It Comes Natural--With Hard Work : Motor racing: Mitch Payton was a motorcycle champion who has become an auto champion after an accident robbed him of the use of his legs.

Mitch Payton is a former desert motorcycle racing champion who has won three consecutive Sports Car Club of America amateur races in a showroom stock Honda CRX and appears headed for the national championship runoffs in October at Road Atlanta.

Payton is a paraplegic confined to a wheelchair.

He drives with brake and accelerator hand controls mounted into the steering column and a clutch release on the shifter.

“I handle the gas and the brake with my left hand, and shift and steer with the right,” Payton, 28, explained. “It sounds difficult, but it comes natural after you do it enough.

“It does get kind of hairy when I’ve got to brake, downshift and steer when I’m cornering. Then I’m sort of holding on with my thumbs. But that doesn’t happen often, because if you’re doing things right, most of the braking is done in a straight line.”

Payton, who won the first race he ever drove last year after finishing a four-day course at Bob Bondurant’s driving school, recently won his class competition--showroom stock B--in SCCA races at Willow Springs and twice at Firebird Raceway in Arizona. In two other races this season, the former cyclist from Norco was second at Holtville and third at Firebird.

Only six races are needed to qualify for the Valvoline Runoffs, so Payton seems almost certain to represent the California Sports Car Club at Road Atlanta.

“I like to think I have a real chance to win in Atlanta,” Payton said. “But I’d probably be satisfied with finishing in the top three, considering this is only my second year of racing a car.”

Payton was 17 and a student at Norco High School when he crashed during a race in the Mojave Desert near California City and broke his back. That was nearly 12 years ago and he has been paralyzed since.

“I was coming down a steep downhill that emptied on a fire road with a sharp right turn,” Payton recalled. “If you missed the turn, you went straight off into a ditch full of rocks, and that’s what happened to me.

“Coming down, my rear wheel caught a sharp rock and bounced the bike in the air. The jolt knocked my feet off the pegs, and I was going too fast to keep from plowing nose first into the other side of the embankment. It broke two vertebrae in my back.”

At the time, Payton was one of the hottest riders in District 37. He had won the Parker 400, the Baja 500 and wore the No. 1 desert plates in the 125cc class.

“I was lucky the accident happened when and where it did, or I might not be here today,” he said. “The Rescue 3 unit was at the race and when they got on the emergency channel to call for an ambulance, it was picked up by some military planes that were doing maneuvers in the area. When they found out what happened, they said, ‘We’ll take the kid in,’ and called for a helicopter, so instead of riding all the way back in an ambulance or in the back of a truck, I got flown straight to Long Beach Memorial Hospital.”

Payton started a motorcycle repair garage that has grown into a prosperous company, Pro Circuit, that occupies a 9,000-square-foot building in Anaheim where his firm makes high-performance racing equipment for two-cycle Japanese motorcycles.

“I had an accident and had to get on with my life,” Payton said matter-of-factly. “I wanted to be involved with cycles. I enjoyed being around people who ride bikes and I like working on bikes, so I started a business where I could do all of those.”

More often than not, the ebullient Payton can be found at the grinder in the back of his shop, boring out cylinders to improve the porting in a never-ending search for more horsepower. His clients include most of the country’s top desert racers and motocross riders.

“Mitch is a unique person,” says Oscar Johnson of Huntington Beach, who built the red No. 45 Honda that Payton races. “After you are around him for 10 minutes, you forget he has a disability.”

In late 1988, Payton decided to return to racing. First, though, he had to find out if the push-button hand controls that former off-road racer Drino Miller had designed would work.

“We went to LAX, rented a Mustang and brought it back to the shop where we took the dashboard off and bolted on the hand controls,” Payton said. “When we found out they worked, we took the car back and I called the Bondurant school and told them my situation and that I’d like to enroll. They said to come on up and try.

“The T-Bird I drove up there (Sears Point Raceway) was an automatic, but I still had to have my other hand controls. My Honda is a four-speed stick shift. Jeff Moore, the chief instructor, worked with me a lot personally and when I finished the four days at the top of my class I decided to go racing.”

Payton entered a Cal Club regional race at Willow Springs and won it. He drove eight races last year and won the club’s regional championship in his class, enabling him to step up into the nationals this year.

“I decided on Showroom Stock because I wanted to start at the entry level,” Payton said. “I still have a lot to learn because with cars, you have to be smooth and more patient than with motorcycles.”

Payton also drives a Honda in the International Motor Sports Assn.’s Firestone Firehawk endurance series and a Mazda pickup in the SCCA’s professional race truck series.

He has never given up hope that someday he may be able to leave his wheelchair.

“The feeling (in the legs) is slowly coming back,” Payton said.

And his dreams are of more than a championship at Road Atlanta.

“The biggest things I can imagine doing are playing a game of softball and walking down the beach,” he said. “If I could do that, I could do anything.”