Superbike Great Merkel Returns With Road Races

National championship motorcycle road racing will return to Southern California this weekend for the first time in five years and, coincidentally, so will Fred Merkel.

Merkel, a Stockton native who lived in Newport Beach when he was winning three American Motorcyclist Assn. superbike championships in 1984-86, has spent the last seven years in Europe, during which time he won two world superbike championships.

Even though Merkel has been out of the country since ‘86, he still is the all-time leader in superbike victories with 19.

Now a factory rider for Rob Muzzy’s team of Kawasaki Ninjas, Merkel will be one of the favorites when the AMA holds Round 3 of the national superbike season Sunday at the Pomona Fairplex. The 60-mile race will be over a 13-turn, 2.1-mile road course on the Fairgrounds’ parking lot--similar to one used in the 1950s for stock cars and sports cars.

“Years ago, I rode in a lot of races at Riverside and Ontario, and I’m looking forward to racing at Pomona,” the 31-year-old rider said. “It’s been a long time since I’ve raced in my home state, and a bunch of friends and family are coming down from Stockton. I’m just glad the AMA is bringing superbikes back to Southern California.”

The last AMA championship race in the area was in 1990 at Willow Springs; it was won by Randy Renfrow on a Honda.

Merkel, who lived in England and Italy the last seven years, will make a travelogue out of his return to the United States. He and his wife, Lorraine--a former Miss England whom he met while racing in Europe--and their 3-year-old son, Travis, will tour historic and scenic sights in their motorhome between races. It has carried them from Florida to California, with trips to Georgia and New Hampshire ahead before they return to California.

“What a great way to make a living, showing my country to my wife and son,” Merkel said. “It’s a whole lot easier than keeping a home in Italy and traveling to 14 countries like I’ve been doing. My wife loves it here. After roughing it in Italy, she says we’ve come to the Land of Conveniences.”

Merkel decided to become a full-time resident of Europe after his 1987 season, during which he made 14 trips to Italy and 12 to England.

“Nobody needs Frequent Flyer miles that bad,” he said. “It all started so innocently. I had just won three U.S. championships and was invited to ride in England that April. I finished second and beat the world champion, so I was invited back and won the third race I ran at Mallory Park.

“This caught the attention of a sponsor from New Zealand, and he signed me on the rest of the season. When the FIM announced it was holding the first world superbike championship the following year, Oscar Rumi and I entered a bike from Honda of Italy and won it. Then we won it again in 1989 and I was leading midway through the 1990 season when I broke my neck during the Suzuka eight-hour race in Japan.”

Merkel sat out the rest of the season, and when he returned in 1991, he found his Honda wasn’t competitive with the bikes of other manufacturers who had made high-tech improvements. Last year, he left Honda, rode briefly for Yamaha and ended the season with Ducati. His highest finish was a second.

“Rob (Muzzy) planted the seed in my mind about returning to the U.S. a year ago, but I had a year to go on a contract,” Merkel said. “My wife and I decided then that if we got another chance, we’d do it, and when Muzzy called again last fall, I took it. I had never ridden a Kawasaki until I signed my contract last November, but I had known Rob ever since the early ‘80s when he had Wayne Rainey and Eddie Lawson riding for him.”

One of the requirements in joining Muzzy was that Merkel had to also race a 750cc supersport bike in a support race.

“I was really leery of riding two bikes at the same event,” he said, “but since I’ve ridden the supersport--which is close to being a consumer bike like you can buy yourself--I’ve come to enjoy it. It makes the American schedule quite different from the one I’m used to.”

World superbike programs call for two 60-mile races on the same day. In the United States, Merkel rides a 40-mile superbike race Saturday and a 60-mile superbike race Sunday.

At Daytona Beach, Fla., where a minor crash dropped him out of contention, Merkel also filled in for an injured teammate, Takahiro Sohwa, and shared a bike with Tripp Nobles to win an endurance race for Kawasaki.

In the second event, two weeks ago at Phoenix, Merkel finished second to Troy Corsers of Canada. Corsers’ Ducati was protested as being illegal, but Wednesday the AMA disallowed the protest.

Merkel hopes to ride two or three more years, but when he retires, he does not plan to switch to cars as many cycle racers have tried to do. Instead, he plans to move to New Zealand, where he can turn his hobby of fly-fishing into a business.

Motor Racing Notes

DRAG BOATS--Clinton Anderson and Ron Braaksma, two of the fastest drivers in drag boat history, will resume their rivalry this weekend in the Mission Foods Springnationals at Puddingstone Lake in San Dimas. Anderson, returning after a life-threatening crash last November, had three runs over 216 m.p.h. in his Fatal Attraction last month at Firebird Lake in Arizona. Braaksma, who sat out the Firebird race, won eight of nine International Hot Boat Assn. races in Madness last year. Qualifying is Saturday, with top fuel hydro eliminations Sunday at 11 a.m.

STOCK CARS--The Miller Genuine Draft 100, second round of NASCAR’s Featherlite Southwest Tour, will be held Saturday night at Saugus Speedway. Two-time series champion Ron Hornaday Jr. of Palmdale will be the favorite on the tricky one-third-mile paved oval in Santa Clarita. A train race will follow the main event. . . . IMCA modifieds will open the Ventura Raceway season Friday night and will also be featured Saturday night at Imperial Raceway in El Centro. . . . Pony stocks and a destruction derby head Saturday night’s Cajon Speedway program. . . . Kern County Raceway will open its weekly Sunday afternoon season at Willow Springs with Grand American modifieds.

SPEEDWAY BIKES--The 26th season of Friday night racing at the Orange County Fairgrounds in Costa Mesa got under way last week with Josh Larsen returning after two years in Europe to win the opening event. Racing this week will include sidecars.

SPRINT CARS--Bakersfield Speedway will showcase California’s top winged sprint cars this weekend, with a Northern California Racing Club main event Friday night and the opening round of the Budweiser Golden State Challenge series Saturday night. Brent Kaeding is the defending champion in both series. . . . On the non-winged car front, the Sprint Car Racing Assn. will be at Manzanita Speedway and the California Racing Assn. at Canyon Speedway, both Saturday night and both in the Phoenix area.

MIDGETS--Ventura Raceway will play host to ESPN’s “Saturday Night Thunder” show the next three weeks, with the United States Auto Club’s combined Western States midget and TQ program starting at 5:30 p.m. Nine drivers have been seeded into this week’s 20-car main event: Page Jones, Billy Boat, Jimmy Sills, Tony Stewart, Jay Drake, George Ito, John Cofer, Sleepy Tripp and Rick Hendrix.