My professional motocross career started one day in 1975 at Saddleback Park. It was a real pivotal day where I got a big break that helped launch my career. I went to Saddleback for a CMC Sunday with my 250 Husky and it just happened to be the day Suzuki was introducing the new RM’s. They had all these vans and bikes there. My friend Marcel Delay who was also there came up to me and said, “Hey, did you get on the list for trying out the new Suzuki’s? They’re going to let 20 guys try out the new bikes.” I went over to sign up and they said, “No we’re full.” I went back and told Marcel that they were full and Marcel said “Bull Crap, I’ll get you on one of those bikes.” He went over there and told the Suzuki people that this Hannah kid would go pretty good, so they yanked somebody else and gave me a spot me on the new RM125. I rode my Husky in the 250 class that day and got a third in the 125 pro class on the new Suzuki. Jeff Jennings was also on one of the new 125 Suzuki’s and got a forth or fifth. At the end of the day, out of twenty riders, they only asked Jennings and myself to come back and ride them again at Carlsbad the next week. They offered to pay my gas and hotel and since I was broke, I thought “Shoot yeah” this was a great deal. I told them that I needed to ride my Husky in the 250 class because I needed the purse money. They said “No problem, you just ride our bike in the 125 class.”

 The next week in the 125 class, I got a big wake up call. I was going down the long Carlsbad downhill and Billy Grossi who was also on a Suzuki passed me so fast…. his right elbow was all the way down with the throttle wide open and the bike was completely sideways, shuddering as it skipped across the bumps. I remember thinking “This is insane… no, this more than insane!” I was going as fast as I could and I thought, “There is no way I can beat this guy!” His wheel finally blew up and I got third behind Marty Smith and Tommy Croft. After the race, the Suzuki head boss Tosh came up to me and gave me his card and said, “Let’s keep in touch.” Over the next couple of Months, I kept calling and hounding him and he kept saying, “We’re not ready yet.” Then finally one day he said “OK we’re ready.”

 Suzuki signed me up as a test rider and I got bikes, a van with a gas card and $800.00 a month to race and test the new preproduction RM’s. They gave me a brand new RM250 and 370 and during the week, I was allowed to go to Suzuki’s headquarters in Santa Fe Springs and work on my bikes. In the break room at Suzuki, they used to post the results on one of the walls and I would go in there and read all the names that won the prior week. Tony D, Billy Grossi and Roger DeCoster’s name were always up there and seeing those names every week really motivated me. I wanted to be just like them, I wanted my name on the wall too. I wanted everybody to see “Bob Hannah” on the wall. I didn’t want to take anything away from them, but I wanted my name up there real bad!

 Suzuki was really strict about leaving the bikes box stock; they didn’t even want me to cut down the bars that were way too wide at about 35 inches. I complained to one of the bosses Shiganoya (Shiggy) that the forks were too soft and he said, “The World Champion Roger DeCoster says they’re just right, leave them alone.”  Later, I went to one of the factory mechanics Brian Lunnis and he fixed me up with stiffer springs and I cut the bars down. Every Thursday, I would load the bikes up and go out to my dad’s house in Lancaster and on Fridays we would trail ride them in the desert. My dad usually rode the 370 and I rode the 250, I did a lot of riding in those days. On Saturdays, I would go down to Saddleback for the Saddleback Saturday races where they ran 40-minute motos and then on Sunday I would go to wherever the big money races were. Those Suzuki’s were great bikes and they really fit me well, much better than my Husky. If the conditions weren’t just right, I might get a fifth or so on the Husky whereas on the Suzuki, I would win. During the entire time I raced the Suzuki’s I only lost two motos. A 125 blew up in one and a black box went out on the 250 in the other. Other than that, I won every moto I entered.

Prior to all this, I worked as a welder for J&R where we made pipes for companies like DG and I got to know one of the owners of DG, Gary Harlow. It was that November that Gary (who had connections at Yamaha) went to Yamaha and suggested that they give me a factory ride. At the time Yamaha really didn’t want me. They had their eye on two other local pro’s, Bob Stem and Davey Williams. Davey was the guy they really wanted but he was a real show off. During a race at Saddleback, he would be going down Banzai Hill wide open and start showing off by taking his hands off the handlebars in mid air. Mel Calloway (one of the bosses at Yamaha) kept warning him to stop showing off and worry about winning races. He didn’t listen, kept showing off and lost his chance at a factory ride. It was because of that; I got the factory Yamaha ride, although I did something similar at Suzuki. I bet a friend that I could let everyone go at the start and still win. I did it and won but afterwards Shiggy came up to me and said, “I don’t want you doing that anymore. I want you to beat them as bad as you can beat them, don’t play games.” I never did anything like that again. Bob Stem crashed at the bottom of Banzai and broke his leg real bad and that ended his career. There were openings at Yamaha.

It was on a Tuesday in November; That Gary Harlow took me over to Yamaha for a meeting with Mel Calloway and Yamaha team manager Pete Schick. During the meeting they said, “This is what we’ll do, we’ll give you $1000.00 a month, bikes, a mechanic and a truck.” I told them I’d let them know in two days because I was already with Suzuki. So the next day, I went to Shiggy at Suzuki and said, “I want to ride factory bikes and I want to do the 125 Nationals next year.” He came back at me and said, “You think you can beat our guys?” I said, “No.” He then told me, he wanted me to ride locally for two more years. I told him, I was bored with the local races and wanted to ride the Nationals and that Yamaha had already offered me a factory ride. He instantly thought I was lying but when I told him what the offer was he said he would think about it. I went back out in the shop and started working on my bikes and a little while later Shiggy came back out and said, “I just called Yamaha and they don’t know anything about you.” He did call but the person that answered the phone didn’t know anything about the meeting or offer I had from the day before. Schick and Calloway were the only ones who knew and with that, Shiggy said no. Thursday morning I went over to Yamaha and signed a contract that would be in effect January 1, 1976 and in the mean time I planned on racing the Suzuki’s in local CMC events for the rest of 1975.

I was out in the shop loading up my bikes for the races that weekend and Hide who at the time was head of testing comes out and was he mad! He looked like he wanted to start a fight. I instantly knew that he knew I signed with Yamaha. He walked up to me and said, “Did you sign with Yamaha?” When I told him yes, he said,” Get off the property!” I told him, “I’m going to the races.” He was so mad he was shaking; I thought he was going to take a swing at me. “You’re not going anywhere in that van” he said and he personally escorted me off the property with no way to get home. I went to a payphone to call someone to give me a ride home and then I called Pete Schick and told him what happened and that I had no bikes and that I wanted to race at Valley Cycle Park that weekend. Schick said, “Don’t worry, we’ll have you a 125, a 250 and a mechanic at Valley Cycle Park this Sunday, all you have to do is show up.” On Sunday, I had a friend drive me there because I didn’t own a car and we met Yamaha mechanic Don Dudek who brought along Bruce McDougal’s old works 125 and Pierre Karsmakers’ 1974 works 250. The bikes didn’t have a lot of travel but they had Profab frames and they were real light and real fast. Talk about bitchin’ bikes, those things hauled ass! They didn’t need much travel because they were so light. I won both classes easy that day and kept thinking how cool those bikes were. That was the first time I rode works bikes. I continued to race those bikes in local races throughout November and December and then it was off to Florida for the Winter-am series where I won all five races and won my first Championship as a factory Yamaha rider.

Yamaha entered me in the 125 Nationals and we got our new OW27’s right before the first race at Hangtown. We didn’t have much time to test but at that time I wasn’t really an experienced development rider, I was new and pretty much rode what you put under me. We tested with Ed Schiedler and Danny Turner who would be my teammate. My mechanic was Bill Buchka and he pretty much set my bike up and that’s the way I rode it. I didn’t have any pre-conceived opinion as to how things should work. We would try different things and I would say, “yeah that works better”, but I didn’t have the experience to develop a bike back then. Marty Smith was probably better than me at that point-as far as testing goes-because he had a lot more experience than me. That might have hurt him in 1976 because he might have thought about it too much. They were always on a different bike that year. As a rider, if you think like, “His bike is better than mine,” it drives you crazy and that’s not good.

Even though I won the Florida series I had no idea that I could win in the 125’s. There was no way I thought I could beat Marty Smith. I even thought Danny Turner would be ahead of me and he should have been. At the time, I thought he was a better rider, but he was a head case. He couldn’t take the factory pressure and in the end he ended up quitting because of it. I had the opposite approach; I wanted to seize the opportunity and make the most of it. Actually, Yamaha never put any pressure on us to win at anytime.

Going to the first 125 National at Hangtown, I drove up there with my friend Steve Gordon in his van and on the way to the race we started talking about boats. Steve kept saying, “I think you are going to win this thing” and I would say there’s no way. I thought maybe I would get in the top five, something like that, but I really didn’t think I had a chance to win. Steve said, “Hey, if you win, let’s buy a boat.” Knowing I wasn’t going to win, I went along with him, “Ok, fine, if I win, I’ll buy a boat.”

Hangtown was my kind of track, it was rough, sandy and it was wide. If you’re in my way, I just move over and go faster. I had 40 lines and if they start to slow down I just turn it up and waap….go right on by em.’

In the first moto, I went down in the first turn and had to work up from last place. The track was to my advantage, and I was going through the pack wide-open passing guys at will. When I caught Marty and saw “Smith” on his jersey I was quite surprised. I was happy but surprised and I remember thinking, “He’s not going that fast.” I knew he was done; I had more in me than this, “If he wants to run, we’ll run.” On a rough track like that, I could go wide-open for the whole 45 minutes. Marty’s type of track was a smoother and faster track. When I came back to the pits after winning the first moto, I remember Buchka saying, “Hey, we can race with anybody!” From that point, I knew the race was on.

After I won the second moto at Hangtown I reneged on my deal with Steve Gordon to buy the boat. I said, “I ain’t buyin’ no boat.” That was too much money at the time and there was no way I was going to buy a boat. I just went along with him and before the race I really didn’t think I had a chance. In fact, back in November when I signed the Yamaha contract, I thought to myself, “Boy, did I just pull the wool over these guys.” I knew I couldn’t race with the factory riders but I thought I would at least get a year in and maybe I would be able to save enough money to buy a house and a car. Then I figured I would get a job operating heavy equipment for my friend’s construction company out in the desert. But after I won the Florida series I thought, “Maybe I can run with these guys” and after I won the 125’s at Hangtown I said, “I’m staying and I’ve really got to buckle down. - Bob Hannah 2024