Randy Renfrow stands atop the podium at Loudon in 1986. Sharing the podium with him are Kork Ballington and Wayne Rainey. Renfrow won the final AMA Formula One Championship that year. Ballington won the final AMA F1 race later that year at Road Atlanta. (Larry Lawrence photo)
It’s hard to believe, but it was 25 years ago that the final AMA Formula One road race took place at Road Atlanta. Kork Ballington won the final race in a great battle over Randy Renfrow, who earned the 1986 championship.
The last Formula One road race went out with little fanfare. It was suspected, but not yet confirmed by the AMA at that time, that the class was going away. Superbike had surpassed Formula One in popularity several years earlier. For the most part the factories left the class and even by the mid-1980s the handwriting was one the wall that two-strokes would eventually go the way of hand shifters.
The class was born in 1976 as the AMA Formula 750 Road Race Series. It was an outgrowth of the AMA Grand National Championship at a time when road racing was growing in America primarily by way of the thriving club racing scene of the 1970s. Formula One races continued to count in the AMA Grand National Championship standings through 1985.
The inaugural season featured only four races – Daytona, Loudon, Laguna Seca and Riverside, Calif. Venezuelan Johnny Cecotto won the Daytona opener, Steve Baker scored wins at Loudon and Laguna and Kenny Roberts wrapped up the season with a victory at Riverside. Oklahoman Randy Cleek strung together a string of top finishes, including two podiums, to win that first F1 title (then called Formula 750). A year later Cleek was gone. He died in a tragic traffic accident in Italy.
Just before leaving to win three world championships, Kenny Roberts parting gift to America was winning five of the six rounds in a display of total domination of Formula One.
Mike Baldwin was the King of AMA Formula winning the championship five times, including four in a row.
A young Mike Baldwin came out of the alphabet racing club (AAMRR) to win the championship in 1978. He was followed by another AAMRR alum Richard Schlachter, who won in 1979 and 1980. The Georgian Pig Farmer (a stage name only) Dale Singleton won the series in 1981. Then Baldwin came back and thoroughly controlled AMA Formula One winning 1982, ‘83, ‘84 & ’85. Renfrow won the final championship in 1986 and that was all she wrote.
Yamaha dominated the class in the early years with Honda closing the gap in the last few seasons. The stats – after 11 years of Formula One, Yamaha won 35 nationals to Honda’s 29. Suzuki won four times and Kawasaki earned a single victory in the series. Mike Baldwin not only won more championships in Formula One than any other rider, he also edged Kenny Roberts as the all-time wins leader with 17-career victories to Roberts’ 15. Singleton and Renfrow tied for third among all-time winners with four each.
The AMA’s decision to ax Formula One after the 1986 season was highly controversial. It was America’s only link to the 500cc World Championships, yet most of the Americans who were winning in the world championships by then came from Superbike racing. Also, much of the Formula One field by the mid-1980s was riders on Superbikes looking to double dip.
Privateers who’d bought GP bikes were the big losers when the class was eliminated.
Jim Knipp, a WERA National Champion from Indianapolis, is a prime example. Knipp raced AMA Superbike in the early ‘80s, but the cost of maintaining the temperamental four-stroke was wearing thin for Knipp, who was a mechanic at a Honda shop.
Riders like Jim Knipp spent big bucks on GP bikes to race in AMA Formula 1 only to have the series discontinued after 1986. From then on the bikes were expensive club racing machines. Knipp won numerous WERA races on his Yamaha YZ500. (Larry Lawrence photo)
“When Honda came out with the HRC kit VF750 motors you had to either pony up 12 grand to Honda or you couldn’t be competitive in Superbike,” Knipp recalls. “A buddy of mine named Mike Elmore told me I should get a GP bike. He was racing a Suzuki RG500 and said that the bikes were a lot more reliable than a built Superbike. Plus they were a lot faster. The bikes had 130 horsepower. That doesn’t sound like that much now, but in 1984 that was a lot of horsepower and the bikes only weight 280 pounds, so the power-to-weight ratio was off the dial.”
In 1983 Knipp found one of the few left over 1982 Yamaha YZ500 J-models, one of the last production 500cc GP bikes ever produced, in France. He took the 12 grand it would have taken to buy a HRC motor and instead bought the complete Yamaha to race AMA Formula One.
When the AMA announced the end of Formula, Knipp, like a lot of privateers, was left with expensive toys that could no longer be raced in the national ranks. Knipp raced his Yamaha in WERA’s Michigan Grand Prix Series with the promise of big bucks that never transpired, before selling the bike for $5000. He was lucky to get that much for it.
Of course now the 500cc GP bikes of the era are coming back up in price driven by collectors. A bike like Knipp’s could now fetch $15-16,000, but he wasn’t willing to sit on his investment for 20-some-odd years hoping for that kind of appreciation.
Canadian Miles Baldwin worked out of the back of a box van and rolled out a well-worn Yamaha TZ750 that barely made it through tech inspection. Yet Miles Baldwin pushed Mike Baldwin and Honda all the way to the final race of the 1983 championship.
Colorful privateer riders were the heart and soul of Formula One. There was Canadian Miles Baldwin, who was the David to Honda and Mike Baldwin’s Goliath (the two weren’t related). Miles worked out of the back of a box van and rolled out a well-worn Yamaha TZ750 that barely made it through tech inspection. Yet Miles Baldwin pushed Mike Baldwin and Honda all the way to the final race of the 1983 championship.
There were riders like Rich Chambers, whose bikes looked cool enough in the Union 76 colors, but you wondered how he managed to get to the races in the junkyard vans he drove. Nicky Richichi, a former drag racer from New York City, who became Rookie of the Year in 1980. The Hollywood stuntman Gregg Smrz. Roofer turned racer Rich Schlachter. Alan LaBrosse, who won a national at Brainerd and later became Miguel Duhamel’s manager. Farmer Boonie Knott, motocrosser Steve Wise. And other great guys like Dan Chivington, Larry Shorts, Steve Gervais, Bruce Hammer, Mark Homchick and Thad Wolff, just to name a few.
Now 20 years removed from Formula One the series has been relegated to little more than a footnote in the AMA record books. Predictably that doesn’t sit well with five-time champ Mike Baldwin.
“Since Superbike has become the premier road racing class in America, it seems like people think that’s how it always was,” Baldwin said. “But Formula 750 was the national class and Superbike was just a support class. Now the series is nearly forgotten. It’s a bit sad.”
On August 10, 1986, South African Kork Ballington stood atop the Road Atlanta podium marking the end of the Formula One era. “I want to thank everyone who made it possible for me to race here,” he said. “This series has been a lot of fun.”
It certainly was Kork.
Rider Files 
Good stuff.
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Thanks Rick
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Outstanding flashback! There was Steve Baron, John Bettencourt, and Jeff Heino from the alphabet club as well.Doug Brauneck was no slouch either.
Thanks for the memories.
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I love these stories of the “way it was”! In about 1978, when I was 13 years old, my parents gave me a three year subscription to Cycle Magazine for Christmas. I was a motocross kid and I asked my parents for Motocross Action or Dirt Bike Magazine, but somehow they got me Cycle instead. I was disappointed at first because Cycle wasn’t very dirt bike oriented, and sometimes had very little motocross content in an issue. Some issues, in fact, didn’t even test a bike or cover a single race. Oh, the horror! Thus I was forced to read road tests and technical articles about street bikes and feature articles on roadracing in places like Daytona, Loudon, Silverstone and Isle of Man. At first I was bored, but I eventually came around, due in part to the comprehensive journalistic approach that Cycle used to tell stories. I kept the subscription going. By the middle 1980s, I had fully adopted street bikes and began to follow roadracing in earnest; by late 1987, I was club racing. Thus, some of my most formative years were spent reading Cycle Magazine cover to cover, and many times those articles were on these racers and these classes. It’s always great to read these snippets in time, Larry, because they take me back to two eras: one when I was a kid and reading Cycle Magazine, and the one when I was reading classic history but didn’t know it.
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Larry, Randy Renfrow beat all those guys and clinched the AMA Formula One Championship at Mid-Ohio in 1986. Richard Chambers did not drive junbkyard vans, he had a new blue Dodge Maxi Van with the White’s Truck Stop Racing Team logo on each side. He was our privateer hero from Summit Point Raceway doing battle with the factory racers all over the country. I think Miles Baldwin also drove a MaxiVan too. Back in 1982 at the Las Vegas Ceaser’s Palace,they had FIA Formula One, Can-Am, and Superbikes and Grand Prix bike races, Miles Baldwin, TZ750, beat Nicky Richicci,TZ 750, David Aldana on a factory Honda 1000+ F-1 racer, Rich Chambers,Z-1 Kawasaki, Mark Jones,TZ 750, John Woo, and a host of others!
This was the American stop for Formula One cars in 1982 and they added the ground pounders Can Am cars and Motorcycles for a great spectator event!
Thanks for digging up the history. Keep it coming.
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Roger,
Thanks for your excellent recollections of the F1 days. I will say Rich Chambers’ nice van must have been in the shop when I took a photo of him in his pits at Road America. The van he had that day was a rust bucket.
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Roger – we must defer to Larry on this.
Richard’s Blue truck was the “new” one.
Larry is talking about the 250,000 mile “White” 318ci Dodge Maxivan, that after leaving Laguna Seca we did a – Timing Chain in parking lot in CA. – Rear Trans Seal in NM. – Blown Motor in OK. – Towed it to VA. with a Rental Truck – Rebuilt the TZ-750 (bad water pump drive gear) – and still made first practice at the soon to be “rained out” Pocono National the next weekend. (oh and don’t tell hertz but we pulled the speedo drive for the VA-PA-VA run)
That thing had “Thrush” side pipes that are still ringing in my ears.
Good times !!!
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Some of my favorite spectating memories are of the David and Goliath battles between the Baldwins. Some how with Kevin working on Miles TZ I doubt there was any trouble passing tech, but it sure looked cobby.
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Another singular asset was Alex “the artist” Cameron, Miles Baldwin’s tuner during those years. btw Alex remains a well-known artist with paintings in most Canadian museums, major corporate collections here and the USA, and Her Majesty the Queen’s art collection. He’s still painting up a storm in the same Toronto studio he’s rented since their F1 and F2 days.
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Roger…….were you at that Caesar’s F1 in 82?
I was there but remember very little other than much if not most of the bike race was run under windy and blowing dust conditions.
Went for the bikes only and found the cars to be boring on that joke of a track built in a parking lot that was built on top of a wash channel.
Seem to recall there was another big bike race back east that same weekend so there wasn’t a good turnout of riders or factory bikes?I seem to recall the purse was pretty for the day but don’t remember how much.
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Thanks for the great look back! Any one have pictures of Miles winning the Laguna 250cc race on Honda… I guess it was 1985? Thanks all!
David
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Miles’ bike was not pretty. The foam rubber piece that held the tach and water temp gauge was gone and in it’s place was a pink kitchen sponge with holes cut out to hold the gauges and fit on the panel mount. Miles was, however, effective on this tired little bike. (Except at Sears Point where he had some handling issues)
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Ah yes, Brian. The high-handlebar special. That was a rough day for Milo.
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Summer of 1982 in Heino’s hometown of Henniker, NH, I’m standing on a roof early one morning scratching my balls, drinking coffee, nursing a hangover… I hear this howling in the distance, getting closer fast. Andy and Jeff had been tuning his Suzuki, he’s on a test run, shorts and a t-shirt, hard braking, looks up at me, waves, turns right on Liberty Hill Rd and rode a wheelie as far as I could see him.
“G’morning, Jeff”.
I remember when they sometimes ran Bryar/Laconia backwards, before the Bahre the car guy destroyed the track with an oval, and the police wouldn’t even think of going into the camping on the hill behind the track. Take away your Honda and burn it, Hell, they burned a Cadillac one year.
I loved the smell of two-strokes in the morning. It smells like… victory.
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I’m just a longtime fan of motorcycle roadracing, used to clip out cool racing pictures from motorcycle magazines (remember those?) to put on my wall at home.
One picture I somehow lost is a picture of Miles Baldwin & Mike Baldwin (1982-83?) giving a up “thumbs up” to each other after a race on the cool down lap. It was in a mainstream motorcycle magazine in the day like Cycle, Cycle Guide, Cycle World, Motorcyclist.
I believe Miles was on his knackered TZ750 & Mike was on the FWS1000. Anyone have a recollection of seeing this photo in “Race Watch” or the like back in the day? Would love to find that picture again, as it represents pure stoke & respect in my my mind.
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I was there in f 1 84/86 actually made money Superbike not so much
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