| August 18, 2024
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Still Going Strong
By Kent Taylor
50 years later, the Moto-Masters Park motocross track in Mexico, New York, which held three Nationals in the early to mid-1970s, is still going strong.
The Moto-Masters track is still running races and will celebrate its 50th anniversary with a special vintage race this month.
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When motocross fans take a quick glance at a 2024 MX Sports Pro Racing/AMA race schedule, they may be thinking that they are looking at last year’s calendar. Or maybe even the year before that, because the itinerary has become a “second verse, same as the first” kind of experience, with the same promoters and their respective racetracks making repeat appearances. Every year, the song remains the same, as the outdoor Nationals return to the same venues and fans realize that they will have to stare down several hundreds of miles of windshield time to get to a pro motocross race.
Turn back the clock to the early days of MX, however, and you will find a time when the race powers seemed much more willing to spread the wealth. Professional motocross was sowing its seeds across the USA, giving race fans in places like Herman, Nebraska; Midland, Michigan, and Olive Branch, Mississippi (home of America’s largest Bonsai nursery) a chance to see the budding stars bring the moto circus right to their hometowns.
One such track that had a brief fling with the AMA was the Moto-Masters facility, located in Mexico, New York, and just a short drive from the Canadian border. The Moto-Masters held the first of their three professional motocross events on August 18, 1974, and the top teams brought their best riders for the 250/500cc National Championship race. Both series were winding down and the points championship in both classes was still within the grasp of many top pro riders.
The results section alone provides a motocross history lesson. Racers who would later become champions on Japanese machines competed in Mexico on motorcycles that now belong to the ages. Bultaco, Montesa, Ossa, Can-Am, Maico, and even a Penton were represented in the top 20 in the two classes.
From 1975 through 1977, race schedulers kept 250cc and 500cc classes from competing on the same day, meaning the top riders theoretically had a chance to compete for more than one championship. In 1974, however, the riders were forced to make a choice. Thus, the two classes were somewhat watered down. Jim Weinert, Steve Stackable and Gary Semics chose the big bikes. Gary Jones, Marty Tripes and Pierre Karsmakers were doing battle in the 250cc class.
Marty Tripes won the AMA 250cc AMA National Motocross at Moto-Masters Park in Mexico, New York, in 1974. It was the first of three consecutive Nationals that the facility would host.
1970s motorcycles were rolling experiments; riders and mechanics were dabbling in weird science as they sought ways to make their machines fast, lightweight, and durable. Lab rats on wheels! It must have been a frustrating process, as teams sought to both test new ideas and win races on the same day. This was the advent of long-travel rear suspension for dirt bikes. More suspension was good, but shock technology was lagging behind, and performance would diminish significantly over the course of the moto. Reliability was also an issue, with metallurgy often misunderstood and wrongly applied. Ask Jimmy Ellis, the long-suffering Team Can-Am rider. Navigating a deep mudhole on the track, Ellis’ machine snapped a handlebar in two! “I didn’t fall,” bemoaned the Connecticut rider. “[I] just went through the mudhole and it broke.”
Ellis would return to win the second 250cc moto that day. It is a textbook illustration of these early days of motocross, as many rider/bike combos would demonstrate the practice of “win one, break one.” The first works bikes were devils in disguise. As Team Honda’s Warren Reid later expounds, “They were always trick. They weren’t always good.”
Ellis’ misfortune handed the victory to Marty Tripes, who was onboard a Husqvarna in 1974. Tripes took the first moto win and the eventual overall, even though he could only muster a fifth-place finish in moto number two. Other riders, like Team Yamaha’s Tim Hart (second and sixth) and Pierre Karsmakers (seventh and second) also had good and bad motos. “Consistency, or a lack thereof,” wrote CN’s Lane Campbell, “was a key factor in today’s 250cc race.”
It was a different story in the 500cc class that day, with Weinert winning both motos. Weinert, who hailed from Middletown, New York, was in a tough battle for the title with CZ rider Tony DiStefano long before he was known as Suzuki’s “Tony D.” DiStefano was just 17 years old (and carried the same number on his CZ) and was the points leader in the class, only to suffer a thumb injury shortly before the New York round. In Mexico, Tony rode with a modified twist grip on his bike (an “orthopedic throttle” according to his rival Weinert). It would be neither the throttle nor his thumb that would plague Tony on this day, though. Instead, his Czechoslovakian motorcycle would let him down, with both engine and chain issues. DiStefano still managed a top-five overall finish, but well behind Weinert, who was on his way to winning his first National Championship.
The AMA granted the Moto-Masters facility two more Nationals, with the series returning in 1975 and ’76 for 500cc Championship events. The natural-terrain track, with its signature “Devil’s Drop Downhill” (Lucifer’s Ladder when run in the other direction), is still in existence and going strong.
“The [Moto-Masters] track is similar but not the same as it was,” says track owner Richard “Bunk” Bristol, who has been the track’s sole proprietor for the last seven years. “Over the years, we’ve had to make changes to the track for the modern bikes, and it has more jumps. We also modify it for the vintage races to suit the older bikes.”
Bunk attended the track’s first National in 1974. “I was there,” he said. “We lived just up the road and, well, I probably shouldn’t tell you this, but we snuck in and had a good time. I don’t really remember the race. It was a long time ago.
“It’s interesting the track has made it this long,” says Bunk. “You don’t need a million dollars to keep it running, so that’s probably why.”
The Moto-Masters track is one of the oldest, if not the oldest, motocross tracks in New York. Bunk says it could be the oldest but says Unadilla and Thunder Ridge have been around for a long time, too.
On August 17-18, the Moto-Masters Park will celebrate the 50th anniversary of its first National with a vintage race weekend. The AHRMA event will undoubtedly be a resurrection of great old brands powered by sweet-smelling pre-mix! It will be 1974 all over again! CN
