Jerry and the Factory SX Corona Test Tracks

that is a great article. from what ive found it appears he passed in 2020. would of loved to of heard his best stories about the tracks. imagine everything he has seen being out there since the beginning. 

Sadly, Jerry Deleo is no longer of this earth. I miss catching up with him, even though his hand strength was nearly enough to make me cry every time he'd shake my hand and ask "how ya doing young buck".

Great man, great man. My father did business with him on and off throughout my childhood, I have great memories of Jerry going back to when I was about five or six years old.

Do you know who controls that land now? Assuming his family, wasn't he Jeff Ward's father-in-law or something like that? (sorry I recall reading the article years ago but didn't read it again).

Hopefully the family doesn't decide to take a different path for that land and not renew leases as they expire.... ):

I don't think anyone would be able to find the Factory test tracks land that would ever be a similar chunk of land anywhere in SoCal in these days.

Yes, he was Jeff Ward's father-in-law, his daughter married Jeff.

Jerry's son, Craig, runs Corona Clay these days and deals with the test track leases and property.

So kinda funny story. When I was in late teens, so a little over ten years ago, my dad was keeping a few personal pieces of equipment at one of Jerry's yards near the test tracks. The rent for keeping said equipment was a bottle of wine. Actually, I think the rental space was free, a bottle of wine was just our funny way of re-paying him at the time. So once a month or so, I would snag a bottle of wine and try to track Jerry down to hand it off. However, Jerry wasn't always the best at answering his phone and he still was on an old school flip phone at the time. 

Jerry had a route of sorts. In the morning, very early, I could find him at Hunny's cafe. If it was mid-day he'd either be over at his office at Corona Clay, or up at his crusher near the test tracks, sometimes at the hot dog stand right in front of the dump near the test track properties (this was around lunch, bullshitting with "weiner dude"...who's grandson raced Supercross for a short time. It was JonJon Ames.), or he was at the driving range right down the street. Albeit the last one was much less common after his wife passed.

I would just drive from spot to spot, asking anyone in the vicinity if they had seen him. Eventually, I would just track him down, bullshit for about 15-20 mins, hand off the wine, and go on my merry way.

When I was really young, around 5-8 years old, my father was a part of a much larger equipment rental company that had a yard across the canyon from the Yamaha test track. I'd sit on the edge of the yard and watch the Yamaha guys ride when I'd go to work with my dad during times I was off from school. Every so often, Jerry would come to pick me up, take me over to get a hot dog, drop me off next to a test track that someone was riding at, and then come pick me back up and take me back to my pops.

For a man that was quite wealthy, you'd never know it. He drove the same 20 year old white Ford pickup, that always had bald tires, with an old welder or generator in the back. Wore the same or identical greasy bib overalls and dirty ass hardhat, every day to go work with his hands on his own equipment. 

Jeff Ward's story about him is awesome.  Sounds like a badass guy that was not scared of local government BS and protected the land.  I can't remember the interview where he told the story, but I think it was relatively recent.  

Cool story about the owner, factory test tracks and ML's real life experiences there growing up.  Jeff Ward's father in law?!?  

This is what is great about the VitalMX forum.

When we went to A1 for the first time (finally) this year. On Friday evening before the race we went by all the factory practice tracks and ended up speaking to Mark Peters while he was working on the Yamaha test track. He was awesome to talk to! Let us walk the track a little while he turned on the sprinklers. Told us old old stories from years of doing maintenance on all the tracks on those hills and private tracks for some of the pros. Told us about his dad's racing history. It was cool. Just lucky he was there when we came by. We were just going to take a couple pictures of the tracks and leave. He let us go check out the K4 track and the Honda track below that can be ran forward and backwards. I'll upload some pictures from my phone later. Just really cool to have been following the sport since 1995 (I was 6) and being at the factory test tracks I've only seen on video. To be there was a motocross bucket-list item for sure.

My question is how did the teams keep secrets, secrets, training within rocks throw of each other? I always found it interesting how riders who where switching teams or considering it got to ride the perspective bike w/o their current employer finding out. Or maybe they did and didn't care?

Depended on the day. Was above the Honda track one day, at the Suzuki track i bbelieve. Some guy on a roached out 87 ish cr500 rides up out of the hills and asks if he can grab a few used tires. One of the guys said yes, but he had to do a lap on the Honda track. He does it. They are flipping out. We are laughing ducking down behind a small bank. Dude rides back up and they load him up with 2 or 3 tires. He rolled everything, they eventually laughed lol.   

Jerry loved his Merlot's.

So is this land still active for all the teams test tracks??

I think Kawasaki has a different spot near the highway and PC at GH.  

Imagine checking this out the weekend before A1 would be epic.

The highway property is also of the Deleo family ownership, their company Corona clay is one lot over, on the other side of the Volvo Dealership.