Larry Lawrence | October 17, 2022
John Ashmead scored two-career AMA Superbike wins and was an AMA National Endurance Champ
John Ashmead (holding trophy) celebrates his 1989 Daytona 200 victory alongside runner up Jamie James (right) and Kevin Rentzell who took third. Ashmead’s win was one of the biggest upsets in the history of the race.
John Ashmead, best known for winning the 1989 Daytona 200, has died. His sister Leslie said he died in hospice care in Stuart, Florida, on Sunday night (Oct. 16th) after a short battle with cancer. He was 59.
Ashmead’s upset victory in the 1989 Daytona 200 aboard a three-year-old privateer Honda VFR750 Superbike remains as one of the most unexpected wins in the long history of the storied race. His Daytona victory marked several milestones – it was the last AMA Superbike victory for the legendary Honda VFR750 and Ashmead also became the first rider from Florida to win the 200.
John Ashmead came to road racing through a peculiar path. Running from the police on his dirt bike, Ashmead made his escape riding through Peter Brady’s property. Brady, a road racer himself, was sunning in a lawn chair watching the whole chase transpire and thought he saw some talent in the young rider.
Brady was intrigued.
“I guess he did some checking around the neighborhood and found out I was the kid that was riding through his property,” Ashmead remembers. “The next thing I know is the guy calls me and asked me if I wanted to go racing. I thought he was kidding.”
Brady wasn’t. He and Ashmead began hitting club racing endurance events in the late 1970s and it became quickly apparent that Ashmead’s outlaw street riding had made him a very good rider.
Daytona always proved to be a track of milestones for Ashmead. He scored his first AMA Superbike points there in 1982 when he finished 12th in the Daytona Superbike race. A couple of years later he scored his first top-10 result in the same event. In 1984 Ashmead and teammate Lynn Miller clinched the very first AMA National Endurance Championship at Daytona with Team Ontario.
John Ashmead’s win in the 1989 Daytona 200 marked the final AMA Superbike win for the legendary Honda VFR750.
1985 proved to be a breakthrough year for Ashmead. Now racing with backing from Ontario Moto Tech and Brady, on an HRC Honda VF750 he became a contender in the Superbike championship. He scored his first podium at Road America in June of 1985, but that was nothing compared to what was in store for Ashmead a month later.
At Laguna Seca in July of that year, Ashmead won his first AMA Superbike race. He battled Kevin Schwantz early before Schwantz’s Yoshimura Suzuki broke leaving Ashmead in the lead. Unfortunately, the glory was short lived. Ashmead crashed and broke his thumb in the very next round taking him out of contention for the title. He ultimately finished fifth in the series.
John Ashmead celebrates on the podium alongside Rich Oliver and Chris D’Aluisio after Ashmead won a WERA Pro Formula USA race at Road Atlanta in May of 1993. (Larry Lawrence photo)
By the time the 1989 season rolled around Ashmead’s racing program was hanging on by a thread. Brady’s financial assistance was sharply reduced and Ashmead couldn’t even afford to pay his faithful mechanic Gary Medley at Daytona that March, but he came anyway. The two worked out of a one-third-sized garage space tucked off in the corner.
If faces were glum in the Ashmead garage coming into Daytona, qualifying didn’t brighten things up much. Ashmead qualified 19th for the 200 with a time of 2:02.337. By comparison, Yoshimura Suzuki’s Doug Polen was on the pole with a lap at 1:55.778.
“I knew I didn’t have the speed on that old bike to run with the factories in qualifying,” Ashmead said. “I figured that I could run a good race pace. I just approached it like an endurance race.”
The strategy paid off. An unbelievable set of events led to one top rider after another falling by the wayside. Late in the race it was only Yoshimura’s Jamie James in front of Ashmead. James was three laps from victory when his bike began to sputter. Thinking he was running out of gas James dove into the pits for a splash of gas. It wasn’t low fuel however; a spark plug had gone bad.
With just two laps to go the No. 37 flashed atop the electronic scoreboard at Daytona. Fans were standing trying to catch a glimpse of Ashmead, trackside photographers were quickly doing the same, hoping to snap off a quick shot of Ashmead in the closing laps since they’d largely ignored him most of the race.
“I looked up and saw my number on top,” Ashmead said after taking a quick glance at the scoreboard on the final lap. “I thought it was a mistake, I couldn’t believe it.”
Ashmead took the checkered flag about 22 seconds ahead of James, who limped to the finish on his sputtering Suzuki. Another speedy WERA endurance racer named Kevin Rentzell finished third on a self-built Suzuki.
Even James was happy to see Ashmead win the big one. “I hated to lose the race, but if I had to lose it, this is the guy I wanted to see win,” a sportsmanlike James said. “They’ve worked hard for years on no budget, so you’ve got to hand it to them.”
After the celebrations Ashmead said one of the most memorable moments came later that night when he was all alone.
“I went back to my hotel room and made myself a TV dinner,” Ashmead recalls. “I went out on the balcony to eat and that’s when it hit me – that was me who won the Daytona 200!”
Ashmead continued racing in the Daytona 200 for years and went on to set race participation and mileage records for the race.
John is survived by his mother Shirley Ashmead, sisters Leslie Felton and Ruth Ann Ashmead and brother Vaughn Ashmead.
