A Weekend of Firsts at Little Talladega

• Larry Lawrence
Riders line up for the B Production race at Talladega Grand Prix Raceway in February of 1986. Ben Beasley (371) sit on the from row. (Larry Lawrence photo)

Riders line up for the B Production race at Talladega Grand Prix Raceway in February of 1986. Ben Beasley (371) sits on the front row. (Larry Lawrence photo)

Riders grid for the start of the WERA B Production race at Talladega Grand Prix Raceway (aka Little Talladega) in February of 1986. It marked not only the very first race weekend at the newly completed track, but this race was the first Suzuki GSXR Cup race. The Suzuki GSXR Cup was a game changer for club racers and made it possible for them to actually make money doing club races.

This was the American racing debut of the GSXR and the bikes were up against the proven Yamaha FZ750. It didn’t take long for most of those Yamaha riders to realize they were outmatched by the revolutionary Suzuki and many sold their FZ to buy a GSXR during the 1986 season.

In this photo are Ben Beasley (371), Dave Schlosser (519), Adam Smith (88), Jeffrey Dean (246), Wink Price (63) and Don Leavitt (427). Bike 614 was the only rider I couldn’t ID. Doug Polen came from the back of the grid to win this race starting his amazing run in Suzuki Cup races in 1986.

5 thoughts on “A Weekend of Firsts at Little Talladega”

  1. I love your site, Larry. Here’s a video of Ben Beasley crashing as a Novice at Road Atlanta. Your info above says your pic was taken in 1986, but these are Expert riders, correct? I’m not sure you have the correct year since Beasley is a Novice (yellow plates) with a different number(441)in my video and he’s racing against a guy on a new GSXR 750. Could your photo have been taken in ’87?

    Regards,
    Scott Turner

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  3. Look at the leathers and helmet. The same. I think for some reason Ben started the season as an expert and then went back to novice. Cool video. Brings back the memories and shows how brutal Road Atlanta could be in those days.

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  4. ’86 was the year the domination began, but I actually rode a GSXR 750 in the Paul Revere 250 at Daytona in July of 85, so selfishly I’ll count that as it’s American racing debut. Fun race either way as Schwantz was on an RZ500 that night.

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