Racing legends, including Bob “Hurricane” Hannah and Broc Glover attend the Yamaha 60th Anniversary Celebration at the company’s U.S. headquarters.
Yamaha Motor Corporation, U.S.A., officially celebrated Yamaha’s 60th anniversary as a motor company during a gathering at the company headquarters in Cypress, California, today, capping the event by inducting 10 Yamaha motorcycle and ATV racing legends to its Wall of Fame, which is located in the building’s main hallway.
The event marked Yamaha’s sixth decade of producing powersports products, which began with a single motorcycle model, the 125cc two-stroke YA-1 in 1955, as a way for parent company Nippon Gakki to branch out from its primary business of building pianos. Going from concept to production in just 16 months, the YA-1 quickly became successful in domestic racing events, launching Yamaha on a path that would reap numerous world and national championships in a variety of motorcycle racing disciplines.
Most of today’s Wall of Fame inductees are household names in their given disciplines, including four of Team Yamaha’s most iconic motocross stars, which constituted a virtual dream team in the late 1970s—Bob “Hurricane” Hannah, Broc “Golden Boy” Glover, Mike “Too Tall” Bell and Rick “The Lumberjack” Burgett. All four men won at least one AMA Championship during their time with Yamaha, and in 1978 they led a Yamaha sweep of the AMA 125cc National Championship (Glover), the AMA Supercross and 250cc National Motocross championships (Hannah) and the AMA 500cc National Motocross Championship (Burgett). Four-time 500cc World Road Racing Champion Eddie Lawson, three-time 500cc World Road Racing Champion Wayne Rainey and multi-time AMA 250cc Grand Prix Road Racing Champion Rich Oliver, multi-time off-road racing champions Jason Raines and Ty Davis, and GNCC ATV Champion Bill Balance, who won the ATV title an amazing nine times in a row.
Along with the great Kenny Roberts, Hannah is arguably one of the two most prolific Yamaha factory riders of all time. Bursting onto the scene by winning the AMA 125cc National Motocross Championship in 1976, Hannah went on to become a three-time AMA Supercross Champion (1977, ’78 and ’79) and also won back-to-back AMA 250cc National Motocross Championship in 1978 and ’79. Hannah also bested the top Europeans in the sport, including his hero, Roger DeCoster, when he won the Trans-AMA Championship in 1978. Hannah was sidelined for all of 1980 after he was injured in a waterskiing accident, but although he never won another title for Yamaha, and although he went on to ride for two other factory teams, he is still synonymous with Yamaha.
Naturally, the larger-than-life Hannah was his usual hilarious self while accepting his Wall of Fame award, joking that when Yamaha Vice-President of Motorcycle Operations introduced U.S. Racing Manager and Wall of Fame emcee Keith McCarty by stating that he’d had the pleasure of working with McCarty for the past 20 years, that was only because he hadn’t spent 7 years sharing a motel room with him—although Hannah quipped that he wanted to make it clear that the two “stayed in separate beds.”
“I’m glad that Yamaha brought back the yellow and black, from when the men were men and we wanted to stay that way,” Hannah joked. “But seriously, Yamaha is a family, and they go out of their way to prove that all the time. Yamaha was a great place to start, and I guess I am going to end here, too, although I do need to get my address to Bob Starr because my checks have stopped coming.”
That reference wasn’t just a joke. As McCarty explained, during his heyday, the forward-thinking Hannah chose to have his factory salary payments deferred rather than receiving them in a lump sum.
“There are a million stories I could tell you about Bob Hannah,” said McCarty, who served as Hannah’s mechanic during the glory years. “He liked explosives, he liked guns and he liked to play jokes on people, but he also has a big heart. I can remember times when we would being our thing on one side of the fence in the paddock, and there would be a kid on the other side, and it was not unusual for Bob to walk over and lift the kid over the fence and put him on the bike or give him his trophy at the end of the day and make it something very special for that kid. So, underneath the gruff, hard exterior, there is a genuinely big-hearted guy.”
Glover enjoyed a long and extremely successful career with Yamaha, joining the team in 1976 and going on to become the first rider to win the AMA 125cc National Motocross Championship three times in a row (1977, ’78 and ’79), but he was also terrific on the fire-breathing ground-pounding 500cc two-strokes works machines, winning the AMA 500cc National Championship in 1981, ’83 and ’85, giving him the most outdoor motocross titles of any factory Yamaha rider to this day. He also experienced international success as a winner of the 1978 125cc U.S. GP, the 1981 Trans-USA Series. He was also a team member of the victorious USA teams in the Trophee des Nations and Motcross des Nations in 1983. He earned another Motocross des Nations win with Team USA in 1984. Glover retired from racing when he left Yamaha in 1988, making the longest tenured factory Yamaha motocross rider of all time.
McCarty recounted the story of how Glover suffered a terrible wrist injury while he was battling Jeff Ward for the AMA Supercross Championship in 1985, and he had to receive injections to keep the wrist from becoming more inflamed.
“The size of the needle that this doctor brought out and stuck in Broc’s wrist…I’m a pretty tough guy and can handle a lot of stuff, but it made me sick to watch that,” McCarthy recounted. “To see Broc’s heart and determination to go out there and put everything on the line and go out there and beat Ward that day, it proved to me that he is a lot tougher than he looks.”
“I had dreamed of becoming a professional motocross racer from the time that I first watched ‘On Any Sunday,’ and I was barely 16 years old when [then-Yamaha team manager] Pete Schick called me and asked what plans I had,” Glover recounted. “They signed me to a ‘four-month trial period,’ and they were going to put me in the Trans-USA Series, but at the time I didn’t have enough points because I had never raced a professional race. So, they introduced me to this guy named Ed Scheidler, who was going to be my mechanic. We went racing together, and Ed was focused on winning the CRC Vet Championship while was focused on showing Yamaha how good of a rider I was. So we had some words over that, and he finally sat me down one day—and I still remember it distinctively to this day—and he said, ‘Look! They’re going to sign you for next year, so just put your ass on the seat and your hand on the throttle, shut up and ride the thing!’”
Bell was a factory Yamaha rider from 1977 through 1983 and won the 1980 AMA Supercross Championship by claiming a record-setting seven main events in a single season. He said that he was thrilled to be a part of the event.
“This is really cool,” Bell said. “For me, I’ve only ever been a Yamaha guy, since 1977,” Bell said. “It is so nice that Yamaha keeps us all part of the family. It is pretty unique that Yamaha puts so much effort into this to get us all back together again. I haven’t seen some of these guys in a decade.”
Bell said he fondly recalls his days as a Team Yamaha factory rider, although he downplays the notion that he, Hannah, Glover and Burgett were superheroes—or if they were, they certainly didn’t realize it at the time.
“We were just a bunch of kids,” Bell said. “I can still remember when Yamaha flipped Dave Osterman [Bell’s mechanic] the keys to a team boxvan and started getting me a plane ticket for every weekend. We were just 19 years old. It was definitely an era of innocence. We still all laugh about it now.”
Joining Team Yamaha in 1976, Burgett earned one just championship during his six years as a factory rider, but it was considered to be among the most prestigious of the outdoor titles at the time, the AMA 500cc National Motocross Championship, in 1978. He would go on to race for Yamaha through 1981 before scaling back his time on the national motocross circuit and then ultimately retiring in 1983. He now owns a trucking company.
“I’m just happy to be a part of this,” Burgett said. “I think it’s great. I get to see some old friends.”
A burly rider from the Pacific Northwest whose physical size and strength were well-suited to a 500cc motocross bike, Burgett earned the nickname “The Lumberjack.” However, he still jokes about the time that Yamaha, in an effort to help either Glover or Hannah win the 1977 AMA 125cc National Motocross Championship, recruited him, Pierre Karsmakers and Mike Bell to ride 125s as possible spoilers for Suzuki’s Danny LaPorte at the series finale in San Antonio, Texas.
“They gave me a stock bike, and my weight back then was 1985 lbs.!” Burgett said. “I was last off the starting line, and I pretty much just rode around.”
Raines, a five-time AMA U.S. Hare Scrambles Champion (2003, ’04, ’07, ’08 and ’09), also stands out as one of the only riders to win a U.S. Hare Scrambles round, a GNCC round and an AMA National Enduro round on three consecutive weekends. Raines has maintained his ties with Yamaha by running its successful traveling off-road demo program, and he also maintains a riding school known as Raines University. Raines said that his proudest Yamaha moment doesn’t so much have to do with his racing accomplishments, however.
“You always remember your first win,” Raines said. “But I always tell people that as I get older you don’t always remember every trophy that is on the wall. You remember the people you meet and the places you go. Me and my dad traveled the world together, doing this and having fun. That’s what I remember the most.”
Davis began racing in the desert before going on to win the AMA 125cc West Supercross Championship. After returning to off-road racing, he earned the AMA National Hare and Hound National Championship for Yamaha in 1998 and backed it up by giving Yamaha its first AMA National Enduro Championship in 1999. He also won the Hare and Hound title in 2001 and the WORCS Champuionship in 2003. Davis has raced and won in virtually every off-road discipline. Funny that he recalls his first few years in off-road racing as ‘Hell.”
“I said, ‘I don’t want to do this, this is too much,’” Davis said. “I came in here planning to kick everyone’s but, and they kicked mine. Off-road racing is extremely difficult. But a buddy of mine told me to hang in there for one more year, so I anchored down, trained and practiced a lot, and it turned my whole life around. It’s pretty amazing, and I’ve met a lot of amazing people—going to International Six Days [Enduro], and going all over the country and all over the world.”
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