Between the Races: Buell’s Dave McGrath

When Dave McGrath switched from American Honda to Buell over the off-season, he figured there would be a steep learning curve. There was, but amazingly, the change has actually brought him more success so far than he’d have had if he’d stayed put—at least in terms of race results. We spoke with McGrath prior to the recent AMA Pro Road Race round at Road Atlanta.

RRX: How did your move to Buell come about?
Dave McGrath: I was at Honda up until October. Obviously, the industry was a bit strange, and nobody really knew what was happening. We’ve got triplets, and my wife and I had a plan once our family got started and they were approaching school age, that we were going to look at moving back to the part of the country where we might want to set up shop—get a shop going or something like that. We had a place in Long Beach where I was able to work first with Ducati and then when they disbanded, I was fortunate enough to go over to Honda. Once the family got started, we were just sort of sticking to our plan, and it just so happened that the circumstance—with the uncertainty as far as Honda’s racing plans—kind of facilitated putting some irons in the fire. I was actually contracted through 2009 to work with Neil [Hodgson] again, and because a couple different opportunities opened up and they still weren’t sure what was going to happen, I spoke with my bosses there at Honda, and they were very gracious. I spoke with Neil, and he was very understanding as far as the relocation goes. Honda released me from my 2009 contract, and I pursued the couple options and chose to go with the Buell option.

How did the connection with Buell happen?
Well, I actually, when I pretended to be a racer way back in the ’90s, I actually did some racing in their Buell Lightning series, so I was familiar with a couple folks. But basically, my old co-worker, Al Ludington—we all had irons in the fire. This was one of the ones where, as a mutual thing, we both made contact with them. Frankly, they put ads out in Cycle News and word of mouth, and we had both kind of pursued it and talked to the HR folks there within the same week. So Al chose to go elsewhere, and it opened up the opportunity. To be honest, the job was very attractive; I really wanted to sink my teeth back into the R&D side of things, so it really interested me a lot.

What’s your role?
Basically, what Erik [Buell] has done is, he’s got a race R&D group put together to try to work real hard to make the 1125 a viable race bike and to provide teams that choose to ride the bike with a technical liaisons type of thing. Myself and our electrical engineer, Bob Sweeney, have been going to each AMA national. We’re not really assigned to a specific team, but kind of a support system to the teams that are permitted to do the whole thing. What we’re doing is, our number-one pursuit is to get our feet wet, kind of walk before we run kind of a deal, because frankly, the idea of breaking down the stigma of Buell racing poorly or having poor results or reliability, etc., is the number-one priority—to hook the professional teams up with technical assistance to make sure that the brand and the tag of being a sport bike and a potential race platform is legitimate. That’s my number-one priority.

So who all do you work with besides the two Richie Morris Racing riders?
[Shawn] Higbee’s being an Indian, I’ll tell you. He’s doing his own gig. We try to give him as much support as we can. He was a full-time employee with Buell, as a matter of fact, in the test group—a development rider and whatnot—but he is no longer. He resigned from Buell after, I believe, nine years, just recently, and has decided to go full-time racing. He’s pursuing that again. There’s also a team who’s committed to doing the whole AMA [Daytona] SportBike series, out of Washington, called Latus Motors, with two riders.

How do you like the job?
I’ve enjoyed it a lot. We’ve already talked about the family side of things, which was an absolute homerun with quality of life and all that. With work, it’s been really, really encouraging—certainly a steep hill to climb, which is one of the main reasons why I pursued it. We’re working really hard back in the shop. I brought in some folks that I worked with before, and am currently talking to another guy from my past life [laughs]. We’ve got kind of a fresh perspective and outlook in the race shop. We’re trying to develop things to look toward the future.

You mentioned trying to shift the public’s perception of Buell. Changing perceptions isn’t an easy thing to do.
Very, very early in this program, when I first came on with Buell, I had to kind of keep myself in check because obviously, especially over at Honda, when I was working with the FX side of things, we were kind of mortal enemies, like when the XBRR program came out and they were going to get into Formula Xtreme. That was probably not the best thing that could’ve happened to the brand; it didn’t go very well, and frankly, when I was working with Honda, nobody really took a second notice of it. And since Daytona and Fontana, obviously, I’ve got very good relationships with my old teammates and bosses, and at other brands. At the tire test, Richie Morris’ guys showed up and did a lot of laps and frankly, you could tell, people were scratching their heads and going, “Man, that thing just runs and runs and runs. What’s going on?” We went to Daytona and obviously, Danny showed some speed. We went to Fontana, and of course a lot of people were getting bent out of shape. And frankly, they just looked at me and said, “Well, sure the Buell was listed on the homologation sheets from day one, but nobody gave it a second thought.”

As you say, results are the best way of changing perceptions. On the other hand, you’ve got people accusing the bike of having an unfair advantage.
The problem is Daytona SportBike wasn’t structured to be a 600 class—a lot of people don’t realize that. If you talk to Al Ludington, who’s obviously working with Colin Fraser and [Bill] Syfan, and Roger Edmondson, and the whole group, their idea’s going to be for parity and close competition. Now, I appreciate that they look at the hard facts. For example, Danny won both [Fontana] races, but he didn’t do the fastest laps, he was only fast in the first split, which was all the turns, for goodness sake—and this is during both races, an average. The first split is the longest part of that track, and it includes all the turns—he was fastest in that split. The second split was Turn 8 through the back straightaway—he was third-fastest down the back straightaway. And the last two turns onto the front straight, he was fifth-fastest. You can kind of argue the whole fact now. Are there three Buells in the top five, or five Buells in the top ten? No. Danny Eslick…just clicked with the thing…Am I happy about the fact that the Buell now is competitive? Sure I am—no question. Do I think it’s unfair? I think when we get to the next couple of flavors of tracks, we’ll see how unfair it is. I’m surprised not to see more Triumphs there, I really expected to see some Ducatis in there. I think if you look at it that way, it’s a good formula so far.