Dave Despain, most recently of SPEED TV’s Wind Tunnel fame, really was a racer and here’s proof. That’s Despain (No. 200) on a Suzuki GSXR750 leading a WERA road race at Roebling Road in March of 1986. Not only was Despain a racer, he was an exceptionally fast one at that. Dave regularly ran up front in novice class races and beat a good number of experts in the process. I used to bug him a bit about cherry picking in the novice classes, but the fact is even though he had flat track experience, he had very little road racing background when he started winning. Directly behind Despain is Omar El-Khalidi then Alan Jacobs (No. 177) and Patrick Harris (No. 490).

Dave Despain, best known as a TV personality, was also a very good road racer in his day. Here he is racing his Suzuki GSXR750 en route to winning a B Production race at a WERA sprint weekend at Roebling Road in March of 1986. (Larry Lawrence photo)