Larry Lawrence | May 29, 2022
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Fisher’s Dominant Loudon Weekend
Gary Fisher had a solid professional racing career, he even became a factory rider, but on one particular June weekend in 1972, “Fish” shot to the stratosphere and rode so far above the rest of the field that he turned in one of the most dominant AMA Grand National Road Racing performances of that era. What made Fisher’s Loudon ’72 even more amazing was the fact that in the Loudon Classic National (the second most important American road race at the time behind only Daytona), he raced a motorcycle he’d never turned a wheel on until that weekend, and which was almost completely stock.
Photos by Gary Van Voorhis
Fisher was a second-generation racer, whose father, Ed, was famous for winning the Laconia Classic (which later became the Loudon Classic when the track moved) in 1953. Ed owned a motorcycle dealership, so Gary began racing as a youngster. A motorcycle brat, as he referred to himself, Fisher was a very good off-road rider and said he gained a lot of confidence by finishing ahead of racing legend Gary Nixon (the two would become great friends and racing travel mates) in a scrambles event when Fisher was just 13 years old.
Fisher began road racing in the AMA Sportsman Class in 1968, and then he racked up a slew of strong finishes as a Novice and Amateur/Junior. He was on a fast track to becoming a factory Triumph rider and received Triumph support bikes as a Novice, Junior and into his Expert career, but then came the collapse of the British motorcycle industry and Fisher, like a lot of his fellow Triumph, BSA and Norton riders, got left out in the cold. So as a pro expert coming into Loudon, Fisher’s best result had been an eighth at Road Atlanta in April of ’72 riding a Ron Krause Honda CR750. Fisher was one of the few riders in the country racing the big Honda four-cylinder at the national level. Honda introduced its CB750 to the racetrack with great fanfare in 1970 with Dick Mann winning the Daytona 200 on the CR race version of the machine. But that was it for the Honda factory. It seemed they proved what they wanted to prove by winning the biggest motorcycle race in America and then pulled up stakes.
Ron Krause became one of Honda’s earliest motorcycle dealers in Emmaus, Pennsylvania, in 1959 and later one of its earliest auto dealers as well. So according to Fisher, Honda Racing was giving Krause backdoor help with his CR750/4 racing effort, even though as Fisher explains, the operation seemed far from semi-factory. And preparation of his race bikes was one of Fisher’s biggest bones of contention with Krause’s operation. In ’71 Fisher raced the Honda and never got close to a points-paying finish.
“The Honda in ’71 was in the developmental stages to say the least,” Fisher explained. “I didn’t even have the factory racing ignition at that point, so there was no ground clearance on either side. Fujio [Yoshimura] was working with us and would report back to Pops. And Ron was a Dunlop tire importer and that was a big thing because I could get all the tires I wanted. And we would run up front (Fisher led briefly in the ’71 Daytona 200 before blowing a motor) and had good speed but had a hard time finishing races. Then before the ’72 season Pops came over and things really progressed with the bike.”
Fisher explained that Pops had developed the first four-into-one exhaust pipe and that helped solved the bike’s ground-clearance problem. “We were loaded and ready to do some damage going into ’72,” Fisher said.
And at Daytona things really looked like they’d finally come together for the team when Fisher took over the lead in the Daytona 200 on his Pops Yoshimura-tuned Krause Honda about mid-way through, but a split oil tank put Fisher out after leading only a couple of laps.
“Ron was a really good guy, but like all Pennsylvania Dutch, guys like my dad, they were brought up to fix stuff instead of putting the new thing on that you have sitting in the box there. They were like, ‘Well, we might need that later.’ And that’s what happened to the bike at Daytona in ’72. I came into the garage and Ron had a rag around the oil tank. I asked him why he didn’t put the new oil tank we had on the bike, and he said they’d welded the old tank and it was fine. The day before the 200 I told Ron, ‘I want that oil tank changed before the race,’ and of course it didn’t get done and it let go down the back straight going into NASCAR Three. It should have put me down, but it didn’t. So, I left Daytona really ticked. We could’ve, no, we would’ve won the race had he put a new oil tank on the bike.”
Fisher then got a solid eighth-place finish on the bike at Road Atlanta, but he said issues still lingered and his anger from Daytona was still fresh on his mind as they looked towards Loudon. Loudon was a good-paying race, and as Fisher said, racing was his job and he needed to get paid. So, the decision was made to leave the Honda on the sidelines and get a Yamaha TR3 to race the National at the tight and twisty Loudon circuit. The only problem was, there were no TR3s to be found. Gary and his dad called everyone they knew. There were no TR3s in either Yamaha’s West Coast or East Coast warehouses. It didn’t look like there was enough time to get one from Japan. They couldn’t even find a spare bike from another racer.
Finally, the idea came to call Yamaha Canada and sure enough they had one TR3 sitting in their warehouse. It was the week of Loudon and Fisher’s dad took off and drove to Yamaha’s Canadian warehouse near Toronto and arrived back at the Holiday in Manchester (NH) on Thursday afternoon before the race.
“We didn’t have time to really go through the bike and make sure everything was race ready,” Fisher said. “Fortunately, when you bought the bikes from Canada, unlike here in America, they came with a full race fairing, aluminum belly pan, a full set of gears, spare parts, you were race ready. It was bare-minimum prep. Dad went through the top-end, and we switched back and forth the front wheel from my 250 with its big Fontana brakes. Everything was done in the Holiday Inn parking lot that evening. He fired it up about 10 at night and it sounded crisp, and I said, ‘Shut it off, it sounds good.’”
Fisher proceeded to blitz everyone in both the 250 race and the national. He said the 350 felt very similar to his 250, except, “It made the track feel a lot shorter.”
In the national, the trio of Harley’s Cal Rayborn, Kawasaki’s Yvon Duhamel and Fisher immediately gapped the field. A couple of laps in, Fisher passed Duhamel and then Rayborn around the outside of the final turn to take the lead. Rayborn was out shortly after with bike problems and Fisher split from Duhamel and everyone else, including guys like Mark Brelsford, Gene Romero, Kenny Roberts, Paul Smart, Kel Carruthers, Ron Pierce and Dick Mann. It was a command performance that included setting a new lap record and race record. Fisher was so dominant he was lapping riders after only five laps and by mid-race had built a 27-second lead before backing off and riding comfortable ahead of factory Harley’s Brelsford and Triumph’s Romero.
It was a great day not just for Gary, but for his whole family since he and his dad became the first father/son combo to win the Loudon/Laconia Classic.
With bonuses and race purse, Fisher took home $10,000, that’s about $65,000 in today’s dollars. The only extravagant thing he bought was a Hobie Cat sailboat that he learned to sail. “Oh, that and we had a good time,” Fisher adds with a laugh. “It was money, chicks and glory.”
The rest of ’72 went well for Fisher. Well enough in fact that he was rewarded with a factory Yamaha ride in ’73. “They hired Don [Castro] to take points away from [Mark] Breslford at the dirt tracks and me to take points away from him at the road races, so that could help Kenny [Roberts] win the championship,” Fisher adds.
This year at the 99th anniversary of the Loudon Classic, the Fishers will both be honored as Grand Marshals. Even though both Ed and Gary had overall successful racing careers, they both will forever be linked to their exceptional rides at the Loudon/Laconia Classic 19 years apart. CN