The newly promoted professional Ray Seymour mounted on his Indian Big Base 8-Valve inside the Los Angeles Stadium motordrome in the Spring of 1912. Seymour was selected by Indians Oscar Hedstrom as the test rider for the beastly new factory board track racing machine at the Elmhurst Motordrome in late 1911.
In early September 1910, Ray Seymour returned home to California as one of the world's top motorcycle racers. He was the newest recruit on Indian's dominant factory team as an understudy of the undisputed greatest motorcycle racer in the world, Jacob DeRosier. Only four years prior, Seymour had thrown his leg over a motorcycle for a race at LA's Agriculture Park for the first time, but in 1910, he returned with the crown of National Amateur Champion resting on top of his dusty blonde hair. He reacquainted himself with California's warm winter climate with a few dirt track races in San Jose before returning to Los Angeles. Once home in LA in late September, Seymour and his Indian cohorts soon gathered to assault the records at the large 1-mile wooden circle at Playa Del Rey.
Sometimes called the LA Motordrome or the pie pan, the board track at Playa Del Rey was an early experiment in the design of timber saucers and had only just opened in April of that year. The track at Playa was built in a circular shape, learning from the challenging oval-shaped LA Coliseum and the benefits of continuously banked circles at Springfield and Salt Lake. Still, Playa was significantly scaled up to a 1-mile diameter with much shallower banking of only 20 degrees. Playa was also built wider that either of the motordromes that preceded it in an attempt to host automobile races, but the size and shape proved ideally suited for motorcycles. On Saturday, September 29, Seymour, DeRosier, and Balke attacked the records, many of which had been set by DeRosier upon its opening in May. As was always the case, DeRosier smashed through the existing records, lowering the 100-mile time by nearly 11 minutes. However, the young Seymour demonstrated beyond question that he was a serious contender in the speed game. For the 1-mile dash, DeRosier lowered his existing time to 41.2 seconds, a new top speed of 88 MPH, but Seymour raised more than a few eyebrows, coming in at 41.4 seconds, just two-tenths behind the world's champion.
Seymour's warpath continued through California with wins at Ascot Park, Agriculture, Park, and the Los Angeles Coliseum Motordrome. In early December word spread that motordrome builder Jack Prince had secured a 32-acre plot of land just outside San Francisco for his next track. Without hesitation, the top riders, Seymour, Balke, Graves, DeRosier, and Whittler, were signed to compete and Oakland bound. At a half-mile-long circle with a continuous banking of 40 degrees and seating along the rim, the new Elmhurst Motordrome in Oakland was a pared-down version of the wildly popular 1-mile-long behemoth Los Angeles Motordrome at Playa Del Rey. Still, material shortages and wet weather delayed the opening, but practices in early 1911 raised more than a few eyebrows by local promoters as many of the youngest talents appeared to have outgrown their amateur ranking.
A series of protests filed by the San Francisco Motorcycle Club argued that the new crop of riders had been paying for their services, which required a professional classification. Seymour, Graves, Blake, and other California locals, Al Ward and Walter Dreyer, were among the accused. Seymour was concerned that moving up to the professional class would not only spoil his relationship with Indian, but also impact his livelihood as a racer given that he would be up against men like DeRosier and Whittler. Following the hearings, where, according to reports ample and undeniable evidence was provided against the accused, each rider was bumped up the ladder. By late February 1911, Ray Seymour had become one of the first class of professional motorcycle racers.
Finally, on April 23, 1911, the Elmhurst Motordrome opened to the same sensation and acclaim that all other board tracks had received. Seymour's teammate Charlie Balke took the top spot in their first races as professionals, winning the five and 10-mile events with Seymour coming in a close second and Merkel's Morty Graves grabbing third. Within a week, Seymour was back in form and knocking down victory after victory at the new track in Oakland, developing a fierce rivalry with "Millionaire" Morty Graves, another pioneer from the Southern California scene who occupied a top seat at Merkel next to Fred Whittler. Racing continued at the Elmhurst track through May, when on May 21, Seymour found himself in the victor's circle in Santa Rosa after winning the five and 10-mile professional races. However, that same day on the opposite side of the country, a new machine from the mind of Indian's genius engineer Oscar Hedstrom was causing a stir in New Jersey that would soon elivate Seymour to legend status.
Two weeks before, on May 5, Hedstrom had unveiled his latest racing prototype, an overhead-valve V-twin with four small valves per cylinder. The novel approach moved gasses through the chambers more efficiently than the standard F-head configurations of the day, and as a result, the new Indian "valve-in-head," or 8-valve as we know them, was a superior racing machine. Amateur Frank Hart took the first 8-valve for a spin, followed by Fred Mercier on May 14 and 21, though reliability issues plagued the prototype machine. Meanwhile, on the West Coast, Seymour returned to Salt Lake City and the Wandamere Motordrome. There, he mounted an undefeated campaign through the summer so successful that Wandamere's manager, Ivor Redman, published an open offer of $500 to anyone who could defeat the California Wonder.
It was Merkel's Fred Whittler who finally ended Seymour's streak on August 24, but in doing so, it seemed to change Seymour's fate for the worse. Following his defeat to Whittler in August, Seymour struggled to regain his form, losing race after race as the summer season wained. His former mentor, Jacob DeRosier had returned from Indian's first international campaign in the prestigious Isle of Man TT earlier that month only to have rubbed Hendee and Hedstrom, along with most everyone else in the sport the wrong way only to have been shockingly let go by the brass in Springfield. Complicating matters further was his dragging in of young Charlie Balke, who was also terminated after his name was unknowingly signed to DeRosier's berating telegrams about the inferiority of their mounts. The pair were quickly recruited by Excelsior, who, with the help of a new 7 horsepower twin and its star rider Joe Wolters, had been nipping at Indian's heels all summer.
While DeRosier and Balke made their Excelsior debut alongside Wolters at Chicago's new Riverview Motordrome in early September 1911, Seymour continued to stumble and stammer, moving up to the Tuileries Motordrome in Denver for a few weeks only to be beaten by local cracks Eddie Hasha and Erle Armstrong. An article in Bicycling World & Motorcycle Review read, "It looks as if Ray Seymour needs either a new machine or else a change of luck." Luck wasn't what was missing, as proven by Indian's other jockeys who were finding it difficult to beat the new factory racers coming out of the Excelsior camp. Luckily for them all, Oscar Hedstrom had been working away on his 8-valve prototype since its debut in the Spring, and unlike that first "valve-in-head" iteration, the second version would prove to be an absolute demon.
Hedstrom's new 8-valve was purebred, specifically made for the speedy, slanted timbers of America's wildly popular board track Motordromes. Its rigid frame was tweaked, made taller and longer with a slightly raked fork and longer steering tube. The fuel tank was made to fit, giving the new 8-Valve its distinctive, elongated line at the neck, sharply sloping in the rear to keep the riding position as low as possible. The oil tank was notched on the right side to accommodate the short exhaust from the rear cylinder and aid in warming the oil. Given the lack of pedals, the traditional jackshaft assembly was deleted altogether, as the machine was now a direct drive off the crank with rigid footpegs attached. Taking a cue from Excelsior's successful new model 7, Hedstrom increased the size of the flywheels and cases, with the new racer getting the designation of the Big Base 8-Valve. Being purpose-built for the motordrome, the Big Base had no brakes, transmission, clutch, suspension, or throttle; power regulation is left to a metal tab on the handlebars, which would break the electrical circuit from the magneto. The cylinders heads were ported, with several holes to aid airflow to the combustion chamber. Each head had two intake and two exhaust valves actuated in pairs by a rocker arm so gasses could more efficiently move in and out of the chamber. As was often the case with Hedstrom's designs, the machine's simplicity was elegant, raw, and efficient, and its power would soon redefine the idea of speed.
As the top professional in the Indian camp, Seymour was selected to be the first to test the new Big Base 8-Valve racer, taking delivery of the new beast in San Francisco in early November. The top riders in the country began to pour into the Bay Area in anticipation of the start of the second season at Elmhurst, and as the first to wrangle the raw brutality of Hedstrom's new 8-Valve, all eyes were on Seymour. In testing, the Indian Big Base 8-Valve was lightening fast, and Seymour was unofficially pulling down preseason track and speed records before being Indian's newest recruit, the young crack from Denver that had put him through his paces a month earlier joined him in Oakland. Originally hailing from Texas, Eddie Hasha was hired by Indian and shipped off to the Elmhurst Drome, being outfitted with a new Big Base of his own. With the new year came the first official races at the Elmhurst, but unfortunately for Seymour, his Big Base blew a rear tire on its official debut while running a hot lap at 90 MPH.
His innate skill kept him upright during the rapid deceleration, but unfortunately, another racer, Theo Samuelson, was unable to avoid Seymour and his crippled Indian, colliding with them from behind and sending both men and iron tumbling across the track. Seymour was injured but not severely, and after a two-week hiatus he returned to the Elmhurst saucer and promptly set a new track record. For the remainder of the winter Seymour unleashed his new 8-Valve to the crowd's delight, duking it out against Merkel's Morty Graves and Excelsior's Joe Wolters. On December 11, during a grudge match against Joe Wolters, Seymour's greatest rival up until that point, the two were running wide open, elbow to elbow, when French Aviator Didier Masson, who had been flying exhibitions during the race, overshot his landing and drifted onto the track. Seymour narrowly evaded the rogue biplane, but Wolters, unable to avoid the collision, crashed through the wing, violently removing him from his mount and sending his Excelsior directly into the plane's propeller, which snapped off. Wolters was exceptionally lucky to have only received a solid knock on the head and a variety of cuts and bruises and was back to racing within a couple of weeks.
The truth was, the dangers of the sport of motordrome racing were growing just as fast as its popularity. The machines were becoming increasingly capable of high speed, as displayed by Seymour and Hasha on their pair of Big Base 8-Valves or Balke and Wolters on their Excelsior 7s, yet there were no signs of brakes or safety equipment to be found. The tracks, too, were becoming more advanced, with steeper banking, shorter, more confined footprints, and larger grandstands along the top. As the season drew to an end in Oakland, the rider camps moved south to Los Angeles in January to open Jack Prince's latest track, the 9th in operation in America by that point. The Los Angeles Stadium motordrome was the steepest yet, a continuous circle 1/3-mile around and banked at 50 degrees.
When the Los Angeles Stadium Motordrome opened on February 11, 1912, Seymour's wiry teammate Eddie Hasha proved to be the man to beat, hitting record speeds upwards of 93 MPH. Speeds weren't the only records being smashed at the LA Stadium as attendance numbers soared at every event. Motordrome racing had become the most popular event in the country, and the new track in LA was by far the fastest, and most thrilling yet. Legendary names like Seymour, DeRosier, Wolters, and Balke shot around the timbers nearing 100 MPH, sometimes five wide across the 50-degree boards, often with spills or tumbles, and frequently with a level of gamesmanship and aggression only found in the racing game. When enthusiasts today imagine board track racing at its height, it is undoubtedly the races at the LA Stadium in the Spring of 1912 that they picture.
For all of his talents, Seymour often had to fight twice as hard for his podium positions against the smaller, lighter racers he lined up against. Couple that with the frequent mechanical issues the high-revving Big Base 8-Valve engine would encounter meant that Seymour's spring season at the Stadium was a struggle. DeRosier, Balke, Wolters, and Hasha were in peak form, which didn't help either, but despite finding a podium position in every event he entered, Seymour was seldom in the top place in LA. His fate would change in May when the riders packed up to re-open the Riverview Motordrome in Chicago for the summer. The Windy City was Excelsior's headquarters, and at Riverview, it had a clear home-field advantage; they just forgot to tell Seymour. With his Big Base dialed in, Seymour thrashed the competition at Riverview, chalking up win after win beginning in June 1912. Despite a nasty collision with Joe Wolters on June 8, which rendered both men unconscious, the California Wonder was back to the shock and amazement of the local crowd two days later, only to close out every race he entered. "At this writing, Ray Seymour is still King of the Motordrome," exclaimed local papers. Seymour was in top form in June 1912, and as long as his machine held, few could catch him. The momentum was building, and with the inaugural F.A.M. National Championship races in Columbus scheduled for July, Ray Seymour was an easy favorite to wear the crown.