The Team Skippy Racing USA Origin Story
Team Skippy Racing originated in Perth, Australia with the Kirkby family of racers. Husband and wife, Chris and Lorene and their son Hayden all raced with Australia’s Historic Competition Motorcycle Club (HCMC).
The word Skippy is Australian slang for “kangaroo” and the team’s name comes from a time when the family would take in orphaned baby, or “joey,” kangaroos at their home and care for them to the point at which they could be released back into the wild. Oftentimes, Chris would be working on the bikes while having a young ‘roo standing right next to him watching and learning how to spanner a race bike. Special times for sure!
In 2014, Chris and Lorene traveled to the States, as Lorene, who had been pursuing a medical degree, decided to spend one semester at the University of Vermont. For 6 months they rented a home in Colchester, Vermont. During this period, Chris had spent a great deal of his time looking for “bits” for his new race bike project: a vintage 1970 Suzuki Titan 500, his dream road race machine. The house that Chris and Lorene rented was next door to future-TSR Crew Chief, Ken Lavallee. Chris and Ken found out that they both had much in common as the two of them were both musicians and racing enthusiasts.
In time, Chris asked if Ken would be interested in participating in his T500 project and Ken quickly accepted. During Ken’s racing days in the early 1970’s, he had a small business modifying two-stroke engines used at the time in motocross racing and he put all those skills to work on Chris’s bike.
Racing had always been in Ken’s veins and having an opportunity to get back into the game after 40 years was something Ken wanted to see through. Ken immersed himself in everything T500 and put his considerable engineering background to the test, learning everything he could about the evolution of two-stroke technology since the time of the Titan with an eye to seeing what modern technology could be introduce into this build. Throughout the rest of his US stay, Chris worked with Ken as they assembled the pieces of what would be Chris’s race bike when he returned home to Australia.
When Chris returned to Australia, he and Ken continued to communicate via Skype and email, sharing ideas, designs, and everything bike- and motor-related as together they formulated a plan, and proceeded to build what became their dream racer. They stepped outside the box everywhere they could while carefully staying within the vintage racing rules framework for their period build. To help bring ideas to life, Chris enlisted the skills of friend and Engineer/Master Machinist Allen Cook. With Allen on board, the bike started taking shape and finally, in January, 2016, the bike was raced for the first time at the world-famous Phillip Island International Classic event which Ken and his wife Sarah were able to attend.
Over the next few years, Chris won the 500GP title with the HCMC and in 2018 became the Western Australian 750cc States title holder. All originating from a sandy, bonfire-lit beach on the shore of Lake Champlain Vermont, the four of them listening to music and sharing libations, while gazing at the stars.
At the same time that Ken and Chris were working on their T500 project, Peter was campaigning a variety of bikes, including his father’s Honda CB350 and a 70cc Rieju two stroke, with the United States Classic Racing Association (USCRA). Peter started racing in 2012 after having spent his childhood in the 70’s and 80’s attending and corner working at Bryar Motorsports Park (now NHMS) while his father raced with the Association of American Motorcycle Road Racers (AAMRR).
In 2015 Peter discovered the Classic Bike Experience (CBE), a community shared-space vintage motorcycle shop in Essex Junction, Vermont. Excited to have a vintage motorcycle workspace so close to home, Peter joined the CBE Guild and immediately went looking for a race bike project to wrench on in the winter of 2016. After a few FB posts on the USCRA’s page, Peter located a “barn find” 1969 T500 Titan belonging to Karl Smolenski, a passionate motorcycle racer and collector. In February of 2016, at the USCRA Awards Banquet in the parking lot of the Greenfield Inn, in exchange for a bottle of Maker’s Mark whiskey Peter took possession of what would become one of the the fastest T500 Titans in the world.
Through the winter of 2016 and then into 2017 Peter and his son Aiden worked on the Titan at the CBE shop and eventually the bike hit the track for the first time in 2017 taking a 2nd place in its first race event.
In June of 2017, CBE held its annual Open House and as usual promoted the event through its email list. The email went out advertising the many British Nortons and Triumphs, CBE’s primary bikes of choice and at the bottom of the email, there was a brief mention of a Japanese race bike, a T500. A coworker of Ken’s received the email and forwarded it to Ken, adding, “Hey there’s a T500 over in Essex. We should go check it out.”
Ken attended the Open House and it was there that Peter and Ken met. Peter had been yearning for knowledge in how to build a proper two stroke race bike and over the years of working on the exact same bike with Chris Kirkby, Ken had made many contacts around the world on everything T500. It became quickly apparent that Ken could help Peter on this build and was very eager to do so … and with that TSR-USA was born!