Key’s Odd 250GP Bike

• Larry Lawrence

Here’s a photo that is a bit strange because I don’t recall the circumstances of this machine and I followed this rider’s career closely. This is Ed Key racing in the AMA 250 Grand Prix class at Road America in 1988. Key rode a Honda RS250 in the series during this era, so I’m guessing there’s a Honda under this bodywork. Key was a Wisconsinite, so looking at this bodywork and putting two and two together I would bet this faring is a creation of Erik Buell, but I don’t know for sure. I’m certain someone knows the story of this bike. If so please leave a comment below to fill us in.

Ed Key racing the AMA 250 Grand Prix at Road America in 1988 with his bike wearing some unusual aerodynamic bodywork. (Larry Lawrence photo)

Ed Key racing the AMA 250 Grand Prix at Road America in 1988 with his bike wearing some unusual aerodynamic bodywork. (Larry Lawrence photo)

6 thoughts on “Key’s Odd 250GP Bike”

  2. Larry,

    I talked with Ed Kay (and his racing buddy, Gary Gibson) about that odd front fender at the ’88 AMA Road America event. Was told that it was not illegal per the AMA rulebook at that time.

    Regards,

    Tracy

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  3. I seem to recall that Ed and team mate Gary Gibson were working very hard on aerodynamics at that point even looking at relocating radiators and exhaust routing and such. I don’t remember this particular configuration, but Ed and Erik did work together at Harley for a while.

    Ken

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  4. 1988 was a great year. The fastest bike which was developed by Gary Gibson. Gary was very talented in putting together a competitive machine .

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  5. Larry,

    That bike was the ex Randy Renfrow Vance and Hines 1987 RS250. Gary Gibson purchased it at the end of the 1987 AMA season. He took a year off from racing to develop his aerodynamic ideas with this bike and I rode for him the entire season.

    As delivered from Vance and Hines the bike was already very fast. They had over 200 dyno pulls developing the motor. Gary designed a very innovative cooling system based on low drag aircraft designs and incorporated some pieces from Eric Buell’s RR1200 as you surmised. Although Gary did build a custom fairing the one in the picture is stock while the front fender and tail was Buell’s. While we were not able to fully develop the cooling system the other aero bits worked very well.

    The bike caused quite a sensation when we showed up at Daytona. We had some teething issues so I only got 1 practice session before the start of the 100. We had approximately 3 to 5 mph advantage on the high banks. I didn’t even have to bother drafting, I could just go to wall and motor by anyone. We were very pleased but the officials were not. As I recall Kevin Cameron was the head of tech and he was insistent we were not legal. According the previous year’s rule book we were not but the verbiage outlawing the front fender was inadvertently left out in that year’s book. Gary argued his case and we were allowed to race.

    In the race I was just biding my time hanging out at the sharp end of the field when the bike suffered a partial ignition failure. One cylinder went full retard so we missed our best opportunity of winning a AMA pro race.

    I have never before or since had a bike with that much of a performance advantage.

    Ed

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