AMA HALL OF FAMER, VMD 2023 Grand Marshal, and the only rider to win an AMA Supercross, Motocross and Road Race National

BY JOHN BURNS

PHOTOS BY GARY YASAKI, MITCH FRIEDMAN, DAVID DEWHURST, WISE ARCHIVE

It is altogether fitting and proper that we celebrate the career of AMA Motorcycle Hall of Famer Steve Wise by naming him Grand Marshal of this year’s AMA Vintage Motorcycle Days (July 21-23), as it was 40 years ago that Wise did a thing no other AMA professional motocross and Supercross winner had done before or since: He won the 1983 AMA National Superbike road race on this hallowed Mid-Ohio track, where the faithful gather to celebrate AMA Vintage Motorcycle Days every July.

He was also in victory circle at the Houston Astrodome National TT a year earlier, finishing third in his very first Grand National dirt track appearance. While that’s a whole other story, it helps cement Wise’s reputation as famous motorcycle racers out there. Honda was impressed enough to come calling with an offer to try out one of its CB1025-based Superbikes.

It’s a shame Wise didn’t have a few more years to drive his brand home: His career was cut short by injuries he suffered while making that difficult transition from dirt to pavement — specifically by the even more difficult transition from Honda’s RS1000 fourstroke Formula One bike to its NS500 two-stroke, but that’s also a whole different story. Born in 1957 in McAllen, Texas, Wise’s pro racing career was done just a couple of years after that Superbikers breakthrough, at the not-quite-ripe age of 26.

maybe the most versatile motorcycle racer in the history of the sport.

But for those of us of a certain age, nothing speaks more to Wise’s mastery of motorized twowheeled racing than his two wins on the made-for-TV “Superbikers.” Pavement and dirt racing rolled into one, from Carlsbad, California’s famed MX park/dragstrip, these races aired on ABC’s Wide World of Sports. Wise did not win the first round, in 1979; he took seventh on an ill-prepared Honda with drum brakes. He made up for that in 1980 and 1981 against the best riders in the world, including AMA Motorcycle Hall of Famers Kenny Roberts, Freddie Spencer, Eddie Lawson, Wayne Rainey, Jay Springsteen, Ricky Graham and Kent Howerton. Andrea Malherebe, Graham Noyce and others only added to the competitiveness of the era. In the three-channels TV era, when televised motorcycle racing was about as common as bipartisan agreement, those wins made him one of the most

“Dang,” I said to Wise on the phone a few weeks ago, “you were just a kid, just getting started.” He didn’t take offense, but he wasted no time in correcting me:

“Not really. My kid times were early on, riding with my father, Gary Wise, on our Pentons, when I was 13 to 15 years old. With my dad on hand, at 19 years old I won – on America’s Bicentennial, July 4th, 1976 – the 125cc National in Kaiser Ridge, Maryland, on my Jimmy Strait-tuned privateer CR125 from my father’s Honda dealership, whipping the likes of [AMA Motorcycle Hall of Famers] Marty Smith and Bob Hannah. Professional racing makes you grow up in a hurry. By the time I was 26, I felt like a seasoned veteran, like I’d been racing my whole life.”

At 17, Wise was 1974 Texas State MX Champion, beating established national pros like Gary Jones, Jimmy Weinert and Kent Howerton to get there. By 17, he’d notched a few top-10 finishes in AMA National events. Kawasaki had signed Wise to ride its KX125 MX bikes in AMA competition in 1976, but the KX was so slow compared to the radical new Honda CR125, Steve quit the team, bought the aforementioned CR from his dad’s shop — and promptly became the first privateer to win an AMA 125 National, beating the factory Japanese bikes; he ended the 1976 season in fourth.

Racing pro motocross in that rough and tumble era of 45-minute motos wasn’t easy. “Winning a motocross event,” says Wise, “even more than a roadrace main, which is really my claim to fame, your physical condition has to be absolutely premium, and everything has to go right.”

It didn’t make Wise’s life any easier when Bob Hannah appeared on the scene in 1976: “Bob Hannah was the greatest MXer of my time, I could beat him sometimes, but Bob beat us all way more than we beat him. Conditioning for 45-minute motos plus two laps, people have no idea how hard that last 10 minutes was. I’m husky, thicker built... I had the sprint ability, but not the endurance. I lost a lot of races in the last 10 minutes. I knew if we were coming down to it, and I was in the lead, if I could hear Bob close to me or if [AMA Motorcycle Hall of Famer] Broc Glover was close to me, I knew I was in for a race… but I still won my share of those long races.”

250cc class, and won the New Orleans Supercross on his birthday, the crowd singing Happy Birthday to him: “That was an incredible feeling, and a great year.” He podiumed in a handful of other races, finishing third in the SX series.

In 1980 a broken wrist, broken ribs and a knee injury at Daytona kept Wise from consistent training and full potential during the Supercross series, but he pulled it together later in the 250 Nationals, winning another July 4th National, at Red Bud, and finishing the season in third.

Battered and bruised after years of top-level offroad competition, a shot at roadracing would seem to be just what the doctor ordered. After winning the Superbikers again for the second time, in ’81, that’s exactly what happened: Udo Gietl, the Team Honda road-racing manager offered him a Willow Springs tryout on Freddie Spencer’s Superbike – a seat recently vacated with Freddie’s departure to Europe. Nice timing, too, since Steve’s factory MX contract with Honda was up.

In 1978, Team Honda came calling, and in his rookie year as a factory MX rider, Wise finished fourth overall in the 125cc National Championship and seventh in AMA Supercross points. In 1979, he moved up to the

According to his AMA Hall of Fame bio (Steve was inducted in 2001), that winter ride in the California high desert was the most intimidating thing he’d ever done in motorcycling:

“Here I was a motocrosser all my life, now riding this 150-horsepower Superbike beast, my first time ever on a pro roadrace course, at the very difficult Willow Springs racetrack — with winds gusting 50 mph. It’s only by the grace of God that I survived that day. I ran off the track into the rocks multiple times at very high speeds. I was shocked by the power of the bike. It was a real eye opener, but I loved it.”

Apparently, he stayed on track well enough for Honda to offer him a three-race contract for the 1982 AMA roadracing season. It all started well enough at Daytona.

Many are no longer old enough to remember when Superbikes were not the premier AMA road-racing class legitimized the series), and then to climb onto its GP machine in Formula One on Sunday. At first it was the seasoned inline-Four RS1000, but then there was a move to the new FWS1000, Honda’s million-dollar V4-powered racer designed to restore the factory’s four-stroke racing glory in the wake of the oval-piston NR500 disaster.

In his first AMA Pro road race, the ’82 Daytona 200, Wise raced to a perfectly respectable seventh on Honda’s suddenly old RS1000, while AMA Motorcycle Hall of Famers Freddie Spencer and Mike Baldwin finished second and fourth on the new FWS1000. They would’ve done better if not for the FWS’ talent for shredding tires.

Wise continued to improve for the rest of his first road-racing season, losing out on the 1982 Formula One championship by just three points to teammate Mike Baldwin in the last race of the season. He might’ve barged past AMA Motorcycle Hall of Famer Wes Cooley to take second instead of third in that last race and

(including yours truly), but from 1976, when it debuted as the AMA Formula 750 Road Race Series, American road-racing was more about Formula One, which consisted of grand prix-style racers. Yamaha TZ750s dominated the early years until GP-spec 500cc twostroke Hondas and others infiltrated later.

When Wise came on scene, Honda expected him to race its four-stroke streetbike-based machine in Superbike on Saturday (Honda’s entry into the growing AMA Superbike class in 1980 was the thing that really won the championship, but that’s never how he rolled. In Superbike he finished the season in fifth, behind Eddie Lawson, Mike Baldwin, Wayne Rainey and Wes Cooley — a crowd several notches beyond tough.

In March of 1983, Wise was off to a great Daytona start, too. Wise remembers being swamped by photographers and journalists from around the world, during a time when the 200 was an international event. For this 200, Wise and Baldwin got the mighty FWS1000, while Spencer and Ron Haslam rode a pair of brand-new NS500 twostroke triples — Honda finally having acceded to the two-stroke hegemony in open-class racing.

Wise finished third on his FWS, behind a pair of overbored Yamaha OW69 500s ridden by Kenny Roberts and Eddie Lawson. Spencer and Haslam’s new Hondas both Did Not Finish.

After a third place Superbike finish in round two at Talladega, Wise crashed hard in the next Superbike race in Riverside, Calif. — then bounced back a month later to take that famous Superbike win at Mid-Ohio, along with a second behind Baldwin in F1 on Sunday. Things were looking up, but after Daytona, Honda had retired the rider-friendly FWS1000 four-stroke. Now, Wise and Baldwin were expected to ride the 500. Steve had ridden the NS500 very little, and was struggling to learn its mysterious ways in the heat of battle.

1983 also brought a change in AMA Superbike rules and a new displacement limit of 750cc. Enter the Honda Interceptor, another new motorcycle to adapt to. Luckily, it was pretty adaptable. Spencer won the Daytona Superbike race on it, while Wise suffered a chain derailment DNF. Baldwin, AMA Motorcycle Hall of Famer Fred Merkel, and Wise won seven more events that season. On the other F1 hand, the NS500 remained a harder mistress to master for everybody not named Freddie: A crash on the triple at Pocono broke Baldwin’s left wrist and right hand, doing him no favors in that year’s Superbike championship: Baldwin finished the season second to Wayne Rainey’s Kawasaki. Crashing, as it doesn’t take most of us long to figure out, is not the way to go: “Top pros don’t crash much,” says Wise.

“It’s the amateurs, the people who want to be good who ride beyond their ability, who do most of the crashing…but us Pros end up there sometimes, too. At the top, we were pretty much all the same, thinking how to negotiate the race. Winning motocross, winning or top three, came down to conditioning, maybe you were hurt and weren’t able to train. Maybe your suspension wasn’t as good, but top factory riders all had good equipment.”

“Road racing is more analyzing the track, learning lines, having a bike that works good. In road racing, it was even more about the motorcycle; forget winning without a good bike. All the top riders are able to brake deep, know how to accelerate, have the right judgment when to pass and when not to…”

“Road racing is more analyzing the track, learning lines, having a bike that works good. In road racing, it was even more about the motorcycle; forget winning without a good bike.”

STEVE WISE

Learning all that while hopping from the user-friendly VF750F Superbike on Saturday practice to the twitchy and peaky NS500 wasn’t going to be as easy for Wise as it was for the more experienced pavement racers he was up against – not that it was much easier for them. While both Hondas claimed almost equal horsepower in the official specs (125 for the VF, 123 for the NS), the two-stroke’s 50% less displacement dictated its power would be peakier than the four-stroke’s. Add to that that the NS was said to weigh around 270 pounds to the Interceptor’s 470. That’s why Kenny Roberts called Superbikes “diesels.”

At the next round, at Road America, Steve crashed the NS hard in the rain. “Elkhart Lake – oh, my,” Wise told journalist Eric Johnson from MotoSportRetro.com a few years ago. “That’s where the two-stroke got me. I remember that day clearly. I was having a rough time switching from the Superbike to the 270-pound two-stroke F1 bike, which had the powerband of a light switch. I was really struggling jumping back and forth from one bike to and I said, ‘Udo, I’m done, I’m retiring.’ They gave me a very nice severance check, and I called it the end of my career.”

“I’m not sure if it could’ve happened, but a terrible mistake was made with me not continuing with the fourstroke FWS1000 for the rest of the F1 season. I loved that motorcycle and placed third on it at Daytona that year. In only my second year of world-class road racing, it was just too hard for me to jump back and forth between the two-stroke and the Interceptor. I hadn’t ridden in the three weeks before Laguna, I was cold, I wasn’t comfortable… It was my fault mostly, but I wish I could’ve raced that FWS1000 all year. Hindsight is 20/20!”

Steve’s teammate Mike Baldwin, who won more Formula One races than anybody, loved the FWS too, and is on record as calling it his all-time favorite bike.

Not really. “We all have hindsight, but I really don’t look back too much. I’m a forward-thinking person. My career the other. Freddie Spencer and Mike Baldwin seemed to adapt better, but they were much more experienced than I was.”

Even though his crash caused him to miss a few races, Steve was still in the running for the Formula One Championship, and decided to mount his comeback at Laguna Seca, not quite three weeks after the big Road America crash.

“At Laguna I went out for the first F1 practice, again just after getting off the Interceptor,” Steve told MotoSportRetro. “Kenny Roberts came by me and I said to myself, ‘I’m going to stay with him.’ I came out of Turn 9, and at around 80 miles per hour got sideways and slammed into a wall. When I came to, I was in terrible pain. I went to the hospital and was informed that I had internal bleeding, broken ribs and a broken collarbone. Udo [Gietl, Honda team manager] came into my room was great. I was no KR in road racing, no Bob Hannah in MX…but I could run with them on any given day and had my share of wins in AMA Pro racing. My career really speaks of versatility and overall ability. As a student of motorcycle racing history, I like to feel like Dick Mann is closest to comparison in the AMA world. He never won a professional MX, which may be the hardest, but flat track is tough, too.”

“I was a blessed young man from a small town in Texas, having stardom from being a world-class motorcycle racer of all sorts, making lots of money and having 35,000 people singing Happy Birthday to me in the New Orleans Superdome just before my victory that night. What more could you want?”

How about being Grand Marshall at AMA Vintage Days at Mid-Ohio, 40 years after your historic win there? Congratulations, Steve Wise, and thanks for sharing. AMA

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