Cycle News

VOL. 56 ISSUE 7 FEBRUARY 20, 2019 P107 truck driver. Matt McNiel, Daren Fields and Jeff Hoeppner also pitched in at the races." The team looked top-notch, but the old Jartran Rental box van they bought always made for an adventure. Newton recalled a time when the fuel pump conked out and they were feeding gas directly into the carburetor from a lemonade bottle. "It backfired," Newton said, "and I was holding the bottle and the next thing you know the rim of the bottle is on fire. Then I accidently spilled down my front, so now I was on fire. I literally jumped out of the window and when I landed chest first it put the fire out on the front of my t-shirt." Riding for Sunset were So- Cal road racing aces Walt Nitto, Peter Carroll and Terry Statum. Todd Brubaker later joined the team, as did a young Don Canet. The opening round was at Firebird Raceway near Phoe- nix. A tough break hit right at the start. Carroll crashed on the opening lap of the four-hour race. The team spent most of the rest of the race trying to repair the badly damaged Kawasaki. Towards the end they got back on track, hoping to pick up a few points, and in the process, Nitto shattered the old track record by nearly two seconds. The team was more than ready to make up for the accident at Firebird when they rolled into St. Louis International Raceway for round two. They picked up Brubaker for this race and Sun- set not only won the GTU class, they finished third overall. That very same thing happened again at Sears Point (with Statum and Carroll riding), showing the sheer speed Team Sunset and their well-prepped Ninja 600 were capable of. The team took another victory at Loudon, and in spite of some mechanicals and a missed race or two, Sunset ran second to New Haven Kawasaki after six rounds. That would be as close as they got. Sunset earned a fourth victory at Road Atlanta, but it was mostly hard luck the rest of the year and they were out of title contention. "We were usually the fastest GTU team on the track, but freak problems constantly kept creep- ing in," Falley said. The last event of year was a prime example. In the season finale at Day- tona, Sunset was easily winning the GTU class when a chain snapped off another bike and hit their Kawasaki, splitting a water hose, ultimately damaging the engine and causing a DNF. At the awards banquet that weekend, fellow competitor Kevin Rentzell felt bad for the Sunset gang. He knew they were the fastest guys in the class all year, but came up empty in the end. "Kevin came up and present me with a t-shirt that said, 'Shit Happens,'" Falley said. "It was perfect. We all had a good laugh over that." The next season the team was hoping to take another shot at the endurance series, this time in GTO, but Kawasaki sponsorship fell through at the last minute. The squad eventually morphed into Team Del Amo Suzuki, which backed a number of riders in sprint racing including Cal Ray- born III and David Aldana, with Tom Houseworth as crew chief. Several of the team alums used Sunset as a springboard. Carroll went on to race for Team Hammer and Canet had a memorable Formula USA career aboard a nitrous-boosted Suzuki, which he wrote about and put him on the path to become long- time road test editor for Cycle World magazine. Nitto and Statum have both since passed away. Canet is still at Cycle World. Carroll is still involved in the industry with a motorcycle shop in Lebec, California. Falley met an Aussie girl and eventually moved Down Under, where Newton moved back to, as well. What started as a conversation between a couple of racers over beers at a pub in Sunset Beach, turned into a summer racing adventure. "There were laughs and tears and always great fun. It was a wonderful group of guys and we had the time of our lives," Falley said. CN Subscribe to nearly 50 years of Cycle News Archive issues: www.CycleNews.com/Archives

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