In the world of motorcycle racing, where every millisecond counts, the edge between winning and getting beat often hinges on the smallest details. For Larry Pegram, a veteran of both dirt track and roadracing, protecting those details became second nature.

"I learned to protect information as a kid," Pegram begins, his voice carrying the weight of experience. "In dirt track, your setup is your race. Just small things, like how you cut your rear tire for the way the track will be in an hour, or the weight of your rear wheel, or gearing, can make a big difference in the race. So, you learned to protect information, protect your setup."

Pegram's approach was meticulous, almost paranoid to an outsider. But in the tight-knit, cutthroat world of dirt track racing, these tactics were a necessity. "You kept your rear tire covered any time it wasn't on the track. You ground off the stamp on your rear sprocket so no one could easily see what you were running for teeth and gearing. These tactics were very normal; everybody did it. And if someone you were racing against asked you what you were running, you gave them wrong information."

His voice takes on a sly tone as he recalls the gamesmanship that was almost second nature. "You'd say, 'Well, I ran 22 tooth in the rear and a siped Pirelli in the heat race, and I'm not changing anything for the main,' even though you ran a 24 rear sprocket and a grooved Dunlop. It's just the way it always was and I'm sure still is in dirt track."

This instinct to guard every detail extended beyond dirt track.

In the late 1980s the AMA 250 class was a hotbed of intense competition, and the secrets more closely guarded. Once a group of 250 riders stopped to talk in front of 250 ace Rich Oliver's garage. They jabbed away with Oliver inside the garage. One made the mistake of looking at Oliver's RS250. Next thing, Oliver jumped up and slammed the garage door closed. But not before saying, "Sorry fellas, do your own work".

Pegram pauses, a slight smile tugging at the corners of his mouth as he recalls a particular incident with Ben Bostrom, a fellow racer who came from a very different background. "I'll tell you a story about Ben Bostrom," he says. "But what you have to understand is that Ben wasn't raised like the rest of us. His parents were northern California hippies, and how he, Eric, and Torsten were raised was very casual, I guess you'd call it. Like, they never had a TV, but they did have motorcycles so they could always ride. Their parents were very open, and the boys had a lot of freedom from a very early age. If they skateboarded ten miles away from the house, then their parents were not alarmed when they could not find them."

This laid-back upbringing set Ben apart from the more hardened racers like Pegram. "Anyway," Pegram continues, "I remember once Ben and I were racing Superbikes against one another at Topeka. He asked me, before the race, what rear tire I was going to run? I told him I was going to run the medium. He said, okay, that's what I am going to do too."

Pegram chuckles, the memory clearly still amusing him. "I never planned to run the medium. I, in fact, ran the soft. I won the race."

The race played out, and afterward, Bostrom approached Pegram with a mix of confusion and hurt. "He comes over and looks at my bike. He looks at the rear tire, and his eyes got very big when he looked at the sidewall. He walks up to me and says, 'You lied to me. You ran the soft.' It had really hurt his feelings."

Pegram shakes his head, still a bit incredulous at Bostrom's reaction. "I said, come on, Ben, this is racing. Did you really expect me to tell you the truth? Did you?"

For Pegram, the incident was just another day at the track, but for Bostrom, it was a lesson in the brutal reality of the sport.