Larry Lawrence | September 18, 2022
Cycle News Archives
COLUMN
Caylor’s Day at Road Atlanta
Starting in 1986, the Suzuki Cup Finals brought together some of America’s leading club and pro road racers to do battle for big bucks. In 2001, the venue was Road Atlanta at a time when the country was showing major resilience and unity after the September 11 attacks. Like in previous versions of the Suzuki Cup Finals, those races were the highlights of WERA’s big year-end finale. That year a surprising name emerged as the star of the show, a local Georgian named Chris Caylor, known to his friends as “Opie,” who knew every twist and turn of Road Atlanta’s two-and-half miles like the back of his hand. His track knowledge came in handy, and he walked away with a pair of Suzuki Cup victories as well as another podium during the weekend. His 2001 GNF performance instantly made Caylor one of the top up-and-coming road racers in the country. He would go on to score some impressive AMA Superstock, Supersport and even Superbike results over the next five years.
Chris “Opie” Caylor (7) leads Robert Jensen (52) and Mark Junge (57) en route to his Suzuki GSX-R600 Cup Final victory at Road Atlanta in November of 2001. Photo by Henny Ray Abrams
As a college student Caylor started out riding his sportbike on the famous Great Smoky Mountain Road called “The Tail of the Dragon” not far from his college town of Knoxville, Tennessee. AMA Pro Racing team owner Robert Nutt helped guide Caylor off the street and onto the racetrack.
What followed was a rapid ascension in the club ranks, eventually winning the AMA Horizon Award as the top up-and-coming amateur rider.
He became an instructor in the Kevin Schwantz School at Road Atlanta and, as a result, Caylor not only had numerous race weekends around the famous Georgia road course, but countless laps on the challenging and hilly 12-turn circuit doing instruction.
Chris Caylor in 2005. Photo by Larry Lawrence
So, when it came to the 2001 WERA Grand National Finals and the accompanying Suzuki Cup races, Caylor was more than prepared. In the Suzuki GSX-R600 race, the one thing Caylor’s track experience didn’t give him was a great launch. As a result, he was fifth on the first lap of the race, but very much in the lead group. But that didn’t last long. On the second lap, Caylor passed the riders in front of him to take over the lead from Mark Junge. From there, Caylor inched away and took the checkered flag by two-seconds over Junge and Robert Jensen.
“My plan was to get up front and then get away,” Caylor said. “I kept seeing ‘plus zero’ on my board and I was thinking, ‘You’ve got to be kidding? Who’s going along?’ On the fifth or sixth lap, I got a plus one and then the next lap it was plus two. I didn’t back off on the last lap.”
After the race Caylor revealed that one of the secrets to his GSX-R600 Cup victory was a last-minute gearing change. Strong winds over the course of the weekend caused him to decide on going up a tooth on the rear sprocket to help acceleration out of the turns. “It caused two more upshifts and downshift but was worth it. It seemed to work really well.”
In the SV-650 Cup Final, again Caylor got a lackluster start, this time it took him four laps just to get up to third. When he got there, he witnessed a relentless battle in front of him between Bradley Champion and David Yaakov.
“They were really battling,” Caylor remembered. “I saw how intense their battle was and knew I didn’t want a part of that.”
After he reeled the leading duo in, Caylor saw that Champion and Yaakov’s battle was actually slowing them down, and he saw an opportunity. Caylor outbraked the pair going into turn 10 and then made a perfect sweep up and over turn 11 and was able to briefly grab the lead. It proved to be the right decision to get by them while he could. On the next lap Champion and Yaakov, who passed Caylor going into turn one, took each other out. The race was red flagged and declared complete. With scoring backed up a lap Caylor was declared winner, scoring his second Suzuki Cup victory of the weekend.
Caylor may very well have scored a triple Suzuki Cup win that weekend had it not been for a slight mistake. It came in the red-flagged Suzuki GSX-R750 Cup final. Several of the top competitors changed tires during the red-flag break. Caylor didn’t. “The tire went off and it killed my drives,” Caylor admitted after the race. Still Caylor nearly won the race anyway. On the last lap he made the bid coming up under the bridge on the final lap and actually moved ahead of Robert Jensen for a fraction of a second, but Caylor’s front tire pushed putting him wide and Jensen stayed on the gas a little hard coming out of the turn and surged underneath into the lead and swept past the finish line just a fraction of a second ahead of Caylor.
Even though he hadn’t managed a clean sweep of the Suzuki Cup races he ran, a pair of wins and a runner-up finish was enough to make him the headliner of the event and earned him a handsome payday of $10,000 that helped he and his wife buy their first house.
Those Suzuki Cup wins served as a great launching pad into AMA Pro Racing. He’d already raced a few AMA Supersport and Superstock races before his big Suzuki Cup wins, but the confidence those victories gave him proved invaluable.
The 2002 season was Caylor’s first big stab at pro racing. He raced AMA Superstock as well as a few AMA Superbike rounds on an EMGO/Fastlap-sponsored Suzuki GSX-R750. During most of his rookie campaign Caylor scored decent but not spectacular results. He did manage to score just inside the top-10 a couple of rounds, but at the end of the season, he heated up and scored a sixth at Mid-Ohio.
Then his breakthrough pro race came at VIR in the 2002 AMA Superstock season finale. In that race, Caylor earned his first pro podium finish with a runner-up result behind Yamaha’s Tommy Hayden. But it was almost even better. Caylor came oh-so close to winning the race. He actually led Hayden across the start-finish line several times. That was the year Hayden was racing a factory Yamaha R6 against the Superstock field of mostly Suzuki GSX-R750s. Caylor was able to motor by Hayden, only to be outbraked by Tommy each lap going into turn one. On the final lap Caylor’s Pirelli tires were greasy and he couldn’t quite make the pass on the white-flag lap and that was about the only hope he had to win the race. He rode his heart out on the final lap but came up just six-tenths of a second short.
Chris Caylor’s performance in the Suzuki Cup Road Race Finals in 2001 earned him a spot on the Cycle News cover.
“I didn’t even know how to open the champagne,” Caylor remembers, laughing about his first AMA podium. “Tommy [Hayden] had to show me how to do it. Even though I didn’t win, it was such a great feeling sharing the podium with Tommy. I respected him and his whole family so much. It also made me realize I belonged and was capable of running with the top guys.”
It was another near miss in the AMA Superstock race at Road Atlanta in 2003. In that race Caylor hooked up with Vincent Haskovec and together they closed the gap on leader Josh Hayes. Caylor was the quickest rider on the track in the final laps, and it came down to a last-lap shootout with Hayes and Haskovec. But then the trio came upon a backmarker in turn six. Hayes and Haskovec got through cleanly, Caylor didn’t.
“The rider I got caught behind was John McGarity, I’ll never forget it,” Caylor said. “Here we were lapping him, and he actually pulled me down the back straightaway, I couldn’t believe it. But coming into the turn at the end of the straight he lifted early, and I had to veer left and that cost me any hope of catching Josh and Vincent.”
Chris Caylor (143) trails Vincent Haskovec in their AMA Superstock battle at Road Atlanta in 2003. Photo by Henny Ray Abrams
In 2004, Caylor scored a trio of top-10 Superbike finishes, during a period that featured over a dozen factory riders. He was also one of the leading AMA Formula Xtreme riders in 2005, scoring top-10 results in six rounds and finishing ninth in the championship.
He quit AMA Pro Racing after the 2006 season but continued to race select endurance events and other road races through 2019, even winning a pair of WERA National Endurance titles along the way.
Chris Caylor came up just short of winning the AMA Superstock National at Virginia International Raceway in 2002. He shares the podium with winner Tommy Hayden and third-place finisher Adam Fergusson. Photo by Brian J Nelson
Today, Caylor still gets on the track on occasion and operates Taylor-Made Motorsports in Marietta, Georgia, that specialize in sport bike repair and maintenance. He also helps up-and-coming racers when he can. One rider he sponsored was Stefano Mesa.
He looks back with fondness on his entire racing career and especially that epic weekend at the WERA GNF in ’01 that brought Caylor to the attention of road-racing fans across the country. CN
