The raceĪs the revs built before the start, the sound was deafening. So Phil had filled the 5-gallon fuel tank with the precision of a laboratory chemist and then placed a white shirt on top to help prevent heat expansion in the sunny and humid Florida spring. “Old Blue was only getting between 11 and 13 miles to the gallon, and the race was 50 miles long,” Cook says. There was a shadow hanging over them: the ever-present threat of unreliability from a motorcycle that sometimes consumed its engine internals in moments of high stress, and the issue of fuel consumption. But it was the hundreds of hours of painstaking research and development by Phil and Cook that had brought them to where they were on this day in 1977. Its cost? $1,400, about the same as a new Honda Four motorcycle of the day.Īirflow genius Jerry Branch and dyno expert C.R. Old Blue featured many one-off parts produced by California’s hot rod culture and was an enigma to all except the two men who had built it.įor example, its close-ratio gearbox had been commissioned from Webster Gears, a race car transmission specialist. Phil and Cook had left nothing to chance, poring over every part of the bike in the hours before the race. Christopher pendant was screwed tightly to Old Blue’s fairing so that even the Protector of Travelers was along for the ride. (“It’s the only division at Ducati that’s making any money, so we should honor that,” Phil had said when designing them). They were wearing their lucky T-shirts, a wacky logo by Phil that featured Ducati’s industrial engine on the front. Fabio Taglioni, was securely taped to their toolbox. Their good-luck charm, a photo of Ducati’s legendary engineer Dr. Phil and Cook were fully prepared for this showdown. They were the readers who had paid out hard cash for recent issues of Cycle magazine featuring in-depth reports on the building and racing progress of Cook and Phil’s Ducati, Old Blue, aka The California Hot Rod.
“But that brings its own sense of dread: We better not screw this up.” “It seemed that the day ought to belong to us,” Cook recalls 40 years later of the giant-killing efforts he and tuner and friend Phil Schilling had achieved that practice week. But now the rider, who came third in 1976, has mixed feelings as he looks around at his rivals. All week his Ducati has held a two-second advantage over the field. Cook has earned his place on the front row. The first three rows of the grid are packed with America’s top riders on factory-supported machinery. Around him are more than 30 bikes, including Steve McLaughlin and Reg Pridmore’s winning BMWs of the previous year, highly tuned Kawasaki fours, Laverda triples, several Ducatis and a Honda. Cook Neilson is sitting on the front row of the grid for the 13-lap Superbike race. This is the inside story.ĭaytona International Speedway, March 11, 1977. Forty summers ago, a home-brewed Ducati created a legend in racing.
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