As crazy as they come
The late Warren Willing, Australian Road Racing Champion and crew chief to 2000 500cc World Champion Kenny Roberts Jnr, was fond of telling his version of Ron Grant.
“He was the most insane guy I ever met. Life to him was just one big joke, and he loved every minute of it; he was always the life of the party.
But he took his racing seriously and was a fast rider and very good at set up.” In his book ‘Grand National. America’s Golden Age of Motorcycle Racing’, Joe Scalzo says, “Like lots of fast guys, (Ron) never wanted to do anything except race.
Out of the saddle and not behind the streamlining of some maxed-out crotch rocket, Ron was almost certifiable, a thoroughly crazy dingbat. Ron Grant was a full-on racer and jolly bloke, but he did horrible and dumb things that on occasion threatened to put him behind bars. God knows it would have been deserved.”
Ron Grant was born in East Croydon, South London in 1941 – not a great time or place to come into this world. Maybe those formative years shaped the man that was to emerge. His early racing career followed a familiar path – aboard a 500cc Manx Norton on the highly competitive British circuits, including the 1961 Manx Grand Prix on the Isle of Man. At the age of 21 he left for America, taking his Manx Norton with him. For a budding road racer, it was the opposite move to most, who were heading to Europe. On a 250cc Parilla, he raced wherever finances would allow, including the 1963 US GP. In 1964, and by now a US citizen, he became the first American to finish on the podium of a World Championship Grand Prix event, finishing second to Alan Shepherd in the 250cc US Grand Prix at Daytona on his Parilla. Later he had starts in the Canadian Grand Prix on his self-built 250cc Suzuki and a 500cc Honda. By 1968, Grant was contracted to the US Suzuki team, and aboard a twin cylinder TR500 finished 4th in that years’ Daytona 200. In the 1969 race he was second. Ron also spent time in New Zealand where he was a regular in the southern summer season races, working with
Suzuki importer Rod Coleman.
Grant led a peripatetic life, which included riding for the American team in the popular Transatlantic Match races in England in 1972 and 1973. When his own racing career ended, Grant moved to
New Zealand then back to Britain, settling in Louth, Lincolnshire. In 1986 he became the manager of the Honda Britain team and nurtured the career of New Zealander Richard Scott, who went on to a ride with the Kenny Roberts Lucky Strike Yamaha 500cc GP team.
In death, as in life, Ron found controversy. On December 28, 1994 he was one of six people on a speedboat which sank in Strangford Lough, a large sea lake in Northern Ireland. The group had travelled nearly five miles across the lake to a pub on Sketrick Island, but while returning late at night and in darkness, it mysteriously sank with the loss of five lives. 54-year-old Grant’s body was eventually recovered by Royal Air Force Coastguard. He was cremated in Belfast and his ashes taken to USA, where they were scattered at the Daytona circuit. ■