Top 10 Things and People at the 2014 Pomona Half-Mile

They’ve been racing motorcycles at the LA County Fairgrounds in Pomona since 1947, but they’d been racing horses even longer; the first county fair, in 1922, included harness racing and even chariot races. With the decision to move the ponies to Los Alamitos this year, it looks as if the 2014 Pomona Half-Mile might be the last one, but for now things are still up in the air. In any event, word got out, and this year’s Grand National Championship season-ender was even more of an event than usual. Relatively anyway. The beauty of flat-track racing is the up-close and personal perspective it allows; this year’s event was a veritable Who’s Who of American motorcycle racing.

Legendary tuner Bill Werner, 2012 Rookie of the Year Briar Bauman, and their brace of Monster Energy Kawasaki EX650s. After tuning Harley-Davidsons to 13 Grand National Championships under Gary Scott, Jay Springsteen and Scott Parker, Werner’s development of the Kawasaki into a serious contender a few seasons ago breathed fresh air into the modern Grand National series. The 19-year old Bauman won the Daytona Short Track on a Honda CR450R and finished 4th at the Peoria TT, but his best on the Kawasaki this year was an 8th at the Indy Mile. Pomona marked his return to racing after a crash at the Virginia Mega-Mile in August. Keep an eyeball out for him next year.

Gasser Customs’ gewgaws for late-model Triumphs and all sorts of other bikes were on display outside the main entrance of the historic old track, and the company sponsored a ride-in bike show that attracted things like fully streetable Champion-framed Triumphs. They were manly men in those days … GC’s “Titan” CB750 is a rolling catalog of its wares for the classic Honda.

I guess I should expect to see guys like Bill Werner at a National Flat Track, but I didn’t expect to see 1969 250cc GP champ Kel Carruthers, who is easy to spot because he still looks the same at 76 years old as he did then. He also won the 250 class at the Isle of Man in ’69 and ’70, but is most famous for tuning Kenny Roberts to his three 500cc GP championships. When he won the first of those on his first try, in 1978, KR gave much of the credit to KC. In fact, I shouldn’t have been surprised to see Carruthers at the dirt track: His career began on Australian dirt, and he finished 8th in the AMA Grand National Series in 1971. Roberts won the AMA Grand National championship in 1973 and ’74 for Yamaha, while Kel was team manager. The dirt is full of roots wherever you go.

Paul was packed onto a ship to Europe with his dad and the rest of the clan in 1966 to become a member of the travelling GP circus, and wound up settling in SoCal in 1971, where he became Editor of Cycle News and the one motorcycle journalist you’d want to be trapped with if you had to be trapped someplace with one. Breaking News: After 31 years at Cycle News, Paul Carruthers is leaving to become Communications Manager for MotoAmerica, the company that will produce the North American Road Racing Series beginning in 2015. Wow, maybe these guys are serious?

2013 GNC Champ Brad Baker (and 2009 Pro Singles champ) finished third on the night on his Screamin’ Eagle XR750 and fifth in the championship, but the 21-year old kid is just getting started. No attitudes here; BB seemed more than happy to sign posters right before the big race. He made mine out to Marc Marquez, who you’ll recall he had a little coming together with in Spain over the summer.

Who needs factory backing when you’re sponsored by a winery? It’s nice to have options, and 2010/2011 GNC Champ Jake Johnson has at least three: What’ll it be tonight, darling? Harley-Davidson XR750, Kawasaki EX650 or Ducati? This night, the Hypermotard-powered framer stayed parked (all the better to ogle it), but Jersey Jake did ride it to fourth-place finishes at the Springfield Mile, the Indy Mile and the Black Hills Half-Mile. On the Kawasaki, his best finishes were second and third at the Sacramento Mile and the Virginia Mega-Mile. And on the venerable H-D earlier in the season, he placed second and third at the Knoxville and Calistoga Half-Miles. At Pomona, he rode the Harley to another second-place finish, 1.5-seconds back from winner Bryan Smith, and finished third in the 2014 GNC standings.

Other options include – if you don’t want to race a Harley, EX650, Ducati, Suzuki SV650 or Triumph Bonneville – the CRF450R Honda, which won every Pro Singles event this year including the Peoria and Castle Rock TTs. Just remove the lights and street equipment of which there is none, shorten the suspension a little, acquire some wheels and dirt track tires, and you’re ready to race. Well, it takes a lot of talent too. At Pomona, the guy with the most was a 16-year old 130-pound Oregonian named Davis Fisher, 67m above, who won the race but missed out on the Pro Singles championship by one measly point to a 150-pound 20-year old from Michigan, Kyle Johnson.

If you need a bike, in fact, contact Mark Cernicky (below), who is almost recovered from a nasty incident that did not involve the CRF flat-tracker gathering dust in his garage. Though he did get run over by a good part of the field at the 2012 Pomona Singles race … for him, merely a flesh wound.

Bryan Smith didn’t win the championship, but he did win five races on his Villa-Esparza/Crosley Radio EX650, including a record-breaking fourth-in-a-row Sacramento Mile. The season was definitely going Smith’s way, who was leading the points chase until the penultimate Calistoga Half-Mile, where a rock reputedly punctured something and caused the EX to start smoking. Smith ignored the black flag and finished second, but got zero points for his trouble. At Pomona, the 31-year old Flint, Michigan, native put on a display of skill anyway, winning the Dash for Cash and the Main. Anyway, the man has a great-looking team, and big bucks according to some in the pits… I don’t see any Kawasaki logos anywhere though. You’d think they’d want to be involved wouldn’t you?

What is it about Michigan anyway? Jared Mees, of Clio, MI, won his second GNC Championship in three years the old-fashioned way, by finishing fourth at Pomona, winning two rounds earlier in the season and being on the podium ten times in 16 races. Speaking of fun for the whole family, Jared’s wife Nichole, who also races the GNC on another XR750, had to be trucked off to the hospital after sticking her foot in a hole in practice. She made it back on crutches in time to see the Main. Not just another pretty racer, Mrs. Mees’ best finish on the season was an 8th at the Springfield Mile.

Horse tracks always have the coolest bars, the kind of places where your granddad would’ve taken you, and the one on the top deck outside of turn one at Pomona is just such a solid old inviting place. Right outside it is a nice deck with a view of the whole track and the perfect spot if you’re in a wheelchair like our pal Cernicky. We were sitting there with a couple of Cadillac margaritas when Wayne Rainey rolled up. My camera was too star-struck to maintain focus, and I was even more incapable of speech than usual. Rainey rolled off, then Eddie Lawson strolled up, and we pinched ourselves. Then Eddie wandered off and Rainey rolled up again, and I said “Oh too bad, you just missed Eddie Lawson, you two could’ve fought.”

I like to say stupid stuff like that sometimes. Rainey just smiled and said, “Me and Ed come out together.” He might’ve said “came”, it was loud, but I think he used the colloquial like his dad would’ve. Dirt track racing takes us back to our roots.

Then we stood there with Eddie Lawson and Wayne Rainey while they played the national anthem, and Cernick and I both admitted later to being a little choked up. Eddie Lawson is probably sick to death of people like me telling him how the first race we ever got to go to was the ’88 USGP at Laguna Seca, and I don’t remember if he won or not but he was my hero. Ed said he couldn’t remember either and looked around to see if security was around in case he needed it. The part I did remember was being in a huge crowd when they played the anthem there and Ed Lawson had been a dot in the pits, and I was ecstatic to be free and at the USGP in California after years in the Army and at a dreary Midwestern college.

Wayne Rainey said he hasn’t been to Pomona in 22 years, which he remembers because it was his son’s birthday, October 11, which caused me to remember it was my mom’s birthday too, who would’ve been, ahhh, ’86? Impossible. In the car driving home, I wondered how I could’ve forgotten being there in the Corkscrew when Eddie Lawson won that GP? I’d spent what meager cash I had to buy a plane ticket out to watch it, and the whole scene where Lawson stopped at the Corkscrew on the cool-off lap and threw his helmet and gloves into the crowd all came back to me like an old Super 8 found in a box in the attic; all those loud dirt-trackers jarred it loose. Not long after that USGP, I moved to California and stayed. I hope there will be many more Pomona Half-Miles, but if this winds up being the last one, it will have been enough. The bar on top of the grandstands is close enough to Mt. Olympus for me, and the place was packed with gods.

MORE LATE-BREAKING NEWS: Promoter Charlie Franks reports that he had a meeting with the LA Fairgrounds people, where he learned plans to redevelop the track are on hold. Horse training will continue through March. Frank says he was told “the chances of us being able to put on the race in 2015 are 95-percent. This is really good news as the event has seen steady increases of 15-percent in each of the last four years. In addition, we created a few new strategic partnerships (Red Bull Energy being one), which has helped us continue to build and look to the future.”