The days of RJ Reynolds sponsoring AMA national motorcycle racing brought unprecedented race purses, points bonuses and race promotion. The money tobacco brought to racing even filtered down to the promotional materials used in the series. This is the artwork used on a press kit during the 1980 AMA Winston Pro Series. Think about the money that was spent to have an artist paint this rendition of Winston Pro flat track and road racing competition. It’s interesting to note that riders shown in the promotional material of that day were not always strict representations of real riders you can see the in this painting real riders are used. No. 1 is Steve Eklund and that was the actual paint scheme used on Steve’s Arai helmet. The same for Jay Springsteen (No. 9), Terry Poovey (18) and Alex Jorgensen (44) in the flat track portion. On the road race side you see Skip Aksland (No. 27) leading the way over Gene Romero (No. 3), Mike Baldwin (43), Rich Schlachter (48), David Garoutte (38), Bruse Hammer (52) and maybe David Aldana on bike No. 10, although Billy Labrie had that national number in 1980 and he was primarily a flat tracker.  

The artwork used on a press kit during the 1980 AMA Winston Pro Series.