I raced it in 3-4 races at the end of the year. I won a race and trophied at a few others. Of course, I was racing a brand new bike against bikes that had been raced for 6 months, but the bike handled as good as I thought it would, and was perfect for my riding style. The engine was deceptively fast. The power was so smooth that it didn't really feel that fast. It wasn't until I was motoring past wound out 250s that I knew it had some beans.

I trained hard that winter. I went riding quite a bit. I put enough hours on the bike that I began to experience some of its mechanical quirks. My mechanical ability had improved quite a bit over the last few years, but Maicos required special attention. I got into the habit of taking the wheels off, roughing up the brake pads with sandpaper and greasing everything associated with the wheels every week. There were a few other areas that needed constant attention. I learned some of these the hard way. There was the week the compression release came loose from the cylinder, the week that the rear brake seized (I hadn't lubed the brake pedal pivot), and many others. Eventually, I would check almost every nut and bolt at least every week and some of them every ride.

When the season started, I won my way out of B class after a few months. I was still having some DNFs. I managed to fry the ignition three times. Luckily, they were quite a bit cheaper than Japanese units, but then again, I've never had to change a Japanese one. At eh time, B class was not that much different from C class, but was very different than A class. I got lapped my first race, but not again after that. At first, I would finish near the back every race, but eventually, I worked my way into the top ten pretty regularly. The guys in the top five were pretty much at a higher level than I was. I would only finish in front of them if they had big problems.

Some of the tracks had non-points paying Saturday races. Most of the faster A guys would not show up at those. They would run us 30 minutes sometimes. That was good for me, because I was in good shape. At one track, SME, I became king of the Saturdays. The majority of my first place trophies are from Saturday Open A races at SME. There would usually be the same 2-4 of us each time and the other guys were people I could usually beat, especially if they ran long motos. Occasionally one of the fast guys would show up on Saturday to get some extra track time and then I would usually lose. Since there were so few racing, they usually only gave one trophy. My best Sunday finish was a second in a mud race.

Because of having to stay on the ship for duty every fourth day, I would only go to about two thirds of the races. I didn't get into A class until a few months into the season and my bike would break about 25% of the time, so I raced and finished in less than half of the points paying races. I ended up 11th and only the top ten got awards. That would be the closest I would get to a top ten finish in A class. My best finish was a 2nd in the mud (which lead to some DNFs in the following races) and my best race was a 6th out of 40. At Lake Sugar Tree, I raced against Mickey Boone and Rodney Barr, both North Carolina fast guys who did well at the national level, and avoided being lapped by them. I was dead even with both of them, at least until the gate dropped.

Much as I liked riding the bike, the mechanical problems I had with it and the constant maintenance lead me back to Japanese machinery. I can't remember much about selling this bike either. It was kind of cumbersome for me to sell a bike. I lived on the ship and didn't have a home phone. I would run an ad in the local paper with my work number. The person would have to call during the day to get an answer and then would have to meet me at my storage area to see it. I'm sure I didn't get as much as I wanted, but I had to sell it to pay for the next bike.