Michelle Lindsay, 1979-2024

Editor’s note: We are saddened to report Michelle Lindsay lost her battle with pancreatic cancer September 18, 2024. She was 45 years old. The following feature was originally published July 2022, highlighting Lindsay’s tenacity and leadership of TOBC Racing.

Racing means a lot of things to people. For most, it’s a rush of adrenaline, the thrill of competition, a fascination with technology. But for Michelle Lindsay, it was a lifeline. On September 19, 2014, her world was turned upside down when she lost her fiancé, Jon Couch, in a plane crash at Virginia International Raceway.

“Maybe it sounds cheesy, but I think racing saved me,” Lindsay says. “I was experiencing the greatest loss I ever had when Jon passed away. It allowed me to compete against grief and pour myself into something greater than me.”

If you’ve spent any time in a race paddock, you know that racing also means family. “Prior to his passing, we spent all of my free time at the track, and all of the TOBC Racing team became my family,” Lindsay says. “I couldn’t imagine losing him and my race family. It was just too much loss to bear.”

Lindsay also felt that making sure the team carried on would honor her late fiancé's memory. So later that fall, at the Grand National Finals at Barber Motorsports Park, she made a proposition to team manager Scott Harwell.

“I was standing up in the observation deck with Scott, and I looked at him and said, ‘People get loans for really crazy things all of the time. If I can find a way to buy the team, will you run it with me?’ At first, he was pretty resolved that it was over. But I came back and asked again, ‘If I find the money to buy the stuff will you stay with me?’ And he said yes.”

It was no easy task. At the end of the day, racing also means a money pit; as the old adage goes, to make a small fortune in racing, start with a large one. Undeterred, Lindsay mortgaged her house to buy the infrastructure and became the owner of TOBC Racing. It was Harwell’s idea that they should race the Daytona 200 with Danny Eslick riding the bike, saying, “We’ve been an endurance team for four years, and we’ve got two fresh bikes and enough diesel to get there.”

Only a few months after her conversation with Harwell on the observation deck at Barber Motorsports Park, the pair were standing in Victory Circle at iconic Daytona International Speedway, celebrating a Daytona 200 win.

“It was amazing. People race for 30 years and don’t have an opportunity to do that,” she says. “It was also at that race that I met Keith McCarty from Yamaha. He asked me what I did for the team and I said, ‘I own it,’ which hadn’t really sunk in yet. He then asked me if I was married to my Suzukis, and I said, ‘Well, I mortgaged my house to have them, so at the moment, yes.’”

From there, it was a bit of a whirlwind. McCarty, who was the Yamaha racing manager in the US, convinced her to go to the COTA for the Moto­America season opener during the MotoGP weekend to meet with the Krave group, the owners of the new series. They had taken the helm of the U.S. National Road Racing Championship in the fall of 2015, and McCarty felt there was a place for her team there. Even though she had no intention of racing in the championship, she went and, after talking with them, decided that they needed to be at the next round at Road Atlanta the following weekend. She put her team manager on the bike.

Taylor Knapp was racing an R1 and running his program out of his motor home. With the season already started, it worked out to be a perfect match with Lindsay’s TOBC Racing. She called Yamaha asking if there was anything they could do to support them; their answer was “We’ll think about it.”

With Knapp under the TOBC Racing banner at the following round at VIR, they found immediate success. “That race was the first time I’d been back to VIR since Jon’s passing,” she says. “We won that race together with Taylor, and it was really emotional for the team. I came off the podium, and Keith McCarty came over and said, ‘Congratulations, you’ve just become a Yamaha-sponsored team.’ I responded, ‘That’s amazing! What does that mean?’ He answered, ‘It means you won enough money to get to the next race.’ And that’s how we got through all of 2015.”

There were more wins, including two more Daytona 200 wins with Eslick in 2017 and 2018 on Yamaha R6s. After that third win in Daytona, she ended up stepping away from racing and the MotoAmerica Championship. Lindsay had a full-time job in new home sales, and her employer was getting tired of her taking time off on the weekends to go racing. There was also pressure from the series to move up from Superstock 1000 to Superbikes, which she wasn’t keen on, and on top of it all she also had a budding new relationship with Myles Wilson, her soon-to-be husband.

“I felt like at that point, for a multitude of reasons, it was a good time for me to take a step back,” she says. “My original intention was not to run a pro team, but it ended up that way. Initially, it started with wanting to do something to honor Jon’s legacy, and then it morphed into my passion. My husband Myles, our first race together was the 2018 Daytona 200, and we won it. So now it’s exciting for both of us, and he has supported me in going back every year.”

On May 24, 2019, about three weeks after getting married, she was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer. It was a tough blow to be thrust into a fight with cancer instead of going off to enjoy a honeymoon, but Lindsay’s resolve did not weaken.

“When Jon passed away, I read about the five stages of grief, and the one that stood out was anger. I never got angry,” she says. “Same thing with getting diagnosed with cancer. I just got married, and I know what it feels like to lose a partner, and I don’t want to do that to anyone else. It changes your outlook on life if you think your days are numbered. I think the best statistic I found was a 17 percent chance of living for five years, and I’m just over three now. There’s so much life to live, and there’s so much to experience; it’s not worth getting angry or upset. I feel grateful and lucky to be alive every day.”

The newlyweds were delivered another heavy blow late last year. “We, unfortunately, lost a baby, and they found a node in my lung and removed it and elevated me to stage four. So we decided to buy new bikes,” she says, laughing, “and race the 200.”

The new bike was the Triumph Street Triple RS, and she fielded a two-rider team with Eslick and Brandon Paasch in 2022′s 80th running of the Daytona 200. Once again she enjoyed the sweet taste of victory, this time with the young Paasch taking top honors. It was a stellar accomplishment for her and for the TOBC racing team.

“Look at where this has taken me. I’m sitting here talking to you after winning my fourth Daytona 200, having not seen a motorcycle race before 2011,” she says. “I think we’re the only team to win on three brands. I don’t know, do we have to win it another time so that I start being called Mrs. Daytona? Five wins apparently gets you a title, and I’d love to get Danny there.”

With the new MotoAmerica Supersport rules, Lindsay and her husband also have aspirations of return­ing to the paddock next season, potentially with Triumph.

“I love racing,” she says. “It’s every good movie wrapped into one weekend. The triumph, the tragedy, the highs, the lows, the resourcefulness that you have to have, the luck, the opportunity… I think it’s a little microcosm of everything you experience in life.”