For The Love Of The Sport
While planning a recent trip to Texas I thought about other projects I could take on in the same general area. That’s when I remembered Tulsa, Oklahoma, was a short road trip up I-35 from Dallas and that it is the base for two current stars of AMA Pro Racing, 2009 Daytona SportBike Champion Danny Eslick and Dane “The Wolverine” Westby, the runner-up in the 2010 Daytona 200. Thinking the two young racers would be good subjects for Cribs features, I gave them calls. Eslick was unavailable but took a rain check. Westby accepted but pointed out one small problem.
“I don’t really have a house,” 24-year-old Westby said. “I’m getting my own place, but I live in my parents’ basement right now and I don’t think my mom (Jane Westby) is going to be too cool with the idea. Maybe we can do it at our shop.”
Recalling the unusual mix of motorcycles Westby’s father Tryg, a former Pro racer, had ridden around the paddock in recent seasons, I figured there would be plenty of stuff to take photos of. The only thing I had to figure out was whether the feature would be a Cribs or a Shops. After listening to a bit of Westby’s tale, however, I soon realized that it didn’t matter how the story was labeled.
Tryg Westby opened The Kinetic Playground in 1978. He sold it about seven years ago so he could focus on running Dane Westby’s racing operation out of the brick building on the right. The Chevy van is Dane’s daily driver, and the customized Chevy Caprice lowrider is Tryg’s commuter car.
For starters, Westby’s great-great grandfather, Ole T. Westby, the American-born son of Norwegian immigrants and a soldier for the Union army in the Civil War, has a town named after him.
“He started a dry goods store,” Tryg said of his great-grandfather, “and apparently it got to be so successful that when the railroad was coming through (southern Wisconsin) all the guys that were working on the railroad were coming there for food and stuff. And they said, ‘Hey, we should run the rail line through here.’ And they named the stop after that store, so that was the start of Westby, Wisconsin.”
Ole’s grandson (Dane’s grandfather) Gerald H. Westby, Sr. put himself through college at the University of Chicago and after a stint as a U.S. Army officer during World War I eventually earned a doctorate degree (Ph.D.) in Geology and went to work as a geologist and a geophysicist.
“He got hired by some of the first oil companies to go look for oil, basically,” said Tryg. “‘He went over to the Middle East, and that’s why they have oil. No other geologists could find oil for them.” Gerald H. Westby, Sr. developed a system to use seismographs to find oil and used that expertise to build and run his own company, Seismograph Service Corporation (SSC), which at one point was the third-largest employer in Tulsa, Oklahoma, with over 5000 employees. SSC was eventually bought by Raytheon in 1966, and Gerald H. Westby, Sr. continued to lead SSC and serve on the Raytheon Board of Directors until he retired in 1970.
Gerald H. Westby, Sr. and his wife Kathleen were also philanthropists. At one point, the student union at the University of Tulsa was known as the Westby Center, and the official residence of the University of Tulsa President is still called the Westby House, after its former owners, Gerald and Kathleen. The Tulsa Performing Arts Center also has a room named the Kathleen P. Westby Pavilion, and the Kathleen P. Westby Foundation still awards grants to arts and education projects around Tulsa each year. Gerald H. Westby, Sr. died in 1983, and Kathleen P. Westby passed away in 2001.
While his older brother Gerald H. Westby, Jr. became a stockbroker, Tryg Westby took a slightly different route and followed his passion for motorcycles. After graduating from college he started his own motorcycle shop in a building he bought on South Peoria Avenue, once a popular cruising spot for hot rodders. The shop was called The Kinetic Playground, and Tryg ran the whole business solo for a long time. Then in 1980, he bought an existing Honda dealership, which became Westby Honda and gave him the opportunity to go road racing more often. Tryg eventually worked his way up to a Honda-supported AMA Pro Superbike ride in the late 1980s.
“I did that for a couple of years and had varying success,” said Tryg. “I would get right up front and have the motor blow up or something would happen. I did pretty well, but I just ran out of dough. It was too expensive.”
The Wolverine’s Den started out and continues to be a place to store and maintain some of Tryg Westby’s car and motorcycle collections. Once the transmission is repaired, the Chevy pickup on the lift will be a work truck. The blue and orange car is a 2006 Ford GT40.
Tryg said he reached that conclusion right around the time Dane was born, and he decided to scale back to club racing and focus on running the Honda dealership, which he eventually sold in 1990.
“The more I was into the Honda business the less I liked being a franchise dealer. You had no control over what you were doing,” said Tryg. “Plus, the whole time I was doing the dealership I was dying to open The Kinetic Playground back up. I didn’t have the time to run the Honda shop and come down here and run this, too, so I had pretty much shut down Kinetic Playground and was just using it for storage.”
Shortly after selling his Honda dealership, Tryg re-opened, remodeled and expanded The Kinectic Playground, added a dynamometer and set about making it a premier parts, accessories and tuning shop in Tulsa.
Among Tryg Westby’s collection are a show-winning custom chopper and a restored Harley-Davidson Model 24 JD.
Motorcycling was never thrust upon Dane Westby, he said. Motorcycles and land to ride on were readily available to him and he happily started riding with his father, but he never really got into racing while he was young. Riding regularly with Tryg and Tryg’s friends, however, gave Dane the opportunity to learn and display his skills.
“We had a track built in the back yard,” said Tryg. “He would ride his (Yamaha) PW50 and me and my buddy would ride (Honda) XR80s. At first, we would smoke him, but pretty soon he started beating us. ‘OK, we’re drinking too much beer here. Let’s lay off the beer.’ No, he still beat us. Then we stopped drinking any beer, and he still beat us. Then I tried my hardest, and he still beat us. Then, I didn’t tell him but I put a 105cc kit in my XR80, and he still beat me.
Tryg Westby got the inspiration for the restoration from this photo of his father, Gerald H. Westby, Sr. (seated on bike), who used a Model 24 JD to explore for oil in the deserts of Algeria in 1924.
“He would be riding along doing stuff, and it would be like, ‘Wow! Did he just really do that? OK, kid, you’ve got some talent here. Let’s go play. Let’s go see what you can do.'”
So after getting the approval of Dane’s mother (who wanted to make sure her son wasn’t being pushed into the sport, according to Dane), Tryg bought a Suzuki SV650 and took 16-year-old Dane to a CMRA event at Hallett, where he finished seventh. More importantly, Dane fell in love with the sport.
“Well, at first, I wanted to be like Dad,” said Dane. “I wasn’t really sure what was going to happen with it. I just wanted to go try it out. I just went out there and, ‘Man, this is cool!’ And we’ve just kept going from there.”
Dane ran a few events in 2003 and started winning Amateur races on his SV650 at the end of 2004. He stepped up to the Expert ranks in 2005, won 12 times and placed in the top three of three CMRA class Championships.
“Zac Chapman and Dustin Dominguez were both riding SVs at the time,” said Dane, “so we had some good battles. I honed my skills with those guys. Winning is great, but racing around with the guys is the best part of it. If I win, it’s great, but if I lose after a great battle I’ll be there in winner’s circle shaking the hand of the guy who beat me. “
Tryg Westby gives son Dane a ride around the AMA Pro paddock at Barber Motorsports Park last season on Tryg’s restored 1924 Harley-Davidson Model 24 JD and replica sidecar rig.
Dane continued winning races (13) with CMRA in 2006, but the urge to go faster and race against new competition led him to start racing a new Yamaha YZF-R6 along with his SV650 in the WERA National Challenge Championships. And in spite of suffering a broken arm mid-season, he ended the 2006 season by winning the SV650 Suzuki Cup final at the WERA Grand National Finals.
“When I would do better Tryg would give me something, some bike part or improvement,” said Dane. “Then when I would get better on that, he would throw something else into the mix, like a new bike. And I went better and better and started winning more and more stuff.”
Not only were Dane’s parents behind him, but his uncle, Gerald H. Westby, Jr., also sponsored his racing.
In 2007, Dane amassed a huge number of race and Championship wins while riding four different motorcycles: A Suzuki SV650, a 636cc Kawasaki ZX-6R, a Yamaha YZF-R6 and a Suzuki GSX-R1000.
In addition to winning 14 CMRA races, Dane won four AMA Sports National Championships, co-rode to the WERA National Endurance Mediumweight Superbike Championship, captured WERA National Challenge Championships in Lightweight Twins Superstock and Formula Two, and won the SV650 Suzuki Cup Final for the second straight year.
“Racing the SV650 was good because it teaches you to brake later and get on the gas earlier because it didn’t have any power,” said Dane. “Then whenever I got good suspension it was all about having corner speed, and all of that transferred over to the other bikes pretty well.”
Dane and Tryg decided to test the waters in AMA Pro Racing in 2008, a year in which Dane also earned the WERA National Challenge 600cc Superstock and Superbike Championships. Dane made his AMA Pro debut at Mid-Ohio and finished 12th in Supersport and 12th in Superstock. Later that year at Road Atlanta he backed that up with a 10th in Formula Xtreme and a 10th in Supersport, when he finished just 26 seconds behind Supersport winner Josh Hayes.
Up to this point all of Dane’s racing activities operated out of a 2000-square-foot race shop, a.k.a. The Wolverine’s Den, right next door to The Kinetic Playground (which Tryg essentially sold to former employee and long-time friend Donnie Meador a few years ago so he could focus on supporting Dane’s racing), but the new shop started out primarily as a place to “keep the rain off” Tryg’s motorcycle collection.
The collection includes some of Tryg’s old racebikes, including a 1975 Honda CB400F with a Kaz Yoshima 492cc engine and Tryg’s VF750F and VFR750 Honda Superbikes. There are also some cool, relatively stock streetbikes, like a 1987 CBR250RR that revs to 17,500 rpm and a pristine 1990 RC30. Tryg also enjoys custom rides, like his Spondon-framed Honda CBX six-cylinder and his Best-of-Show-winning chopper. The crown jewel of the collection, in my opinion, is a restored 1924 Harley-Davidson Model 24 JD and replica sidecar rig, just like the one Tryg’s father used to explore Algeria. In fact, there’s a photo on the wall of the shop showing 26-year-old Gerald H. Westby, Sr. on a similar machine in Algeria in 1924.
“I guess it was about 10 years ago we started looking for parts at the swap meets,” said Tryg. “The guy I built it with, Bob Critz, was a real stickler for accuracy. He wanted to make it exactly like it was down to the paint. That’s leftover World War I paint. What the deal was they (Harley- Davidson) had so much of it left they just painted all their streetbikes with it for the next year or two until they ran out of it.”
After Dane Westby landed a ride with Team M4 Suzuki for 2011, his old Yamaha racebikes were prepped for sale. Dustin Meador (inset) works as a full-time mechanic for the Westbys and has teamed up with Dane to win several endurance races and Championships.
To maintain Tryg’s motorcycle and car collection (and later Dane’s racebikes), Tryg hired Dustin Meador (son of Donnie Meador) to be a full-time mechanic (and Dane’s part-time endurance racing partner) and equipped the shop with several hydraulic lifts (including a car lift), work benches and various other tools. The shop also has a small, trophy-filled lobby and a sales counter, but Tryg and Dane are the only customers.
Activity at the shop really ramped up in 2009 when Dane took a break from his studies at the University of Tulsa to join the AMA Pro ranks full-time, and that season started off well for Dane. He ran as high as fifth and finished eighth in his very first Daytona 200, but he struggled in the following rounds and a big crash resulted in fractured bones and nerve damage in his right arm.
“These three (first three) fingers and my arm, I couldn’t feel anything, so when I would brake they would do their own thing,” said Dane. “I couldn’t brake like I wanted to because I didn’t know what was going to happen. Luckily, it (feeling) came back.”
To help regain his form and his confidence, Tryg suggested going back to one of the building blocks that helped Dane develop his skills – endurance racing. So at Mid-Ohio, Meador and Dane teamed up on his spare Yamaha YZF-R6 Daytona SportBike and won the very first Moto-GT1 race they entered.
That win and regaining the feeling in his arm helped Dane rediscover his form in Daytona SportBike, he said, and he took three top-10 finishes before the end of the season. He and Meador also continued in the Moto- GT1 class, winning at Heartland Park Topeka and teaming with Jeff Wood and Josh Hayes to triumph at the prestigious 8-Hours at Daytona.
That led to Dane earning a ride on the new Project 1 Atlanta Yamaha support team for the 2010 AMA Pro season and a ride with Team Zyvax R6 in the WERA National Endurance Championship. And Dane (who spends his time in between races riding his bicycle, for training and basic transportation, and managing a piece of property Tryg owns) did not just pick up where he left off the previous season: He made a major leap forward in 2010, becoming one of the consistent front-runners in the Daytona SportBike class, starting with a runner-up finish in the Daytona 200.
In 2010, Dane Westby finished second in the Daytona 200 and fifth in the AMA Pro Daytona SportBike Championship, but he hopes to improve on both this season while having lots of battles with the class’ best riders, the part of racing he enjoys the most, he said. Photo by Brian J. Nelson.
Unlike the previous season, however, Dane kept going strong, grabbing his second podium finish at the second event, earning a total of five podiums and 12 top- 10 finishes during the year and fifth-place in the Championship. Had it not been for two mechanical DNFs at Mid-Ohio, Westby may have finished even higher, which is something he hopes to do this season with his new team, Team M4 Suzuki.
“I’m really excited to be with Team M4 Suzuki this season. This is like going to the factory team for me,” said Dane. “I really want to win Daytona this year. Last year I came real close and pretty much had it on a silver platter, but that was gonna be my first (AMA Pro) podium experience and I let that get into my head a little bit during the race. I want another crack at that, but if I don’t do great there I’m not going to let it affect me for the rest of the season. I want to methodically go through the season and if we have a problem we’re gonna work through it. I don’t want to be fifth in the points again. I know I can race at the front.”
Since this article was published…
Riding his Team M4 Suzuki GSX-R600 in 2011, Westby finished seventh in the AMA Pro Daytona SportBike Championship, but that season included his first AMA Pro sprint race win at Mid-Ohio and three other podium finishes. Westby stayed with Team M4 Suzuki in 2012, won again at Mid-Ohio, collected nine other podium finishes in the 19-race season and finished as the runner-up in the AMA Pro Daytona SportBike Championship to Martin Cardenas.
In 2013, Westby’s team switched to GEICO Motorcycle-sponsored Honda machinery, and he struggled to match his previous results while riding his new CBR600RR. His best finish that season was a fourth at Barber and he placed in the top 10 in 12 of the 13 races, but that was only good enough for sixth in the AMA Pro Daytona SportBike Championship.
Rather than spend another year on the Honda, Westby and his father Tryg decided to go back to doing things for themselves and ran their own Yamalube/Westby Racing team and a Yamaha YZF-R6 in 2014, working with Dane’s long-time Crew Chief Chuck Giacchetto. The switch was just what the doctor ordered for Westby, as he won three races, got five podium finishes in 10 races and placed third in the AMA Pro Daytona SportBike Championship behind Champion Jake Gagne and Jake Lewis.
For 2015, Westby decided to stick with his own team again, but he and his team also decided to take the opportunity provided by the new MotoAmerica restructuring of Pro motorcycle road racing to join the Superstock 1000cc class on a brand new Yamalube/Westby Racing Yamaha YZF-R1.
“I’m really pleased with the bike,” Westby told Roadracingworld.com. “It’s not like other 1000s I’ve ridden. It’s a lot more friendly and easy to ride. I got to go do my thing, so I’m pretty excited about it. I’ve been trying to get on a 1000 for a while. It’s been a hard road. Then Chuck [Giacchetto] and I and Tryg made a plan a couple of years ago to try and move up, and we’re following through. So it’s been something that was in the works for a while, and it’s finally coming to fruition.”
With only a few days of testing under his belt on the still-in-development machine, Westby finished the recent MotoAmerica test at Circuit of The Americas as the top Superstock 1000cc rider and fourth-fastest overall in the Superbike/Superstock 1000cc class. And best of all, Westby’s best time of 2:11.580, was less than one second behind the times recorded by the fastest factory Superbike riders.
Just as he was reaching new heights in his racing career, Westby lost his life Monday, March 23 in a crash on his streetbike in Tulsa, Oklahoma. Godspeed, Dane “The Wolverine” Westby.
