Here is the letter written by Mert that Cycle News Published in the current CycleNews:

I am saddened to learn that my old friend and mentor CR Axtell has left us for the big race track in the sky as he would say. I met Ax at the Ascot raceway in Gardena Ca. in 1963. He was a very private person and it took a year before he really trusted me but we became the very best of friends that lasted until present. He was the first person that I knew to have a flow bench which is a testing device for measuring how much air you could get through a motorcycle head. The more air the more power and he was an absolute scientist at porting heads for more power. Everything he did was done in a very scientific way and he studied everything before he would do it. As I was building my own race engines and needed more power he was the best person for me to learn from and we spent literally thousands of hours together learning how to get more power from an engine. He taught me how to build race engines and was also good at frame design. Most of what I learned over the years came from Ax. The dyno sheets alone must have been in the hundreds. He always said that one day there would be a time to move on and he always called that special place The Big Race Track in the Sky. God speed Ax.

Mert Lawwill

9-2-09