Working for an AMA privateer team
Chris Onwiler - Jul 2, 2010

As a kid, I can remember watching AMA Pro races and dreaming that one day I would be a member of that exalted group. When I finally got my race license at the ripe old age of 29, it was a dream come true.

At 32 years of age, when I finally won my first and only club level championship, I knew that there wouldn’t be any teams knocking on my door and asking me to come ride with them. Even if I were good enough to make the cut, most would-be factory riders are well on their way in their career path by age 16. I still hope that one day I will be able to compete in an AMA round as a privateer, but it is so expensive and so difficult…

Article reprinted by permission of Track Day Mag. Click here for more information and to visit Track Day Mag.  

Last February, I attended the Indianapolis Dealer Expo, a trade show for the powersports industry.  I was walking with photographer, Kendrick Kirk when he stopped to take a photo of a racing bike at the Autolite sparkplug booth. The owner, AMA privateer Mike Morgan, was very friendly, so we stayed there and talked with him for about an hour.

Somewhere during our conversation, Mike mentioned that he needed help this year.  In previous seasons, Mike and his wife, Rachel, have been the entire team.  For 2010, new AMA rules require all racers to attend autograph sessions and fan walks. These events usually occur back-to-back and just before the racing starts.  This means that at least one crewmember must be available to take the motorcycle out to hot pit lane, prepare for the upcoming event and greet fans while the rider makes his way from the autograph session.

As we talked, Mike came to realize that my background as a club racer would make me useful for more than just pushing his bike around the pits while he signed autographs. 

At the professional level of racing, you can use all the help you can get.  The competition is so intense that the rider should be focusing exclusively on the job of being fast; he needs someone else to worry about all the rest of the details. 

My current work situation allows me the time needed to attend AMA race weekends.  Mike offered me the chance to join the RIM Racing family and I gladly accepted. 

This article is the first in a series documenting our AMA Racing adventures in the Daytona Sportbike class, from the perspective of a crew member.

As a privateer team, RIM Racing operates on a limited budget and can’t afford to contest the entire series.  For us, the year would start at Road Atlanta, the third event on the AMA Pro calendar.  I drove all night from Chicago to meet the Morgan family for Friday practice and qualifying. After a 20 minute nap and a few energy drinks, I was ready to go.

One of the reasons that Mike had chosen me as his crewmember was that I have more than 10 years of club racing experience myself.  All those years in the game help me to anticipate what Mike will need, which makes me more useful than someone who is totally new to this.  Still, Mike and I both understood that there would be a period of adjustment as we learned to work together.  It is vital that the rider be able to trust the work done by his crew.   There are plenty of stories out there about riders who have had some item come adrift from their machine, causing them to crash.   This is the very reason why many club racing and trackday organizations require that critical bolts be safety wired. Well, the AMA is different. It is a professional racing organization and expects its participants to have professional people working on the equipment.  Per AMA rules, only the oil filter, oil drain and water drain plugs need to be wired. 

Consequently, for a rider to be able to concentrate on going fast, he or she must have complete confidence that the personnel working on the machine aren’t going to make any mistakes.  In this game, a loose bolt could be lethal. Mike has been doing his own wrenching since he started racing so it will take some time for him to have confidence in me, a complete stranger, doing safety-related work on his motorcycle.  I understand Mike’s apprehension completely, since aside from my teammate of ten years, no one but me is allowed to put their hands on my race bike!

Friday practice was mainly about getting me up to speed on how Mike likes things done.  I spent the day learning when to put tire warmers on, how much fuel goes in the bike, pit setup, hot pit lane setup, AMA procedures for races and qualifying, location of the Dunlop tire tent, the procedure required to get the guys to change your tires, where to put AMA tire allotment stickers on the new tires, where to purchase fuel…  I could go on and on.  And on! The AMA has rules governing every move that a team makes and a simple mistake by a crewmember could be just as disastrous to a rider’s weekend as a crash.  There is still so much for me to learn! 

At the end of the day Friday, Mike had qualified 24th for Daytona Sportbike.  In the process, he recorded the fastest trap speed of the class at 166.98 miles per hour. This is a testament to Mike’s meticulous preparation of his motorcycle between rounds.  To put our accomplishment into perspective, the second highest trap speed of 166.37m.p.h. was recorded by the #1 machine of Danny Eslick.

An evening spent in an AMA paddock can either be the experience of a lifetime or a complete nightmare.  Since our machine had survived qualifying intact, we wouldn’t be pulling an all-night marathon to get it ready for the next day’s race.  For the first time all day, I could relax.  Looking around, I realized that I was at one of America’s most beautiful racetracks, surrounded by the people and equipment that make up the highest level motorcycle racing series in the country.  Intense competition rules the daytime but at night, once the bikes have been put to rest and the fans have all gone home, a mellow social scene develops. 

The RIM racing pit is a popular spot among the AMA regulars. Rachel cooks a great meal, always seeing to it that there is enough to share with any friends who might happen by.  She also makes sure to hand every visitor a Zola, since that beverage company helps sponsor the team.  The Morgans’ young daughter, Isabella, often plays hostess to the other kids in the paddock. During the weekend, we had a visit from Ducati rider Larry Pegram’s wife and their two beautiful daughters.  Injured Jordan Suzuki rider, Aaron Yates, stopped by with his daughter and his father, Lucky.  

In addition to her position as ringleader among the children of the paddock, Isabella is also in charge of making sure that any fans who stop by are given sponsor decals and she routinely cleans the Autolite RIM Racing Suzuki every time it comes in from the track.  (In case you were wondering, the “RIM” in RIM Racing stands for Rachel, Isabela, Mike.)

Road Atlanta was a Double Header weekend, so Mike would be racing twice.  Saturday’s event marked the first time I’d have the responsibility of getting our machine to the green flag and I was plenty nervous.  The start for Race One on Saturday was pretty crazy.  We had discussed the start procedures and made our plan of attack the night before, but that didn’t prepare me for the real thing. Dunlop tires require an hour of heat before use, so at an hour and ten minutes until the race I plugged in the tire warmers. Mike likes the bike’s engine to be at around 190 degrees operating temperature when he comes out to hot pit before the start, so when he went into the motor home to change at thirty-five minutes to race time, I began warming up our Suzuki. Dunlop tires will shred if they are not hot enough or if the air pressure is not exactly right, so with two minutes to go before the five-minute horn blew, I checked the hot tire pressures. We’d been tearing up tires left and right and went through three sets during the course of the weekend.  Tires represent a huge chunk of any privateer’s budget, so Mike was not at all happy that we’d been destroying them so quickly. 

As an AMA race begins, the five-minute board goes up and a horn blows, signaling the riders to head out for a sighting lap and then take their positions on the grid.  My job would be to strip off the tire warmers and send Mike out on the sighting lap, then grab the warmers, stands and air pressure gage and meet him at his grid position.  Sounds simple enough, right?  In reality, this is the most exhausting and stressful few minutes of the race for a privateer mechanic. 

Understand that within the AMA, there is a pecking order.  The factory teams get the pit stalls directly across from the Start/Finish line, while privateer efforts like ours usually end up far down pit lane.  When the riders return from their sighting lap, each machine is put on stands and its tires are again wrapped with warmers.  If you’re a factory rider, two or three of your fifteen crewmembers will make the five-yard walk across pit lane and see to your machine with the spare set of stands and warmers kept especially for this purpose.  If you’re a privateer like Mike, you consider yourself damn lucky if you have the help of one guy like me, running from the far end of pit lane with the only set of stands and warmers that your team possesses.

A fast lap at Road Atlanta takes about a minute and a half, so a sighting lap should be a little less than two minutes.  For me, that was a very HARD two minutes.  Our pit stall was close to the end of hot pit lane, approximately a quarter-mile from the Start/Finish line, with our grid position in the fifth row located a few yards further on.  When the bikes took off for the sighting lap, I threw everything Mike would need into the pit cart and ran at a full sprint to our position on the starting grid.  The front straight at Road Atlanta is separated from the hot pit lane by a three-foot embankment capped

with a three-foot wall.   When I arrived at the fifth row, I gathered the stands, warmers and gauge, looked over the wall and realized that I was facing a SIX FOOT drop to the track surface!  Often in racing, you’re faced with a decision that must be made in the blink of an eye.  Armchair thinkers with time to mull over their actions might choose differently but in this game, you just jump. 

Having survived, I scrambled to find Mike’s grid spot on the opposite side of the track, dropped the stuff in the grass and went to stand in front of the box painted on the asphalt where Mike would be required to place his front tire.  Just as I took a deep breath, the bikes began pulling up and I waved to Mike so that he’d be able to find his position.  The moment he stopped, I threw the bike onto the rear stand and went to grab the front stand that was sitting in the grass. As I turned to step back onto the track, I looked up and found myself staring face to face with a rider headed for the front row who was cranking a stoppie as he tried to avoid hitting me.  I paused and stepped back to allow the rider to continue and as I did, Mike yelled “F… him!  You’re here for me! Let’s GO!” 

I put the bike on the front stand, threw on the tire warmers, and measured the front tire pressure while trying not to burn my hands on the red-hot brake rotors. As I completed this task, the horn sounded again and the two-minute board went up.  I undid the warmers and took the bike back off the stands, sprinted back to the wall, hurled our gear over the top and scaled the six feet back up to pit lane.  At that point, I took my second breath in three minutes!

Mike got a great start and rode a brilliant race to finish twenty-first in his first event of the year.  He followed that up on Sunday with a twenty-sixth place finish in spite of having had his quick-shifter fail during the race. We made it through the weekend in one piece, headed home and began preparing for our next event at Road America.

RIM Racing is sponsored by Autolite, FRAM, Motul, Race Tech, SRP Custom Graphics, KENWOOD, Zola drinks, Shark Helmets, EBC Advanced Auto Parts, Vortex, Yoshimura R-D, Permatex, Turn One Motorsports, Superior Body Works, Barnett Clutches and Cables, DID Chain, Impact Armor, World Wide Bearings, Yoshimura R-D, Lockhart Phillips, Hotbodies and Bazzaz