"My most interesting open-class race was on my street bike (a 792cc Kawasaki tri- ple), against a Yamaha TZ750 (water-cooled 4-cylinder 2-stroke that dominated racing then) and several Ducatis at Sears Point, which should've been their type of course.

I entered that race to confront George Miller, (TZ750 rider, AFM  #1, top-ten Day- tona 200 finsher) and hopefully humiliate him as I had a big grudge against him.  A month or two earlier he'd been picked as my co-rider by my sponsor Denco for a 6-hour enduro at Ontario.  He hogged all the practice time (I got none), set the bike up wrong, called my back tire choice a "shitbox tire" and sent me a bill for his expenses later (why I have no idea).

It was only partial revenge that even with no practice and the bike set up his way I quickly eclipsed his best lap times during the race (we DNF'd).  Later, I paid his stupid bill as he was an AFM honcho, but also determined to get full revenge man- to-man on the race track -- using the same "shitbox" Michelin street tire he'd criticized.  I had a treaded front Dunlop racing tire, his TZ750 was shod with state- of-the-art Goodyear slicks.

During practice, my mechanic John "Tex" Robinette and I kept taking air out of the shitbox tire until it got hot enough to melt from sliding and get sticky. With little air in it, it was so soft that it had a super-predictable transition from slip-angle to slide, and enabled the following:  Coming from a less than brilliant start, I passed George Miller on his TZ750 coming out of the carousel at Sears, and as I went by from the inside I crossed  in front of him to the outside in a genuine dirt-track powerslide.

That put me in the lead, and it was probably my most spectacular moment as a racer.  George Miller, evidently shaken by riding at a level that he couldn't even imagine, pulled off the track and never raced again.   Revenge, perhaps not the most noble of motivations, nonetheless can feel very good and this felt great as my revenge was absolutely complete.

I still have the trophy I won that day and the memories that go with it."