Vance and Hines crewchief Jim Leonard has spent a decade in the AMA paddock, and he's pretty much seen it all. In a paddock dominated by Alpha Male egos, Leonard is a clear-thinking pragmatist. Simply put, Leonard understands more about Superbikes and Superbike racing than just about anyone.

A Southern California guy with a dry wit, Leonard garnered the attention of Terry Vance after the Vance and Hines squad at a club race at Willow. The then-new Vance and Hines Yamaha organization was testing their bikes, and Leonard was tuning for a local privateer who just happened to beat the V&H squad. Since then, Leonard has worked with riders like David Sadowski, Thomas Stevens, Eddie Lawson, Tom Kipp, Jamie James, Anthony Gobert, Ben Bostrom, Troy Bayliss, Steve Rapp, and John Kocinski. He's been a part of AMA Superbike through the growth decade of the 1990s.

Currently the V&H squad is in limbo for 2001, a competent and successful race team without a manufacturer to back them. Rumors persist that the Southern California outfit will return next season with Harley-Davidson or Aprilia, but at this time there is no 2001 deal.

After the Willow Springs finale, AMA Soup sat down with Jim and asked him for his views on a few topics.

The Early Vance and Hines Yamaha Days

Jim fondly recalls the early days of the Vance and Hines Yamaha team. "We never really had the best bike, but we did a lot of neat and creative stuff with Byron (Hines), a lot of engine development in both Superbike and Supersport."

After Vance brought Leonard on board at the end of 1989, the race to get to Daytona began. The team was fielding Thomas Stevens and David Sadowski on the old five-valve OW01 Superbikes. "Time wise, we were under the gun because we were going to Daytona in March. I built five engines and we had one factory engine from Japan. We got to Daytona and we qualified one-two, and won both Twin 50s and the 200. When we left, I still hadn't seen the track," Jim laughs. Sadowski won the 200 for Yamaha.

The dream season tailed off, however. "We left Daytona, and we were pretty pumped," said Leonard. "We thought, this might not be too bad. We were going pretty good at the next races. I was Ski's mechanic, building his bikes and engines, and by then we had worked another mechanic in to building engines. Then Ski fell off and hurt himself, and it went downhill from there."

"At the end of '90, I was pretty disappointed. We tore up a lot of equipment. A lot of things went on that didn't make much sense to me, but I was new to the game, so I was kinda leaning the hows and whys. At the end on 1990 Thomas Stevens approached me and said he was going to re-sign with the team, but he wanted to work with me. I had been keeping an eye on him and I liked what I saw, so we made a game plan for 1991, and stuck to it. It worked out." Stevens was the 1991 AMA Superbike Champion.

Competing in the Trans-Atlantic Match Races that season whipped the team into shape. "We went over to Europe and did the Match Races in England, and it helped us out tremendously. We did Brands and Mallory. We got over there, and there were six or seven guys that just rode 100 percent from the start."

"We got over there and man, they just handed us or butts on a platter. It made our weaknesses painfully obvious. We got back and started working harder. It really made things better in a short amount of time."

Eddie Lawson at Daytona, 1993.

Leonard describes Eddie Lawson's 1993 Daytona victory to be a "magical experience". Lawson won despite severe reliability problems from the machine.

"We worked really hard in the winter to get not only more power but better acceleration. We did that by making a lot of combustion chamber changes and porting the heads, and we picked up a substantial power increase. The problem was we made the engine more efficient, and we didn't have an adjustable ignition. We were running too much advance, and when we got to Daytona we were overheating and blowing up engines left and right. I was literally building engines in the garage at Daytona with the bottom end from this one and the top end from this one, and grinding off parts and clearancing things and struggling and struggling."

Leonard recalls Lawson's extraordinary ability to ride past all the problems, and be a difference-maker on the bike. "Here we have Eddie Lawson coming in and we know he can do the business. We were trying to rise to his level and had all kinds of problems going on. He remained calm and never got upset. He never lost focus with all this stuff going on."

"At one point I asked him, you know, we're pretty far off the pace. We really haven't changed the bike much at all. He said, 'Well, I'm going to pick up a tenth in each corner.'

"I started doing the math in my head and thought, we're in pretty good shape if he can pick up a tenth in each corner. I didn't know if I fully believed it or not."

The four-time World Champ came through. "Sure enough, he was dead on. Just in his riding. We didn't change the bike, he just worked on his riding, and picked up a tenth in each turn, and we were there."

Despite being on the pace, everything was not kosher. Engines continued to blow up at an alarming rate. "We were having a lot of problems. We got through the Twin 50 with one engine, and that was the only time that anyone came in for a tire in the Twin 50 and still finished on the box. We had one engine left, and we put it in for the race. We guessed on jetting, and we pushed him off."

"I'm not sure if we would have won or not if Colin hadn't dropped out, because we did an extra stop." Instead of the two pit stops most runners choose, Lawson came in three times. "Eddie and Scott were really going at it head to head. Before the last stop, I really thought about the tires. I thought, If I put him on a new tire he was gonna lose so much time on the out lap, Scott (Russell) was gonna kill us. So I grabbed one of Colin's scuffed tires. It was a different tire, on a different width rim, but it was scuffed. So I threw it on the bike on Eddie's last stop. On the out lap, we gained over a second on Russell." Lawson went on to win the 200 over Russell in an amazing last lap draft pass coming towards the finish line. It was Lawson's only Daytona 200 victory. (Editor's note: other than the one in 1985, which was Yamaha's first Daytona Superbike victory)

"I asked Eddie in the Winner's Circle, 'How about that last tire?' He looked at me and said, 'The last tire was spinning in fifth gear on the banking'. When he said that I was thinking, this is not good. 

But then he smiled, and said, 'It was bitchin'."

"That was pretty cool."

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