It’s big news today when a top Supercars driver tries their hand at a different discipline of the sport. Back in the day, though, driver versatility was routine: Tickford Ford Supercars driver Cam Waters racing a speedway sedan over the summer, for example, would in the 1970s hardly even have been considered newsworthy.
Which is probably why not much is known or remembered about Yamaha’s works team in the inaugural 1971 Sunraysia 250 off-road rally that featured a rider line-up including Kevin Bartlett and Bob Morris.
The third Yamaha team rider was John Smailes, who put the Sunraysia Yamaha deal together (at the time Smailes was a motorsport journalist and part-time racer, but more recently was the man responsible not only for the Allan Moffat biography but also the first proper Norm Beechey interview – exclusive to AMC – since Stormin’ Norman’s retirement in 1972).
“Kevin and John were on 250 Yamahas,” Bob Morris remembers, “and I was on my own Yamaha, which was a 360 motocross bike, single cylinder. Yamaha took it and modified it, I think it became a 400, but the performance of that bike, it exceeded my skill level, I think you might say!
“They even sent a Yamaha mechanic down to tune the bikes at the event. We had the green leathers too. Everyone else had black leathers; we had factory team leathers.
“I think Kevin did pretty well, and I think John did OK too, but I blew my engine before I killed myself. I mean, this bike I had was geared to do 160km/h, and we’re riding in the sand hills beside the railway track. It spent more time in the air than on the ground! It was a beast of a thing. I’d ridden it around on trails and done some motocross events on it, but when you get out there in the desert, with those big straights, and with the bike geared for high speeds, it was pretty dangerous.”
But as dangerous as it was for the touring car star and the open-wheeler ace on bikes, it may have been even worse had they enjoyed the familiarity of four, rather than two wheels.
Jim Scaysbrook, editor of our sister publication, Old Bike Australasia was himself a competitor in the event. In his autobiography, Scaysbrook notes that he was amazed that any cars finished at all, given the amount of wreckage he saw strewn around the course: “…there were wheels, mudguards, smashed windscreens, trees uprooted and fences demolished everywhere.”
To get to Mildura for the rally, Bartlett had driven down from Sydney with Smailes in a new XY Falcon GT-HO Phase III, more than likely a road test car.
Big Rev Kev’s recollection was that it was a 'very quick trip'. Smailes remembers the HO spent more time in the air than on the ground on the Newell Highway at West Wyalong…
Bartlett agrees with Morris that the Sunraysia was 'a bit dangerous'.
“But then, no brain, no pain!” he laughs. “That rally, it was good, quite enjoyable.
“I did reasonably well and I finished, but I did have a couple of offs. One particular off was very spectacular. I was slipstreaming someone, Smailesy, I think, and then he started to slow, and I whipped out from behind him. You could see from the line of trees that the trail was fairly straight, but what I couldn’t see from behind his bike was the big mud pit just ahead.
“Down I went, sliding down the road on my back like a crab, arms and legs in the air… I was wearing two-piece leathers, and the mud filled my leather jacket and packed it in that hard that the mud was coming out through the sleeves! I went back and picked the bike up, but it wouldn’t start – the exhaust outlet was jammed with mud! I dug it out with a stick and kept going. - Kevin Bartlett
“Bob (Morris) and I, and Pete Geoghegan and Bob Beasley, we used to ride trail bikes all the time. I did a lot of my fitness training on motorcycles, on trails and motocross circuits. I had three or four really good motocross bikes. I even did a couple of races at the Nepean short track.
“It’s good training, because it’s all the muscles you use when you’re racing, and your vision and thought processes are no different from when you are racing. The only difference is the reaction to what’s happening on the bike (rather than a car).”
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