Larry Lawrence | June 19, 2022
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Ballington Comes to America
In the early 1970s American road racers like Kenny Roberts and Steve Baker got a chance to gauge their skill level off former World Champion Kel Carruthers. In the mid-1980s, a new generation of Americans got that same opportunity when four-time Grand Prix World Champion Kork Ballington came to America and raced three seasons. While he didn’t win a championship here, Ballington, who was in his mid-30s, won races and was always a leading contender every time he took to the track in the U.S. Riders like Wayne Rainey and John Kocinski went head-to-head with Ballington and undoubtedly racing head-to-head with a Grand Prix legend had to bolster their confidence as they entered the world stage.
Talking to Ballington via internet video, he looked younger than most men who have passed the age of 70. Fit and trim, Kork, who officially was proclaimed a MotoGP Legend in 2018, looks like he could still throw on a set of leathers and turn some hot laps. He joked about aging saying he was, “Getting older, but no wiser.” The amusing statement was proved perhaps truer after Kork, who owns a garage full of motorcycles including some of his old GP machines, told me his regular weekend ride is a 1969 Kawasaki H1. “I take it out on weekends, and it still scares the shit out of me,” he grinned.
Originally from South Africa, Kork has lived in Australia for 23 years and keeps busy at his construction fastener business he runs with a son. “We’re busy,” he says. “I’m trying to hand it off to my son, so I get down to three days a week and eventually zero days a week.”
His credentials before coming to race in America in 1986 were impeccable—31 Grand Prix victories and four world titles, taking both the 250cc and 350cc crowns for Kawasaki in 1978 and 1979. But when Kawasaki dropped out of Grand Prix after the 1982 season, it appeared Ballington was done with racing. But he came back to race the Suzuka 8 Hours with teammate Rob Phillis in 1984. Then Steve McLaughlin put together a deal that gave Ballington the opportunity to race the Daytona 200 for the first time, riding with the British-based Skoal Bandit Suzuki team in 1986. Ballington qualified well, placing third in his heat race behind the factory Yamahas of Eddie Lawson and Jimmy Filice. But his bike broke early in the 200.
After watching his solid qualifying performance at Daytona, team owner Bob MacLean saw that Ballington still had speed, so he asked him to come race with his squad in what would prove to be the final season of AMA Formula One.
“I still had some steam in me,” Ballington said. “So, when Bob asked me to come race in the States for a season, I said, ‘Sure thing, let’s give it a go.’”
Ballington raced a MacLean Racing Honda RS500 three-cylinder, tuned by Stuart Toomey and things got off to great start. The opening AMA Camel Pro Formula One Series race in 1986 was at Sears Point Raceway in Sonoma, California. The track was notoriously dangerous in those days and Ballington, who was new to the track and to the RS500, started off conservatively. Clear through the qualifying heat races, Ballington chose not to show his hand and, in the paddock, there was some talk that perhaps the former World Champ was past his prime.
In the National, Wayne Rainey blasted to an early lead on the factory Honda RS500. Kevin Schwantz ran second on a Yoshimura GSX-R750 Superbike followed by Randy Renfrow on a Starfire Racing Honda RS. Ballington continued his measured approached and ran just behind the leaders, studying where he might make a move later in the race. Schwantz and Renfrow were battling up front. Rainey was having rear shock problems and dropped back. Meanwhile Ballington was there in third just behind the Schwantz-Renfrow battle, looking incredibly smooth and biding his time.
Schwantz dropped out of the race with suspected vapor lock that starved his Suzuki of fuel. That meant it was a Renfrow-Ballington battle to the finish. Ballington finally pulled out all the stops with four laps to go and took the lead. Renfrow responded and the two swapped back and forth several times. Ballington’s years of racecraft came into play on the penultimate lap when he waited and then found the perfect place to pass a lapped rider, leaving Renfrow stuck behind the rider for just one turn. That was all the gap Ballington needed and he won the race.
It marked Ballington’s first race win in nearly four years. Bob MacLean told reporters that he was mad at himself for not believing more in his rider. “I should have known he would do this well, but I didn’t expect it,” MacLean said. “After all, the guy is a World Champion.”
“It was a fairytale ride,” Ballington said of that Sears Point victory. “I couldn’t believe it. I hadn’t lost the touch and it was a lot of fun. I was really getting along well with the RS500. It was the first well-sorted 500cc GP bike I’d ever ridden. It felt light and nimble, like the Kawasaki 350s I used to race but had the power of a 500. It was a real joy to race. We ended up getting drunk that night with Schwantz attacking me and us rolling around on the floor. It was just an unbelievably great weekend.”
The one rider who Ballington said really amazed him his first year of racing in America was Renfrow.
“I’d never heard of Randy before,” Ballington remembers. “And he turned out to be as tough of a competitor as anyone I’d ridden against, even at the World Championship level.”
And to make Ballington’s point, Renfrow went on to win that final AMA Formula One Championship over Kork in a season-long battle. Renfrow won four of the eight rounds, Ballington two and Rainey one. Mike Baldwin also won the Laguna Seca race on his visit home from the GP circuit.
The one issue Ballington saw racing in America were the tracks.
“The safety issue was not at the forefront in the AMA,” Ballington recalls. “Some of the tracks were a bit hairy. Pocono on an RS500?! Going around the banking at whatever speed we were doing, and the banking wasn’t steep, so if you went off you were going to slam that steel barrier pretty hard. I didn’t look. I just closed my eyes around there.”
Ballington said a momentary lapse of concentration cost him a shot at the ’86 championship. It was at Mid-Ohio where he was leading when he hit a depression on the inside of the track on the final corner and crashed hard into the haybales.
“That cost me a bunch of points,” Ballington said. “Randy may have still beaten me for the championship, but I would have still had a good shot at it had I not fallen at Mid-Ohio.”
When it was all said and done, Ballington scored a podium at every Formula One round that season, except for Mid-Ohio and won two races along the way, adding a season finale victory at Road Atlanta.
“I didn’t look. I just closed my eyes around there.” -Kork Ballington
When the AMA discontinued the F1 class, MacLean had Ballington back again in 1987, this time in the highly competitive AMA 250cc Grand Prix Series. Again, Ballington had immediate success, winning the season opener at Daytona over his rival Renfrow. Amazingly, Ballington scored the Daytona 250GP victory despite crashing on the final lap. He thought Renfrow was right on him, but Renfrow’s machine ran out of fuel with less than a lap to go.
“I went into the chicane too fast trying to get around a lapped rider and spun out and hit the deck,” Ballington said. Ballington managed to keep his Honda RS250 running during the fall and got quickly back on the track and still won the race by eight seconds over John Kocinski.
Ballington and Renfrow would win races that year, but it was Kocinski’s coming out party and he dominated the series, winning five of the nine rounds en route to the title. Ballington finished a distant second.
“I told people then that John Kocinski had what it took to be World Champion,” Ballington said. “And it turned out he did.”
The other untold story of ’87 was that Ballington was promised Michelin GP tires before the season started. “But they never materialized,” he said. “So, I was on second-string Michelin tires, and I crashed chasing John several times because the front tires I was using were junk.”
Ballington came back and raced in the AMA again in 1988, but by then Kocinski was untouchable. Ballington got a solid start at Daytona and Road Atlanta and was a close fourth in the points behind Kocinski, Brit Alan Carter and Thomas Stevens. But then a broken wrist at Loudon put him out for most of the season. He came back and had a decent race at Mid-Ohio, but by then closing in on 40 he decided to call it quits after the ’88 season.
“Thinking back now, I had a wonderful time racing in America,” Ballington said. “It was great being a tourist and seeing different parts of the country. Bubba Shobert and I became good friends and played a lot of golf together.
“I’d like to think some of the riders benefited from having me there to race against. Rich Oliver once came up to me and told me he had to step it up and was going seconds a lap fast racing against me. I look back with mostly great memories of the racing and the people I met in America.”CN