Geno Scali swears he feels safe gunning his 330-horsepower PMFR drag bike from zero to 190 m.p.h. in 7.12 seconds.
“But ask me how I feel riding my Honda Gold Wing by Woodfield Mall. That’s a different story!” laughed the 38-year-old racer from Palatine, who holds the No. 1 points position in National Hot Rod Association Pro Stock Bikes competition.
“Route 66 Raceway [in Joliet] is a closed track. I’m not in traffic. There’s no chance of some guy on a cellphone blowing a yellow light and turning left into me.”
Drag racing conjures tire-burning images of high-profile drivers: John Force now and Don “Big Daddy” Garlits from the past. NHRA shootouts. Funny Cars and Top Eliminators–and motorcycles. The Pro Stock Bikes portion of each NHRA event is gaining in popularity, thanks to the white-knuckle rides of top pros Angelle Savoie, Craig Treble and Scali.
Scali is an unlikely top competitor, given that two years ago he almost walked away from NHRA drag bike competition. He was 36 and had been racing without corporate sponsorship for 15 years, wrenching together bikes from odd spares, rebuilding cast-offs from other racing teams and running respectable times. Scali always ranks in the national Top 20 of NHRA drag bike racers.
But Scali has always ranked in the national Top 20 among NHRA drag bike racers.
His first bike was a brown and orange 1973 Kawasaki KZ900 bought in 1982 and raced at Union Grove, posting times around 12 seconds. A 1985 Suzuki GS 1150 turned 9.4.”But I was broke,” he said. “Track announcers would say, `Hey, here’s Geno Scali with Lexus,’ and people assumed I owned a Lexus dealership. Except I was a car salesman at Woodfield Lexus!”
Enter Joe Koenig, founder of Lincolnwood-based Trim-Tex Corp., the world’s leading supplier of vinyl drywall products. Known as “7.02 Joe” in his racing days for his best time for a quarter-mile run, Koenig keeps his hand in the drag bike world as a team owner and is Scali’s primary sponsor, along with Sears Craftsman Tools. Scali has learned that sponsorship matters. “Our motorcycle was done by Precision Metal Fabricators Racing of Shakopee, Minn., for $80,000,” Scali said. “We keep two motors. They cost $30,000 each. And we have a $300,000 truck and trailer for transporting everything to races across the country. There are 15 NHRA races and another four or six AMA [American Motorcyclist Association] Pro Stars events. . . . It gets expensive.” Koenig, who retired last year from racing bikes, linked up with Scali for his passion. “He lives, breathes, eats and sleeps motorcycle drag racing. I saw what Geno did on his own as a privateer, going against riders with factory-sponsored bikes. He always worked harder. He won on inferior equipment because he had heart and thought ahead, always anticipating the other guy’s moves correctly.”NHRA drag bike competitions often drift under the radar screen with casual racing fans more familiar with automobile drag racing. John Miller, a senior Tech Department staffer with NHRA, said the Pro Stock Bike Races were established in 1987 as an outgrowth of motorcycle drag-racing exhibitions tacked onto Funny Car and Top Fuel events.
“The interest was there,” Miller said. “We had early riders like Dave Schultz who were popular and drew the first fans to Pro Stock Bikes.
“We have no way of knowing how many of the fans at Route 66 Raceway in your area are there for the bikes. We’ll get 100,000 people over the weekend–and I’d say a high percentage are familiar with the Pro Stock Bikes and have their favorite riders. The popularity of Pro Stock Bikes is definitely increasing. Geno Scali is a national figure in motorcycle drag racing.”
As with regular dragsters, the element of risk in motorcycle racing gets the heart pumping in fans and racers.
Scali said his senses become heightened on race days, as he narrows his concentration and the adrenaline kicks in.
“I’m so focused. Everything seems to move in slow motion,” he said. “That’s the only way I can describe it. I’m sitting at the line, revving my bike to 9,000 r.p.m., holding in the clutch. I’m waiting for the light to drop and when yellow comes up and I go, my reactions feel like slow motion to me, but they’re not.
“Count one and I’m at 60 m.p.h. Say one-two, and I’m at 100. This motorcycle has a six-speed gearbox, and I’ll make five shifts in less than six seconds. A smooth gear change and matching the engine revs perfectly, so there’s no fall-off. It’s all done by feel. There is no time to think.”
Koenig, who rode this motorcycle to a 7:029 time, emphasized the difficulty involved. “Those first three shifts come nine-tenths of a second apart, and the r.p.m. have to be exact or you lose momentum. And this is not like shifting a stock motorcycle. Geno shifts with his thumb, rather than his left foot as on a street bike. There’s a gearshift button on the left handlebar. He has the bike revved to 9,000 r.p.m. and when the light turns to yellow, he throws up his hand. He releases the clutch. The bike accelerates, slamming him back with the force of 3 g’s, and he’s controlling it with only one hand for a split-second, until he goes for the second shift.
“On the shifts, there is a natural tendency to snap your head backwards. Geno doesn’t do that. Watch him. He leans forward, into the shifts. There are no sudden head-jerks or elbows hanging out or wasted movements.”
Overwhelming power
Scali considers his greased-lightning reaction time a “gift from God,” especially when looking back at a walk-away crash that might have been fatal for a rider of lesser skills.
“Releasing the clutch into first gear gives you an instant wheelie,” he said. “The front tire always pops up. There’s just so much torque going to the ground at the rear wheel. I’m taking about a 1,508-cc motorcycle that develops between 300 and 330 horsepower, which is impressive for a [Chevrolet] Camaro. Think of that kind of power driving a 450-pound bike. There’s no way to stop the front wheel from rising.
“We have wheelie bars on the backs of our bikes to act as stabilizers, to keep us from flipping over. Six years ago in Memphis, I came off the line and could feel something wrong. The wheelie bar didn’t catch. I shot straight up instead of straight out. I was vertical on the bike, facing the sky like Superman getting ready to take off. I knew in the middle of a shift, I’d be going down. I popped the bike out of gear and used all of my strength to shove it away as I fell over, and the bike missed landing on my helmet by maybe four inches. There was no time to think, only to react.”
Racing against the clock
With seven NHRA Pro Stock Bikes events remaining in 2003, Scali is not terribly wary of New Orleans-based Angelle Savoie, current champion and the winningest woman drag racer since Shirley Muldowney. Savoie, at 33, is points champion for the 2000, 2001 and 2002 seasons; Scali said he races against himself and the clock. “My team’s always trying to tell me who I’m going against, but I don’t want to know. The clock and myself–that’s all I think about.”
Savoie agrees.
“I don’t have anything to say about Geno and I don’t care who’s in the other lane. That has absolutely no effect on me, whether it’s Geno Scali or anyone else. Tiger Woods can’t make Davis Love III play bad golf. It’s the same with us. I only want them to turn on the stage lights so I can go!”
Scali said he might be looking at a dead heat by summer’s end, though, and John Miller at NHRA agreed: “I think we’ll see 50 to 60 riders compete in Pro Stock Bikes this year, and 15 or 20 of those will make it to every race.” Geno and Angelle are right up there, separated by 109 points.
