DUHAMEL!

“NEVER ONE TO DO ANYTHING BUT GIVE 100%: YVON DUHAMEL WOULD EITHER WIN, CRASH AND SOMETIMES EVEN BURN!”

Two wheels, four wheels and even skis: as long as the vehicle concerned had an engine, whether motorcycle, car or snowmobile, then Yvon Duhamel would race it – and race it hard.

So hard, in fact, that Randy Hall, Yvon’s long-time friend and crew chief for eight years at Kawasaki, once memorably described the tough little French Canadian’s approach to racing as being either: “go, blow, or punch a hole in the fence!”

Certainly, the career of Yvon Duhamel did include a number of crashes but it was more the spectacular nature of them rather than the total number that made this aspect of his riding approach so memorable. As far as blowing up his machines went, however, it is definitely true that if there was any weakness in their engine or transmission, then Yvon’s ‘all or nothing’ style would find it. There is little available evidence of him nursing an ailing machine to the finish!

When it came to having ‘the go factor’, however, Yvon had that in spades and was always obviously and awesomely fast. Even when he had a machine that had a speed advantage over its rivals, he never reined in its performance to win comfortably at the slowest possible speed. As the flag dropped, so would Yvon drop the hammer on the opposition and as often as not would speed into the distance unless stopped by mechanical failure…and the occasional crash, of course!

The early years

Yvon Duhamel was born in the French-Canadian city of Montreal in October 1939 and aged 17 began his racing career in local wintertime ice races. He excelled in this discipline of motorcycle sport and he continued to compete in it even after his main career had moved on to