I remember meeting Pete Lamppu out at Saddleback back when I worked for Mike Goodwin in '76 or '77. He was past his serious racing days but was still pretty quick. He was doing a Pop Cycle photo shoot on an OSSA Phantom I believe and we were doing publicity photos for the upcoming Anaheim race. There were some Suzuki factory guys testing the new Ribi front end on an RM370 Suzuki and they asked him to do a few laps on it and his second lap was faster than Tony Ds (I think) the day before. He told them he didn't like the feel of it and only did those two laps.
I believe he was originally from Finland and even though he had become very Americanised, he still had the Euro way of doing things. I remember him telling me that he built movie sets at Universal Studios for a living and was appalled by the bad workmanship by some of his fellow "tradesmen".. He told me they wouldn't have held a job for very long in Finland! I guess he found it easy to open up to a fellow "foreigner"! He was a good bloke and I wasn't aware he'd died.
