Larry Lawrence | February 13, 2022
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Hurricane Hannah’s Last National
On a typical New England spring day in May of 1989 that featured intermittent light rain and sunshine, legendary motocross racer Bob Hannah raced his final AMA Motocross National. The track was Moto-X 338, better known to fans across the nation as simply Southwick. Today if you quickly look at the final results of that race, you would have seen Hannah finishing ninth overall and maybe figured the rider, who at the time was the all-time winningest in AMA Motocross and Supercross history, had gone out with a whimper. But the fact was 14 years after entering his first AMA MX National, the 32-year-old Hannah went out in his final national and was competitive as ever. Dig a little deeper and you’ll find that Hannah was battling up front in both motos on an underdog Suzuki, and had it not been for a mistake by Jeff Ward that took Hannah out in the second moto, at the very least Hannah would have finished on the podium and with a little luck he might have even scored the national win!
That fact that Hannah was battling up front, a full two years after he retired from full-time racing, was astonishing enough in itself. But then consider that the Suzuki RM250 was not the most competitive bike to be on in ’89. Honda won all the 250cc Nationals except for one, Troy, Ohio, where Lechien won on a factory Kawasaki. Consider that Ron Tichenor was the top Suzuki rider on the 250s in ’89, and he didn’t manage to score a podium all season. Southwick was fairly typical for Tichenor—he went 8-4 for fifth overall.
Even though he hadn’t been racing full-time for a couple of years, Hannah came to Southwick in decent shape because he’d been doing testing for Suzuki for a couple of years. What he lacked in race-toughness, Hannah made up for by having hundreds of laps on the bike in testing and his body was fresh from not taking the pounding of a full race schedule.
The only reason Hannah was even at Southwick that day, he now admits all these year later, was “because the promoter paid me to be there.”
Looking back at the race today, Hannah still speaks with his trademark confidence.
“I should have won that day, hands down,” he says flatly. “I was ready to win it and would have won it. On a rough track there was no one who should have been able to beat me. Maybe Lechien in the first moto, but not in two.
“I screwed myself by mixing it up with Wardy and Lechien early on in the second moto. It was stupid, I should have just hung back and let them tire out.”
I should add that during our entire interview Hannah failed to remember that Jeff Stanton won both motos that day at Southwick. His recollection was that Lechien won the first and that once he got by Jeff Ward in the second moto, he was chasing Lechien for the lead and the overall. While his memory of the second moto chasing leader Lechien was correct (Stanton made a late come-from-behind charge to win that moto), Hannah had completely forgotten that Stanton won the first moto. I interjected mentioning Stanton and Hannah paused for a second and said, “No, I don’t think Stanton was up there that day.” After texting him the coverage of the race he replied, “That’s why you guys write that stuff down, because us old guys can’t remember shit!”
Fading memories notwithstanding, Hannah was always a great rough-track rider, and they didn’t come any rougher than the sandy loam that is Southwick. Even though he was supremely confident about his chances in Moto-X 338’s sandbox, he’d actually scored just one national victory at the track and that was way back in ’78, in the 250cc class. But he was solid there throughout his career, nailing down podium finishes again in ’81 and his final full season of ’87, finishing runner up to Kent Howerton and Rick Johnson, respectively, in the motos.
Fans flooded to Southwick that day to see off Hannah. Technically, this wouldn’t be his final race, he ran the USGP at Unadilla a couple of weeks later, but most fans knew this would be their final chance to see the Hurricane at The Wick.
In moto one, it was Ward blasting off to an early lead on his Kawasaki with Stanton, Danny Storbeck, Lechien and John Dowd giving chase. Hannah put himself in a hole with a poor start, but he made up for it by being the fastest rider on the track, in spite of doing it in heavy traffic as he made his way up to the leaders. Six laps into the moto, Hannah moved all the way up to fifth but then his charge hit a snag in the form of local hero Dowd. Try as he might, Hannah couldn’t find a way around Dowdy. Hannah even banged bars trying to intimidate the rider nearly 10 years his junior, but Dowd’s track knowledge and toughness was keeping him on pace. Finally, after five laps of battling, Hannah found a way around Dowd and continued his chase to the front. He managed to get past Ward for third, but the extended battle meant Stanton and Lechien were too far out front to catch.
Still, third was not bad at all, considering his bad start, and with a strong moto under his belt, Hannah was in good position going into the second moto. If he could get a better launch and get up front early, an overall victory might be possible.
And that’s exactly what Hannah did. After a false start where Stanton’s gate didn’t drop, riders were called back for a rare restart. This time Hannah nailed a great jump out of the gate and found himself tucked right in behind Ward and Lechien. Lechien quickly got by Ward and opened up a small lead. Then a few laps later the crowd could be heard cheering all across the facility when Wardy and Hannah moved in on Lechien, setting up a three-way battle. Today Bob admits he made a strategic mistake at that point.
“My nature of always wanting to battle and pass people anytime they were in front of me, won me a lot of races and championships,” Hannah explains. “But sometimes it caused me problems, too. That day at Southwick I found myself in the lead group [with Lechien and Ward] and we’d sort of broken away from the rest of the guys. I should have backed it down a little bit, waited until about the 20-minute mark and then hit go. I was playing it smart, trying to stay clear and not battle those guys too closely, so everything was going good. When Wardy and I pulled up on Lechien, you could hear the roar of the crowd and that really gets your adrenaline pumping.”
Suddenly things went haywire. At the end of Southwick’s fastest straight, Ward lost control of his Kawasaki and swapped hard as he hit the face of a jump and flew all the way across the track and clipped Hannah’s Suzuki, putting Hannah down hard.
“I was all the way on the other side of the track, trying to give Wardy plenty of room,” Hannah remembers. “I had this line down that straight that worked well and had a ton of momentum and was in the air just about to go by Ward and all of a sudden he swapped out, came flying all the way across and took out my front wheel and it slammed me.”
And that was it, Hannah’s day was done. What might have been a storybook ending to his career, a victory in his final national, ended with a DNF in the second moto and a ninth overall.
Hannah went to Unadilla for the USGP a couple weeks later and thought he might have a shot of winning there since he’d won the 1986 USGP at the famous track and was part of the victorious Team USA at the Motocross des Nations there in 1987. “But when I saw the track, I told [promoter] Ward Robinson that he screwed me,” Hannah said. “They’d graded the track smooth, so it wasn’t the rough Unadilla that I was hoping for.” Hannah finished ninth overall there with a 9-12.
I asked Bob after such a solid showing at Southwick in ’89 with sure podium and a possible victory before the crash, why he decided to walk away.
“If Roger [DeCoster] had asked me to come over and ride the Honda I would have done it,” Hannah admits. “That bike was clearly the best out there at the time, and I know I could have done some damage on that thing. But they were stacked with riders, so I understand.”
So let the record show that Bob Hannah was competing for wins from the day he took to his first national in 1975, all the way through several generations of riders to his final national at Southwick in 1989. If you look at the raw results you might not know that, but for people who were there, Hannah battling for a win in his final national is another reason many fans of that era consider him the greatest motocross racer ever to throw a leg over a bike. CN