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A race nobody seemingly wanted to win
By Kent Taylor
It was a question that surely must’ve been asked that afternoon of March 12, 1972, at Daytona International Speedway: was anybody going to win the 1972 Daytona 200? One after another, the greatest racers in the world were taking turns running out in front one moment, only to be pounding the fuel tank of their broken motorcycle the next.
Early in the race, Art Baumann was leading on his Suzuki before engine problems cropped up. Yvon Duhamel and his Kawasaki took over before he broke down as well, handing the top position over to another Suzuki piloted by Jody Nicholas, whose machine would also seize (“welded solid,” reported Cycle News). Other front-runners included Yamaha rider Gary Fisher, privateers Dave Smith and Ray Hempstead (who had passed race leader Phil Read on a Norton), as well as a rookie by the name of Kenny Roberts. They were some of the 11 riders (according to CN) who would be at the front of the pack in what was at that time the most important motorcycle road race in the world.
Somebody had to win, and as the race neared the end, it appeared as if Geoff Perry, the Suzuki-sponsored ace from New Zealand, was going to be that man, carrying the Team Suzuki flag to victory while representing his luckless fellow soldiers whose steeds had failed them. Then, with just a little more than a couple of laps remaining, Perry’s Suzuki gave up the ghost. It was as if the Grim Reaper himself, tasked with the termination of every Suzuki in the field, had sadistically bided his time until the very end before poking a bony finger in the drive chain of the liquid-cooled racer, snapping it like an Alaskan snow-crab leg. Geoff Perry became yet another story of a heartbreaking, last-minute failure that would rob a racer of a certain victory, a tale too tragic to be true.
Which is exactly what it was. But more on that in a moment.
Motorcycle racing can be similar to other sports when it comes to last-minute or even last-second defeats: football field goals as time expires in the fourth quarter, home runs in the bottom of the ninth inning, buzz-killing buzzer baskets and so on. Late-race failures aren’t as common as they once were, but in the 1970s, motorcycle racing was less like a sprint and much more like a marathon, as crews and racers struggled to walk the fine line between glory and disaster. Perry’s broken chain was disastrous, but it turned out that he was a long way from glory.
The eventual winner of the 1972 Daytona 200, Don Emde, explains: “To my surprise, a few weeks later I got a letter from the AMA that said Perry was never in the lead at all. To explain what had happened, you first need to understand the starting procedure at the time at Daytona. Rather than provide a warmup lap, the 62 starters were instructed to turn our machines around and bump-start them backward on pit lane, then turn around and return to our starting position. Then, when the flag fell to start the race, instead of turning left into the infield as they do today, the field went straight onto the 2.5-mile tri-oval track used by NASCAR. We went around the first lap on that oval before finally coming into the infield to begin the second lap.
“What happened in 1972 was that when all the riders were getting their bikes started in pitlane, Geoff Perry’s bike was only running on one cylinder, and he stopped way down by the entrance to pitlane. His crew, however, was waiting for him at his starting position on the grid, and it took a little time to run there to him. By the time they had the plug changed, the race had started, and we all sped around the 2.5-mile tri-oval—except for Perry, who was still sitting with a dead engine in the pitlane.”
“So, they finally got his plug changed, but as they bump-started his bike, the field was coming around to the start/finish area off the track to go into the infield. By then, the officials had changed all of the orange cones to direct anyone in the race coming out of the pits to turn left into the infield. By the time Perry reached the end of the pit lane, he was directed to turn left into the infield and follow the pack coming out of turn one.
“Geoff Perry absolutely rode a great race and did, in fact, make his way all the way through the pack and eventually passed me. But what wasn’t apparent at the time was that Geoff had missed the first 2.5 miles of the first lap around the oval. That meant that when he passed me, he was actually only un-lapping himself and not taking the lead.”
A fouled plug and a broken chain. In between were 200 miles of brilliant riding. Thanks for the effort. Now, please send us a check for $330. Hopefully, even the Grim Reaper would think that was a bit harsh! CN
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