Cycle News is a weekly magazine that covers all aspects of motorcycling including Supercross, Motocross and MotoGP as well as new motorcycles
Issue link: https://magazine.cyclenews.com/i/1122949
VOL. 56 ISSUE 21 MAY 28, 2019 P125 the engine. We had a full-size generator sitting there charging the battery. We had one battery, and it wasn't in the greatest of shape. I remember some of the factory crew chiefs were looking at us like, 'What are these guys doing?' Here we were up against all the factories, and we're sitting there with the big orange extension cord running across the pits onto the grid to hook up to this battery charger. They must have thought we were a bunch of yo-yos." Kipp got a great launch and came up from the second row to lead the race. Amazingly, the priva- teer began pulling away from all the factory riders. His lead went to a full second, then two, then four! The partisan Mid-Ohio crowd of 50,000 was going nuts standing and wav- ing each lap as Kipp came around. Their underdog hero was going to win the race! But then Thomas Stevens and Miguel Duhamel began charging. Kipp, meanwhile, was playing it con- servative in traffic. He'd just crashed earlier while leading the 600 Supersport race, and a week before that he'd crashed at the Suzuka 8 Hour, ruining a great run. So, even though he was leading a Superbike race at his home track, the last thing he wanted to do was crash again by pushing too hard. "I led 23 out of out of 25 laps before I ran out of steam and Miguel and Thomas both got me," Kipp remembers. "It was still a great race, and I was on the podium, and we beat a lot of factory teams that day." In 1992, Kipp won his first AMA National and title in the 600cc Supersport Championship riding for Camel Honda. Yet for all his suc- cess, including three wins, he did not get a victory at Mid-Ohio. Then came the fateful '93 season where he missed nearly the entire year after crashing into the wall going onto the oval at Charlotte and shattered his leg. That's when he lost his ride with Honda and was left on the outside, looking in before go- ing to Daytona and somehow getting a deal done with Yoshimura. The 750 Supersport Series was mainly where Suzuki hoped Kipp could be a contender, but the '94 season didn't start great. His team- mate Britt Turkington, who'd won the title the year before, was winning races, while Kipp was struggling and finishing mainly outside the top-five. "I was still trying to come back from my leg injury, and it was taking some time," Kipp said. However, he then won at Laguna Seca, and his confidence came back. At that point, he kept on winning—next at Elkhart Lake and Loudon before coming to Mid-Ohio. There he finally broke through to win a national at his home track. He ran second to Turkington much of the race. In the closing laps, got around Britt and pulled away to a five-second victory, much to the delight of the crowd. It also drew Kipp nearly even with his teammate in the championship. In the end, the two came into the finale that year at Road Atlanta tied on points. Kipp won the race, while the transmission on Turkington's bike failed. Kipp was series champ. Appropriately, seven years later, Kipp's final AMA National win came at Mid-Ohio in 2001, in the Formula Xtreme class onboard the Attack Racing Suzuki. He won the race with a foot so severely broken that he had to have a local cobbler retrofit his racing boot with shoe- strings, just so his swollen foot would fit inside. "I called it my home track," Kipp says of Mid-Ohio. "But I didn't have an advantage on anyone there. It wasn't like I raced there a bunch of times since we only had the one event there a year. But there was something special about winning there with everyone there watching. And I could always feel the love from the fans. That made winning at Mid- Ohio extra special." CN BREAKTHROUGH Subscribe to nearly 50 years of Cycle News Archive issues: www.CycleNews.com/Archives Tom Kipp leading Yoshimura Suzuki teammate Britt Turkington (1) en route to winning the 1994 AMA 750cc Supersport race at Mid-Ohio. It marked Kipp's first national win at his home track. PHOTO: HENNY RAY ABRAMS