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►As dusk settled into the
rolling Pocono Mountains, Randy Renfrow walked the track. He dragged his feet
across the infield bumps and wondered how his hand would hold up. Just a few
slow practice laps earlier that day had stiffened his fingers to a lump. Bone
showed through the knuckles, still hurting, a reminder of the hard asphalt at
Loudon and the crash a week earlier. Hard braking was a problem; the bumps
murder.
Here he was, Renfrow might have thought, America's leading
privateer, owner/rider of a fancy, expensive 1986 RS500 Honda two-stroke triple,
the machine he needed to prove he could run with factory-supported racers, could
whip Honda's Wayne Rainey. Here he was leading the Formula-One title chase, only
now he had this aching handful of chewed up knuckles to take to the race the
next day. Renfrow might have thought these things, but he didn't.
Instead, he
walked the track, kneaded his swollen hand, forgot about the pain, the
unfairness of racing when you're hurt, and turned his mind to Sunday and the
win. Renfrow doesn't feel sorry for himself. "It doesn't do you any good,
anyway. It gets in the way of what you can accomplish next. There are times when
circumstances beyond your control hurt you, work against you. But most luck is
created, the good and the bad." At Pocono, despite his filed-down knuckles,
Renfrow set out to create his own luck. He found an equalizer.
Most
spectators think the road course at Pocono International Raceway is dead level.
Not so. Racers must battle wicked elevation changes, all shoestring high, bumps
that can knock an RS500 silly. Renfrow, a can of spray paint in his hand, knelt
here and there, and began to mark, spotting bumps he wanted to miss, keying his
braking and entry points to turns. By the time the track workers shouted him off
the course, it was okay; Renfrow had laid down the equalizer.
Next day
Renfrow raced in pain but with an advantage—his reference marks. He beat Rainey
by less than a second, and won.
Renfrow is a
stone-faced stoic in a landscape alive with animated whiners, and most
privateers have a good deal to complain about—no money, no sponsors, expensive
parts, mediocre equipment, constant struggle. Many privateers dream of a free
lunch and a factory ride, but Renfrow is no dreamer: "A racer needs realistic,
specific, obtainable goals, and he has to be willing to work hard to achieve
them. There's been a strong work ethic in my family, and that's been good for my
racing."
Other racers
may complain that racing is so expensive they can't support it on the income
from a single job—we need more sponsors. The Renfrow approach? Work two
full-time jobs. Renfrow's view of racing is just that straightforward and just
that irreducibly simple. If you want to win, you do whatever it takes: live with
your parents; set aside the things society says a man should have at age 30;
commit to racing with the studied calculation of a full-grown adult. Soft-eyed
dreamers get lost in a fairyland of 18-year-old instant champions. It's hard to
believe Randy Renfrow ever had wet ears or a runny nose.
Randy isn't
going it completely alone though; his support crew is a zealous bunch. Randy
lives with intensity, a beam of light darting from point to point, but Ron
Barrick moves through life bathed in a mellow, laid-back glow. Renfrow can have
two jobs, fly to the races and dart home again, because Ron drives the van and
gets things prepared. Barrick quit his own full-time job two years ago; he's
dedicated to Renfrow's effort, and that hasn't made him a rich man, though it
consumes most of his days. Renfrow admires Ron: "He's always calm. He never gets
flustered. When he does something, like put together an entirely new gearbox, I
get on the bike and never think about it. I can be absolutely sure the job was
done correctly."
Ron is an
ex-racer, but Burt Bigoney, the other member of the Renfrow clan, never made the
big-time. Somewhere inside this retired physician lives a competitor: strong,
willful, focused, intense, locked onto goals. Burt has helped to fund Renfrow's
racing, but his connection runs beyond money spent—many of the words that
describe Randy likewise describe Bigoney.
Factories
have entourages; Randy, Ron and Burt have a Dodge van and themselves. What kind
of equipment gets them to victory circle? The van contents spill out in a matter
of minutes: gas cans, an enormous tool box, milk crates containing meticulously
wrapped spares, assorted wheels, stopwatches, a cheap vinyl tarp to provide
shade, two lawn chairs that sit mostly empty, and one Honda RS500.
Spare
engine, back-up bike, suspension parts? Great stuff to stock, but Randy doesn't
have any of it. Without spares, your game plan had best be built on brainpower
and preparation. Renfrow's philosophy? He who makes the fewest mistakes usually
wins; use procedure to catch mistakes before new parts are needed, rather than
provide new parts to fix foul-ups after the fact. The idea is to get the
motorcycle to the gate at the start of every practice session, and to prevent
crash damage from becoming the first tripwire on the way to a DNF or a DNS.
Simplicity,
economy, discipline: Renfrow learned the basics on 250s. He sometimes took his
lessons the hard way, but never more than once. Randy won the 250 AMA
Championship title in 1983, and understood immediately its value to him—very
little. According to fable, racing's fairy godmother is supposed to present the
250 champion with a factory ride. Reality, Randy understood, is less generous.
First, factories are more interested in comers than champions; show them a guy
who DNFs most of the season, but devastates the opposition in four events: he'll
attract far more attention than the steady occupant of victory circle.
Factories
look for speed, but they also shop for youth. Says Renfrow, "I wasn't an instant
teenage star. I was an adult; my age was a factor. Yes, factories passed me
over, and, yes, I'd have liked a factory ride then, and now. I'm not
particularly disappointed, though; being `missed' can be crushing if you have
unrealistic goals."
Randy
Renfrow saw his next goal clearly—he wanted to ride 500s. He would get his 500
ride the same way he had won the 250 title, as a privateer.
From the
outside, Renfrow's desire for a Honda NS500 seemed audaciously ambitious, but
Randy didn't think so. He had the resources for a year-old race bike, and his
tight organization, the system which had once allowed him to go 250 racing out
of the trunk of a rental car, was far better equipped to handle a 500 than were
most other genuine privateers. But there was the matter of Renfrow's personal
acquaintance with the Grand Prix 500. Would he master it, or would it, some
sunny raceday morning, have Renfrow for breakfast?►
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