Dan Salton recently sent me this note about some shots he found in the Blackhawk WERA, May 1987 set of photos. I thought it was too good not to share. Thanks Dan for writing. – Larry Lawrence, Riderfiles.com

Larry, just saw your riderfiles website.  Love it!  Thanks so much for putting all these great pictures up.

Comments are closed on the “Blackhawk Farms – WERA – May 1987”, otherwise I’d post this as a rather long comment there.  But when I saw the pictures of Scott Zampach riding the #190 bike that weekend, I had to tell someone…..

Bike 190 was a box-stock Kawasaki EX 500, loaned out by Kawasaki USA to Dave Essex for the year.  Dave was running riders schools that year and needed a bike for the schools and since his only bike at the time was an old RD400 “crate bike” he had to get creative.  Kawasaki bought his marketing campaign (“just imagine” he told them, “the riding school instructor will be riding your brand new model”) and gave him the bike, but I believe with one proviso with it…. no racing that bike.

But that weekend in May 1987 there was, I believe, a shorter 3 hour “endurance sprint”.  I think.  Dave got the idea to run that race as a fund-raiser for some charity in Milwaukee.  I can’t remember how it raised money, but I know he spent a LOT of time going to area and industry companies trolling for donations to his charity.  But to do it right, he needed riders, and he was a good enough sales-man that he got Dan Chivington and Scott Zampach to ride the bike for him.

In your pictures, you can see that Dan starts the race, and then Scott finishes it.  I was one of the pit-crew for them, and that’s how I remember it – just two stints, one for each rider.  But I could be wrong.  I can’t remember how they finished, but it was very close to the lightweight win, if not actually winning it.

But the reason I write all this, is so I can tell you my favorite Scotty Z story, if not my favorite racing story ever.   Scott came in from a stint on the bike, maybe his only stint, and told us about that the brakes had been fading so badly, he couldn’t slow down enough for Turn 6.  But instead of backing off the throttle, he instead spotted a half-buried tire at the apex.  Every time into turn 6, to get the bike to slow down enough to make the corner, he said he slammed the outside of his thigh into that tire. It hurt like hell, but he was able to make the corner which made it worth it.

Scott was a maniac.  Dave replaced the brake pads and went out and taught the riders school, probably never telling Kawasaki that their bike had been thrashed like that.

Hope you are doing well, and thanks again for posting these.

Dan Salton
Muskego, WI

The Kawasaki EX500 ran out of brakes during Scott Zampach’s stint in an endurance race at Blackhawk Farms. The Z-Man went to extreme measures to get the bike slowed down in one turn. Read the story above to find out what he did. (Larry Lawrence photo)