1976 BMW R90S
Daytona Bound
January/February 2010
By Alan Cathcart
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Steve McLaughlin's 1976 BMW R90S.
Photo by BMW Motorrad/Arnold Debus
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It’s 1975. Teams are preparing for the new AMA Superbike series scheduled for 1976, and Steve McLaughlin is in a pretty good spot. Mclaughlin, one of the road racing world’s multi-achievers, is best known for creating the World Superbike Championship.
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He was also the winner of the first Superbike Production race, the Daytona 200, on March 5, 1976, at Daytona International Speedway.
“In 1975 I was doing OK — I had led the Daytona 200 on a Yamaha TZ750, and I’d been racing in Heavyweight Production on a Racecrafters Kawasaki, and won a few races for them,” McLaughlin recalls of events leading up to that first Superbike race. “I first heard from Yoshimura when a guy calls me up and says, ‘We want you to ride for us next year in this new AMA support race called Superbike,’ and I said, ‘Cool, how much?’ And he said, ‘No, no, no, for the honor of riding for Pops.’ And I said — ‘Well, thanks, it is indeed an honor, but honor doesn’t pay the rent, and I make money from this.’ The day after Yoshimura contacts me, Helmut somebody from Butler & Smith calls and asks me to ride for BMW on their R90S.
“BMW had heard that Yoshimura was going to get me, and they got worried and came and made a bid. Well, it turned out that I was able to charge them more money than they paid Reggie Pridmore, who Butler & Smith had actually been racing with all these years. I got paid $500 a race plus bonuses, and I think Reggie got $1,000 for the season.”
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