IRP Green Flag

• Larry Lawrence

A WERA B Production race gets underway at Indianapolis Raceway Park in the mid-1980s, probably 1985. The front row consists of the Yamaha FZ750s of Brian Berney (56), Robby Braunscheidel (665), Bart Peterson (3) and Charlie Buse (741) on a Yamaha FJ600. Also in the photo are Michael Shilts (21), Kevin Fardoux (42) and Mike Snyder (31). If anyone can ID other riders in the photo please leave a message in the comment section below. IRP, being a centrally located track, used to attract huge fields of riders. Even by this time the track’s 2.5-mile road course was starting to show its age. IRP (now called O’Reilly Raceway Park) always made its money through drag racing and oval track racing so the road course was low on the priority list. Many riders considered IRP’s sweeping turns one through four as the perhaps the best combination of turns of any road course. The track is no longer used for motorcycle road racing.

A WERA B Production race gets underway at Indianapolis Raceway Park in the mid-1980s, probably 1985. The front row consists of Brian Berney (56), Robby Braunscheidel (665), Bart Peterson (3) and Charlie Buse (741). (Larry Lawrence photo)

A WERA B Production race gets underway at Indianapolis Raceway Park in the mid-1980s, probably 1985. The front row consists of Brian Berney (56), Robby Braunscheidel (665), Bart Peterson (3) and Charlie Buse (741). (Larry Lawrence photo)

22 thoughts on “IRP Green Flag”

  4. Thanks Stu

    I wish they would upgrade IRP and have road races there again. They had AMA nationals there in the late 1960s. For sure they would have to redesign sections, but I think it could be done.

    Larry

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  5. The 60 is definitely Hillbilly Hall. The 42 is me. This must have been earlier in the day, as I was run over by Ken Davis on the first lap of C Production, and transported to Methodist, shortly after this race. Not sure where I ended up in this race, but this was when I first realized that squeezing the widest tire possible on the Ninja 600, didn’t necessarily equate to better handling.

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  7. I was 424 as a novice, and when I moved up to expert my second year, they let me have 42. It’s my favorite number now, since it’s twice that of 21 (Eddie Lawson), and half that of 84 (Fred Merkel). That made me almost as fast as both of them combined….if you dropped me out of a plane at 40,000 feet.

    Boy, I forgot about Robbie Braunscheidel. I really admired that kid. He was only 18 when he started racing, and owned his own business already. Faster than heck (though a little wild), and a fun guy to hang with. A bit of a dog on top of all that, as he always seemed to snag onto one of the females our group would bring to the races.

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  8. Kevin,

    Love that about the number 42. Good way to look at it.

    Robby was a cool dude. I hauled Robby’s GSXR out to Willow Springs in the back of my Jeep pick-up so he could race Formula USA back when it was a Willow Springs Series. He crashed huge out of the final turn in practice, ended up in the hospital and I think he pretty much hung it up after that. He came up fast and was really showing serious progress. I often wonder if he hadn’t crashed at Willow Springs where his talent would have taken him.

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  9. He was kind of Schwantz like in that way. He just didn’t have that little voice in his head that said “hey, you might want to back off right here”. I seem to remember him pitching his FZ750 not long after he got it…St. Louis maybe? He was hurt a couple of times, but I didn’t know about his Willow crash. I think that little voice, or at least the ability to intelligently manage the limit, is the difference between going fast, and being at the top of the game. I had lots of kids come through the riders school, who had tons of raw talent, but didn’t want to put any thought into how it all worked. If they don’t start working the mental side of the game, then they burn out fast. I thought Bob Sandy was going to be like that, but he got wise pretty quick, after destroying a few bikes.

    I’ve got a bunch of pics from Indy around 82 or 83, and wondered if you might know who some of the guys were (since you’re such a Hoosier). I’ll have to dig those out and send them to you. No cool pics like you used to take, but I still find it interesting to see some of the old equipment, and who owned it.

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  10. I’m with you on IRP. I miss those days and just did miss the nationals they ran here since I moved here in May of ’72. I wish they could/would re-do the track and hold some AMA races or even WERA again. That would be titties and beer, and even more so that I’m only 5 minutes from any gate there now.
    Good times.

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  12. I have to admit, that there was a fair bit of that going on back then. We had a guy in the North Central that would get hammered every Saturday night, and then crash his brains out on Sunday, and he never understood why. He always blamed it on the CB750F he was running, rather than the fact that he could hardly open his eyes due to the noise from his bike. I think we all started to police each other in the later 80’s, as we had some pretty scary incidents that made us think twice about being on track with a guy that wasn’t all there.

    Speaking of scary incidents….anyone remember Larry walking around in white pants? I think I’ve got a picture buried somewhere….. Ok, to be fair, anybody who worked for WERA had to wear white pants, present company included. I made sure that any pictures of ME in white pants were destroyed.

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  13. BTW, Shilts is still around, and still fast, at least he is on ice. He’s pretty big into off-road these days, and hangs with a bunch of ex-roadracers from the North Central that have found that crashing on ice tends to hurt a lot less than asphalt.

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  14. Appreciate the updates on past riders.

    What’s your problem with white pants? What else am I supposed to wear to go with a white patent leather belt and loafers?

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  20. Kevin’s number story is amazing. In ’84 my novice year I asked for 24 from WERA, I think, East central region, but I moved immediately to Wisconsin. I got 424. In ’85 I asked for 24, 42 or … I got 42 in the north central region. I ran that number through 86. I moved to Mass. in July of ’86 there I ran into other expert 42s and occasionally had to run 42x. I am baffled that I have no recollection of running in to Kevin at any races in the mid west.

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  21. That is kind of weird, Ed. I do remember seeing a couple of other 42’s from the east coast show up in the North Central, but as you said, they had to run 42x. I ran that number through ’89 I think in the normal classes, and then till ’92 or so in V5. Not sure how we didn’t run into each other, as I ran D super through A prod in ’84, and then through B super in ’85 and ’86. By then I started to run low on money, and started teaching the New Riders School to fund my weekends. I also worked as a tech/grid official through ’89. I pretty much stuck to the midwest, with the exception of the GNF.

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