow competitors a little nervous.
By 1968, DuHamel was a major factor at Daytona. Riding a Deeley Yamaha, he won the International Lightweight (250 GP) that year and again in 1969. In 1968, he and Art Baumann shared the distinction of being the first two-stroke racers to finish on the podium in the Daytona 200. DuHamel finished second, behind Harley-Davidson’s Cal Rayborn. Baumann was third.
One of his biggest accomplishments at Daytona was putting a Yamaha 350cc two-stroke on the pole for the Daytona 200 in 1969. He was the first-ever rider to crack the 150-mph barrier in Daytona qualifying, back in the days when a lap around the NASCAR oval was used to determine the starting grid. DuHamel’s pole on the diminutive 350cc machine against the big 750cc four-strokes marked the beginning of the two-stroke era in AMA road-race Nationals.
DuHamel remembers some of the tricks he and his team used to get that kind of speed out of the little TD3. “I was 125 pounds then and 5-foot-3, so I could get under the bike really well,” DuHamel recalled. “I took some duct tape and padded the handlebars and then moved the handlebars in real close to the gas tank so my arms wouldn’t catch the wind. I also put duct tape around the wrist and neck so wind wouldn’t get under my leathers and blow up like a balloon.
“Bob Work, my mechanic, told me in qualifying to go around and as soon as I took the checkered flag to pull in the clutch. They were running the bike very lean to get the most power, and I think were afraid I’d blow the bike up. For years I thought they put 60 pounds of pressure in my tires for the qualifying, but years later Work admitted to me that they put 90 pounds in the tires. The tire company—I don’t remember if it was Dunlop or Goodyear—said it was too dangerous to run it at that pressure—they were afraid the tire would explode or the rim would fail—but I made it.
“I think all that helped me get to 150.5 mph, while a lot of the other Yamahas only ran 148 or 149 mile per hour.”
Running full speed around the NASCAR oval put some tremendous pressures on the motorcycles. Yvon remembers his clip-ons would loosen up and move from the pressure he exerted on them around the tri-oval. The AMA, seemingly not happy with the invasion of the little Japanese-made two-strokes, handicapped the little bikes by forcing the teams to run four-speed gearboxes instead of the bike’s normal five-speed setup.
After his impressive rides with Yamaha, Kawasaki came after DuHamel to ride its new beast of a two-stroke triple in the road-race Nationals. He signed a lucrative factory contract and then set about the task of taming the peaky Green beasts.
Yvon starts quickly when describing the Kawasaki Triple. “They were pretty fast,” he said with a smile before launching into one of racing’s great understatements. “Those bikes were not so easy to ride. The handling was not so hot because of the powerband of the engine—not enough horsepower and then…too much. We had a ribbed tire then with maybe a 2 1/2- or 3-inch rim. So when you hit the powerband—well, it cost me a few times on the ground.”
Despite the Kawasaki’s brutal riding characteristics, DuHamel was able to master the bike well enough to give the company its first AMA National road-race win at Talladega in 1971.
“I remember that race, I was on the H1R, the three-cylinder 500,” DuHamel said. “It was hot, like maybe 110 degrees. The race was like Daytona. It was so bad, when riders came in to pit, they couldn’t continue racing. Some of them ended up in an ambulance. It was hot. In my life, that was the hottest race I was ever in. I was trying to swallow, but it was like a dry stone. Later I devised a tube to be able to drink water during the race.”
From 1971 to 1973, DuHamel was the winningest rider for Kawasaki, earning five National victories for Team Green during that period.
A true national star racing in Superbike, he gave early respectability to the fledgling class in the mid-1970s before it became a national points-paying championship.
“It was called Production Superbike then,” Yvon said. “It was fun racing against Reg Pridmore and Steve McLaughlin and guys like that. The Z-1 was a good bike—a little heavy, maybe. The problem we had was with tires. If we used the ribbed tires, it would slide around too much. If we tried slicks, it had too much grip and would twist the frame. I tried everything, but I found the best was to put a front slick and a ribbed rear tire. That way I could get on the brakes late and have a good feel with the front end, and then I would just try to be careful coming out of the turns, not giving the bike too much gas.”
A move to NASCAR racing might have been possible, but the time wasn’t right. In spite of scoring a very solid 10th in the NASCAR Winston Cup race at the North Wilkesboro Speedway in 1973, he never made the jump to cars.
“I think it was my age,” said Yvon, who by then was approaching his mid-30s. “Plus, I was still getting paid well to race motorcycles, so I wasn’t quite ready to leave that.”
One funny part of DuHamel’s NASCAR debut was that before the race, he did a couple of hot laps around North Wilkesboro Speedway on a production Z-1 as a favor to a local dealer, and then he ran to the pits and quickly changed from racing leathers to a driving suit. Thinking the diminutive Yvon would have a tough time physically completing the 400-mile race in the hot and hard-handling stock car, the team owner had a backup driver on hand, but Yvon’s fitness was one of his strengths and he had no problems driving the car that distance.
By the late 1970s, with DuHamel in his late 30s, his sons were beginning to race, and he began to scale back his racing schedule, even though he still turned in occasional top performances, namely in the Canadian round of the Formula 750 World Championships in 1977, in which he finished second to Gregg Hansford.
To Yvon DuHamel, a motorcycle was a motorcycle. If it had two wheels, he loved racing it.
“I never thought about two-stroke, four-stroke, one cylinder, four-cylinder, shifter on the right or left,” he says. “I just got on the bike and after a few minutes I was comfortable.” CN
