If you raced motocross in Ontario during the mid to late ‘80s you certainly would have been familiar with Burr Racing. In fact, if you were actively racing during that time there was a pretty good chance you were riding a Burr Racing Kawasaki. If not, you were definitely racing against a bunch of them. The Burr family were regular fixtures at the tracks in those days. Bill Burr, and his team, which included his two sons, Mark and Marty, and his wife, Joyce, became a powerhouse on the local moto scene, and his many riders collected a slew of wins and championships for Burr Racing Kawasaki.
While he had no background of any sort in motocross, Bill Burr was a racer at heart. His racing experience, however, was of the four-wheeled variety, not two. Burr started racing Stock Cars or Hobby Cars as he refers to them in the ‘60s at local tracks like Nilestown Speedway, Delaware, which is west of London, Ontario, and the CNE Grounds in Toronto when they used to have racing there back in the day. Burr, who was based out of Caledonia, Ontario, eventually graduated from the Hobby Cars to Super-Modifieds and eventually to Late Models by the end of his twenty-year car racing career.
That was around the mid-seventies, and it was also around the same time that Burr’s eldest son, Mike, who was eight years older than the younger brother Marty, discovered dirt bikes and talked his dad into buying him one. “I didn’t even really know what I was buying,” recalls Burr. The bike turned out to be a Kawasaki 90cc trail bike, but what really attracted the Burrs to the machine was the fact that the fenders had been removed. “Yeah, it didn’t have any fenders,” recalls Burr. “And that’s what we thought made it a real dirt bike,” he chuckles. “I was pretty naïve at the time.” Mike rode the bike around and had a great time on the Kawi 90, but when it came time to start racing, Burr decided that he needed to educate himself on the finer points of motocross and motocross bikes.
“The son of one of my old pit crew members from the car racing days was getting into racing motocross and Mike thought he wanted to try it as well,” recalls Burr. “So, we picked up a 1977 Suzuki RM 80 and headed to the closest track to us at the time, which was Hully Gully, to go racing.” That trusty ‘77 RM proved to be a real workhorse for them and proved to serve the Burr family very well as not only did Mike launch his racing career on the bike but younger brother Marty also used the same bike to get his motocross career started a few years later. “It was a great little bike,” remembers Burr affectionately. “In fact, I never sold it. I still have it sitting in the basement today.”
Never one to rely on a dealer for maintenance and repairs, Burr dove headfirst into the technical aspect of bike maintenance as the family started travelling the local motocross circuit. “That’s the way we did it in car racing so it just seemed natural,” states Burr. And the more he got into it the more he enjoyed it. The fact that Mike and Marty both really took to the sport and were having a good deal of success on the track only served to increase the level of dedication the family was putting into their racing efforts.
“My nine-to-five job was in the construction industry at the time,” explains Burr, “but by the early ‘80s the industry was experiencing a real downturn. There just wasn’t the work that had been available in previous years.” Burr, who worked in a supervisory capacity within the industry, soon realized that he could easily squeeze all the ever-dwindling amount of time he needed to spend on the job site into only a couple of days a week. This allowed him to spend the rest of his time tinkering in the family garage and wrenching on Mike and Mary’s bikes.
Bill’s abilities with the wrenches was becoming well known around the pits at the local races, and it wasn’t long before Mike and Marty’s competitors started actively seeking him out and coming to him with their mechanical issues. Bill, of course, was only too happy to help them out. “It was just kind of a word of mouth thing,” he recalls, “but it really started to grow and took up more and more of my time.”
Things didn’t really start getting serious for Burr Racing, however, until Marty began his string of attempts to qualify and win a Loretta Lynn’s title in 1983. “We started chasing the Loretta Lynn’s thing in the early ‘80s,” recalls Bill. “We would head out to qualifiers mostly in Michigan and that was a real eye-opener,” he recalls. “Those Michigan guys like Brian Swink, Johnny Kitch Jr. and the Beckington brothers could really go. The competition was tough but Marty did well.” Doing well was a bit of an understatement as Marty did indeed qualify and finished just off the podium in 4th overall in the 80cc 7-11 Modified class in ‘83. He also managed to finish ahead of his Michigan rivals beating both Swink, Kitch and the Beckingtons in the process. Perhaps what stood out the most about Marty’s performance was the fact that he was one of only a couple kids that year who were riding the Suzuki RM 80. At the time, the Suzuki was a bike which was thought to be uncompetitive when matched up against the Yamahas and particularly the Kawasaki KX 80s of the day.
It was while at this race and purely by chance that Bill Burr’s relationship with Kawasaki and the beginnings of Burr Racing got started. “I don’t know if they do it anymore but back then they used to make the top 5 finishers put their bikes into an impound and wait for fifteen minutes in case somebody wanted to launch a protest,” explains Burr. “It was while I was waiting for Marty’s bike to be released from impound that an older, well dressed gentleman approached me and started asking me what Suzuki was doing for us. I thought this was kind of weird,” recalls Burr, who was wondering who the heck this guy was. “He obviously wasn’t wrenching on bikes, judging by the way he was dressed, so I figured he must have been a somebody in the industry.” Burr indicated to the man that his local Suzuki dealer was giving them a bit of a discount on his bikes and parts, “but that was about it.”
The friendly stranger turned out to be the original Manager for the Team Green program in the U.S., Dave Jordan. Jordan searched out Bill a couple more times during their week at Loretta’s and eventually indicated to him one night while they were sitting around the old campfire that he had decided he wanted to get Marty on a Kawasaki for the following season and get him some real Team Green style support. Seeing as he was currently beating a lot of the current batch of fully supported Team Green kids on his uncompetitive RM 80, Jordan told Bill and Marty that he was going to speak to his counterparts at Canadian Kawasaki and “see if he could get something arranged,” recalls Burr. “It all sounded great but after we got home, and a couple of months went by, we didn’t hear anything so we kind of forgot all about it.”
Just as they had begun to think that nothing was going to come of their talks with Jordan, the Burr’s phone did ring and it was Canadian Kawasaki calling with what seemed like an unbelievably attractive offer. What Bill had thought was originally going to be an offer of support for just Marty’s racing program turned out to be not only help for Marty but a professional opportunity for Bill as well. “They wanted me to become the manager for Team Green in Canada,” recalls Burr. “I was going to run the whole program for then. They said it was pretty much a done deal, they just had to get the accounting department in Japan to sign off on it.” The last part of that statement raised a couple of red flags in Bill’s mind but he agreed to the proposal as he felt that this may be a good direction for him to go. The construction industry in Ontario had not really rebounded at that point and he was very passionate about motocross. And it certainly did prove to be a good move for him and his family. “I never did go back to construction,” he laughs.
Unfortunately, the higher-ups at Kawasaki were not so enamoured with the plan for Team Green North and called Bill back shortly after the original proposal had been made offering a bit of a different deal. “They told me they had some good news and some bad news,” chuckles Burr. “They were not going to do the Team Green thing. They just didn’t think that with the overall number of bike sales in Canada, being so much lower than in the US, that it made sense to initiate that type of large scale program, but the good news was that they did offer me a Kawasaki dealership.” Bill goes on to explain Kawasaki’s decision in a bit more detail. “The whole Team Green model is based on selling bikes, of course, and it had proven itself in America. Put all the fast kids on KX 80s and what do you think every other up and
coming kid is going to want his parents to buy him. A Kawasaki of course. It’s a great idea but they just didn’t think that it would work in Canada. We just didn’t have enough people racing motocross to justify it.”
While Burr did agree in principal to become a Kawasaki dealer, he did have a few questions. “When you become a dealer, you generally deal with the whole line of products. In the case of Kawasaki, not only did they sell motocross bikes but personal watercraft was very big then and obviously street bikes as well. I didn’t really have any interest in that and they agreed to let me concentrate on motocross bikes,” which suited Bill just fine. Although he does go on to add that he could have had access to the other products if he wished.
The move proved to pay off for both Burr and Kawasaki immediately. “We signed the contract with Kawasaki in ’84,” recounts Burr, “and in 1985 we did some serious numbers.” Referring to the numbers as serious was almost an understatement as Burr sold approximately five times more KXs in 1985 by himself than were sold across the whole country in 1984. “We certainly had some amazing success,” remembers Burr. “In 1984, they only sold sixteen new KX 125s in Ontario altogether, but in 1985 I sold one hundred and thirty-five myself. I also sold seventy-five 250s and around fifteen to twenty KX 500s.” The higher-ups at Kawasaki were pleased, and the success that Burr racing was experiencing from a business standpoint was certainly transferring to the race track as well.
Marty Burr had a fantastic year in 1985 winning the National Schoolboy class in Canada on his Burr Racing Kawasaki. He notched two top ten finishes at Loretta Lynn’s as well and was really on a roll. And Marty wasn’t the only Burr Racing rider putting in some solid results. “We had some great young kids riding our bikes,” remembers Burr. “We had guys like Chris Lemmon, Steve Bulyovsky and of course Marty on the 80s, but we also had some up and coming Pro riders like Dave Marcella and Dave Beatty on our bikes. At the time people were very anxious to be with Burr Racing.” Marcella, who rode for Burr Racing in his first two Pro seasons in ‘85 and ’86, remembers Burr as a guy who just really enjoyed working on bikes. “Bill was the kind of guy who loved being down in his basement shop grinding intake and exhaust ports,” remembers Marcella. “He was always trying to find the right balance for optimum power delivery. He turned my bikes into weapons.” Marcella goes on to add that one of Burr’s greatest attributes as a tuner was his ability to take input from a rider and transfer it to the bike. “If I told him I wanted the power down low, when I would get the bike back it would be exactly how I wanted it. Just how I would have described it to him.” Marcella concludes by saying that Burr was such a perfectionist he wouldn’t let you take your bike home until you rode it on his private track behind his house. “He would make you ride through a couple of heat cycles and he would stand at the side of the track making sure you didn’t go too hard too soon on it. If you did he would wave you in and give you a little lecture,” chuckles Marcella. “Break-in was very important to him.”
Of course, relationships between Team Managers and riders, or more accurately some rider’s parents, don’t always go as smoothly as you might hope as Burr related in a bit of an amusing story. “I was down in Ohio picking up a new trailer at the Hi Point factory and they had some trick Kawasaki ignition kits for the KX 80 that they were working on. I took two of them because I was always looking for ways to make Marty’s 80 faster. I installed one on Marty’s bike and gave the other one to Chris Lemmon’s father, who just happened to be hanging out in the shop when I got back from my trip.” Burr goes on to say that he really didn’t think anything of it at the time but when he showed up at the next race he got a bit of a surprise from an irate parent. “I remember it like it was yesterday,” recalls Burr. “It was Big Bend Raceway down near Tillsonburg, Ontario and as I pulled into the pits I immediately had this parent banging on my window screaming at me about a factory ignition kit. He was going on about how much money he spent with me and why would I give the ignition to somebody else rather than him. I was quite taken aback,” recalls Burr. That particular rider was released from the Burr Racing Team right then and there. “That was the end of the deal for him,” laughs Burr.
Interestingly, in a somewhat amusing culmination to this story, Bill and Marty tested the ignition extensively and decided it wasn’t an improvement to the performance of the bike so they went back to the stock set-up. Bill, however, decided to leave the over-sized ignition coil on the bike. It was situated right behind the front number plate. A bit of a decoy perhaps but Burr insists to this day that it was just an oversight. Maybe it was but obviously his competitors, one, thought he was still running the aftermarket kit. “Well, that individual, he decided to go down to Ohio and get his own ignition kit,” recalls Burr. “Unfortunately, it malfunctioned on him causing a DNF at a big Loretta’s qualifier, that was unfortunate. His dad was fuming mad at me over that whole thing but he ended up doing alright.”
Indeed, most of Burr’s riders did end up doing alright, and the Burr Racing Team became a bit of a juggernaut through the mid to late ‘80s. Bill admits he enjoyed listening to the announcers at the local races calling out the name of one Burr Racing rider after another on any given summer Sunday afternoon. “It was pretty cool,” remembers Burr. ‘We were putting full page ads in magazines, and people were sending us bikes from all over the place. We were shipping parts out to people across the country.” Burr remembers one specific example when he had to airlift a batch of parts to some oilfield workers who were located north of Great Slave Lake in the Northwest Territories. “We had to parachute the stuff into them. It was quite something.”
It was a great little run for Burr Racing. While it didn’t last all that long, the Burrs certainly made their mark on the Ontario moto scene during that period. Marty moved up to the Intermediate class and won a 125 and a 250 title in ’86, even though Bill felt he was too young to be riding that class. “After Marty won the Schoolboy title in ’85, the CMA, or more accurately the CMA President Marilyn Bastedo, decided he was too fast for the Junior class so they moved him directly up to Intermediate. I felt he was too young. He was only thirteen and we argued about it but they weren’t going to budge. That left a bad taste in my mouth so we raced most of the time in Michigan that year.”
Burr Racing transitioned from Kawasaki to Yamaha when Bill decided to take over a Yamaha dealership in Waterdown in 1989. It was also around this time that Marty decided to take a break from racing. “We weren’t really getting along too well at that time,” laments Burr. The hiatus lasted for two seasons but Bill kept busy working on bikes for other up and coming young Pros like Chris Pomeroy. “Bill was great to ride for,” remembers Pomeroy, who raced a Yamaha for Burr in 1991. “He only ever yelled at me once and he was always very supportive,” he laughs.
As the ‘80s gave way to the ‘90s and the old CMA gave way to the CMRC, Marty came back to Pro racing with Bill by his side, spinning the wrenches just as it had been for so many years. “I’m very proud of Marty’s career,” states Bill. “He earned a top ten number for ten straight years in a row.” Marty won the CMRC 125cc National Championship in 1996. He won all four motos, in what today is considered to be one of the all-time great performances in Canadian Motocross history, at the season finale at Walton in 1995, and in one of the achievements that Bill cherishes the most he took a moto win off of Ross Pederson at the first CMRC National at Walton in 1993. “I joked with Ross afterwards that that win probably cost me close to a million dollars, but it was worth it,” laughs Burr.
Bill Burr is 78 years old today, he’s semi-retired but says he still works on dirt bikes and snowmobiles. “More than I should probably, but I do hope to be pretty much retired within the next year or so.” The Burr Racing days are long over now. Marty works in the HVAC field and brother Mike is an electrician, but in speaking with Bill you can easily tell the fond memories of those days remain strong. As for the many riders who threw a leg over a Burr Racing Kawasaki back in the ‘80s, I’m sure the same can be said for them.