Sean Osowski racing his Joey O Racing Honda CBR600 in the AMA 600 Supersport at Daytona in 1989. (Larry Lawrence photo)
Even though Sean Osowski’s older brother Joey had been a Superbike rider and WERA National Endurance racing champion, Sean was happy and doing well racing motocross. One day Sean’s dad told him he had a surprise for him and to go to the garage to check it out.
“I figured I was getting a new CR [Honda motocross bike) or something,” Sean remembered. “I walked out and there was sitting a Honda Hurricane. It was my first road race bike. I thought ‘What am I going to do with this?’”
Little did Sean realize, but Joey had convinced their dad, who owned a motorcycle shop, that Sean needed to make the move from motocross to road racing and this ‘87 Hurricane was going to be Sean’s entrée into pavement racing.
Sean Osowski sits on Daytona's pit wall getting ready to race in 1989. He's wearing hand-me-down leathers from his older brother Joey, who was a multi-time WERA National Endurance champ. (Larry Lawrence photo)
“I loaded the 600 Hurricane in the company pickup and Joey gave me directions to Loudon and said to look for a guy named Johnny B and he would show me the fast way around the track,” said Sean, the Johnny B he referred to was the legendary John Bettencourt.
Exactly how Sean, a complete road race novice, was to supposed to hang with and follow an AMA Superbike winner around the track was something his dad and brother didn’t seem too concerned about. Sean was fast on a motocross bike – he’d figure it out.
“I took the Penguin school and it was raining and Jerry Wood crashed during the school,” Sean said with a laugh. “He made everyone come in and check for oil leaks, which we didn’t find.
“I raced my bike the next day, Saturday, with Joey and my dad watching. My bike had the stock Bridgestones and they weren’t very good. I was getting ready to put on my, borrowed from Joey, Cycle Tech helmet when my Dad and Joey came up and told me I had two races to prove myself. If I didn’t do ‘well enough’ they were taking the bike back and selling it.
Sean Osowski, Henry Wiles and Jeff Heino hanging out at local flat track race in Indianapolis during MotoGP weekend this past summer. (Larry Lawrence photo)
“I didn’t know what ‘well enough’ was so I rode like an idiot, forgot all of Johnny B’s race lines, and finished 7th in the first race and maybe 7th in the second also. I figured, ‘Well, it was fun while it lasted,’ because usually with my Dad, 7th was not very good. They left shortly after my second race and said only ‘Go see Sto Smead and get some goddamn Michelins put on that thing.’ So I got to keep it.”
Just as his dad and brother thought, it didn’t take long for Sean to get things figured out and by the next season he was one of the leading club racers in New England, chasing contingency money races and having epic battles with the likes of Jeff Heino, David Sadowski and many others.
While Sean never made the full leap to pro racing (it was too easy staying close to home and winning money in the club ranks in those days) he did turn in some solid 600 and 750 Supersport results in the era between 1988 and 1990. His best pro results came at his home track of Loudon, but he also raced at tracks like Daytona and Mid-Ohio.
Today Sean lives in Georgia and gets his competition fix on the tennis court, playing in area tournaments. He remains friends with many of his old Loudon racing buddies to this day. This year he and Jeff Heino turned up at the Indy MotoGP race, taking in the entire weekend, including the local Saturday night flat track races. As the pair talked with AMA Grand National rider Henry Wiles in the pits, both Sean and Jeff kept an eye on the grassroots racing going on behind Wiles. Both the old veterans looked like they wanted nothing more than to strap on a steel shoe themselves and show the young kids what a couple of ex-road racers could do.
Rider Files 