One of the quietest behind the scenes forces in AMA Superbike racing is a lanky Colorado native named Merlyn Plumlee, currently the lead technician on Nicky Hayden's RC51 Superbike and F4 Supersport bike. In a career field where young men find themselves burned out and feeling older than their years in six months, Plumlee is closing in on twenty years of spinning wrenches and trying to find a set-up on a Superbike. Other than current Honda crewchief Ray Plumb, Plumlee is one of a very few select people to have worked on six generations of Honda Superbikes (CB900F; VF750; VFR750, RC30; RC45 and RC51).

We talked in the team room of the Honda transporter the day after the Daytona 200, the day after Plumee's Nicky Hayden finished a close second to Mat Mladin in the Daytona 200. We chatted about his start in racing, Fred Merkel, his temporary abdication to Kawasaki, his years in World Superbike, the Mike Hale phenomena and other subjects. Plumlee and I have been talking about an interview since 1993 so we were both prepared.

Q: You started with Honda in 1982. What did you do prior to that?

A: I had been a moderately successful professional dirttrack racer. Maybe I wasn't so very good at riding the bikes, but the bikes were usually pretty good. Like the stuff I built was pretty good.

One of the guys backing me was Dennis Zickrick, he was one of the original Honda roadracing mechanics. He's from Colorado and he knew me from there, just from building dirttrack bikes. I was working at a dealership and just thought working on a factory team looked like an interesting thing to try to do. Dennis put in a good word for me and got me to try out with Honda.

The first road race, first National race, I ever saw was when I came to Daytona in 1982 as a factory Honda mechanic. So I was over my head a little bit for awhile.

Luckily I was with (fellow Honda mechanic) Mike Velasco. Mike and I got along really well. He taught me a lot; he taught me direction and stuff like that, kind of the "Velasco way". I got along with him. A lot of guys don't, but I got along with him well.

Q: What is the "Velasco way"?

A: Well, it's probably a hard thing to put into words. It's just one of those things you pick up, some ideas and maybe just an approach to things. I don't know if I can put a finger on it particularly and I probably changed a lot of it over time, but I think he was a good guy to learn from.

Q: You were born and raised in Colorado?

A: Born and raised there. I just grew up around a motor bike shop. Went to work there in the shop when I was fourteen. A guy named Bill Brokaw, a long time dealer there in Colorado. He really was a big influence on my life. He's a really good guy, ran a shop that was successful because he took care of the customers and kind of instilled that in you when you worked for him. They were really good to me. Like when I was going to college they let me work there in the winter time when there's no work to be done and I'd go racing all summer. They furnished me a short tracker and they always took care of me.

Q: You roadraced as well, correct?

A: Yeah, I did that mainly after I quit dirttrack racing. I stopped professional dirt track racing because I just wasn't fast enough, but I still wanted to ride. Roadracing was going on pretty well in Colorado at the time. You could use a 500 single and ride five or six classes in a day and have a good chance of winning all of them. So it was fun, but I never did any serious stuff.

Q: So you came here (Daytona) in '82 working for Velasco. Who was your rider?

A. Steve Wise.

Q: Did you work that whole year with Wise?

A: Yes, we worked (together) that whole year. We had a reasonably good year. That was in the 1025cc (Superbikes) era, and that was the year before he hurt himself. We didn't win any races that year on the Superbike or the F1 bike, but we had some pretty good finishes.

Then the next year, 1983, (that) was the first year of the Interceptor and we started off that year with Steve. We won the Mid-Ohio Superbike race with him. Then we went to Elkhart and he had that crash on the 500. He crashed, broke some ribs, hurt himself.

While he was recuperating, we put Fred Merkel on his bike because that was the year of the Honda support program that Fred Merkel, David Aldana, Sammy McDonald, John Bettencourt, and Roberto Pietri all had support bikes on. Fred was already showing pretty good talent so we put Fred on Steve's bikes on a temporary basis. Then Steve came back at Laguna Seca, and the 500 put him on the ground again.

That was, unfortunately, the end of his deal there, so Fred just stayed on board the bikes for the rest of the year. I worked with Fred the rest of the time, until I left Honda in the spring of 1987.

Q: What are your good memories about those years with Merkel? He tore a hole through the Superbike class, and set a win record that DuHamel finally beat ten years later.

A: Granted, maybe the level of competition wasn't so tough a couple years there, but Fred rode really well.

When Fred first got on the bike, he would just ride it. He had no clue, he didn't know if the front forks were on the back or not, he just rode the thing. He developed a feel for the bike.

I think, unfortunately, since we didn't really have such stiff competition he lost a little bit of his edge and Wayne Rainey went away to Europe, spent that year riding a 250 (84) which didn't go so successful, but it really made him have a sharp edge and he came back.

It was tough on Fred the last year that the two of them raced against each other (86). Wayne kind of had us covered, I think, partially because of that. We were kind of used to resting on our laurels a little bit and Wayne was really hot and heavy.

But we ended up winning the championship. That was the year of the crummy waving yellow flag thing, but the important thing was at the end of the year, maybe the best part of that whole year for me, was when Fred came from behind, passed Wayne at Mid-Ohio pressured Wayne into making a mistake and falling down. That's basically when Wayne lost the championship. It was like finally that you could see the spark in Fred take off again and then I think from there he went on to win those world championships.

Merkel, I think he was a better rider than a lot people gave him credit for. I think those couple of years that we didn't have a lot of competition over here really hurt him. I enjoyed working with Fred; he was a great guy.

Q: What do you remember about that first Honda Interceptor in 1983? Any anecdotal stuff?

A: No, just that they were, you know, you look back on them now, they were really crude; but at the time they were really awesome. That was the first real sprint Superbike that HRC did, because the previous bikes were all endurance oriented. Like the 1023s, we built everything for those in this country and they would blow up left and right.

But the Interceptor, that was when Honda decided ?Okay this sprint race thing is going to be a (serious) deal'. So that was the first time they really started sending over a lot of really good pieces aimed at our kind of racing. They were good, the original VF750. I mean, they were really good. I was still sort of young to roadracing but the bikes were pretty good for their time.

Continued