Taken from the current issue of Classic Racer

Steve Baker was the first Stateside World Champion on two wheels, winning the F750 title in 1977, the same year that he won the Daytona 200 and finished second in the 500cc World Championship. Norm DeWitt met the quiet spoken American to get the lowdown.

Steve Baker recalls his earliest days of riding and racing: “My dad first got a motorcycle and every time he wanted to go riding I’d jump on the back. He got tired of that and bought me my own motorcycle, a Yamaha 80. I think the model was a 60s Yamaha YG-1 with a pressed steel frame, with trick cylinder, big carburettor and expansion chamber, all stripped down. Just over the hill from my house, there were some friends of mine, and their dad had made a dirt practice track in a field. Those guys who would ride there were racers who rode on the track locally. When I was as fast as those guys, I decided to try dirt track. A Suzuki dealer in Bellingham offered me a Suzuki to ride at Hannigan. I was working for a Yamaha dealer, and riding Suzuki for a Suzuki dealer at Hannigan! That lasted for about half a season. My first race, a 100cc race at Hannigan, I won. Then they got me on a Yamaha. I had come in part of the way through the season, and the following year raced 250.”

Steve’s rise through the ranks continued quickly. “When I moved up to 250, I raced indoors and outdoors. I raced novice on my flat tracker Yamaha 250 at Ascot one time in 1970 on the TT and the half-mile against guys like Scott Autrey, and Scott Brelsford, but mostly I raced locally in the Seattle, Tacoma, and Portland area. For me and a friend of mine; that was a big deal for us to ride at Ascot once, so we made the trek down. I won the TT on Saturday night, and I think I got third or fourth on the half mile. I did a lot of indoor stuff during the winter on old Bultaco 200 that worked really good indoors, but when I got the ride with Deeley, I switched back to the 250 single Yamaha.”

That Yamaha connection continued almost throughout Steve Baker’s career. “In 1970, my novice year, I had the highest number of points of any novice in the nation. In the north-west back then, we could race three nights a week, so there were lots of opportunities for points.”

Steve had just graduated from high school, and spent much of his summer traveling around the mid-west riding the fairgrounds dirt track races. But soon opportunities in road racing were to change his focus. “Halfway through my novice dirt track year, I mentioned to a guy that worked for Fred Deeley (based in Vancouver, BC, Canada) that I’d like to try road racing sometime. Well, they called me the next week, and Bob Work got a friend of a friend to loan him a bike for me to ride at Westwood.”

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