Cycle News is a weekly magazine that covers all aspects of motorcycling including Supercross, Motocross and MotoGP as well as new motorcycles
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4.. The Trans-AMA Wells through II III • the Grand Canyon State a t By Art Friedman Photos by John Ulrich and Friedman PI;J0ENIX, ARIZ" NOV. 11 Arizona Desert Raceway's motocross course sprawls on the edge of a gravel quarry in Phoenix. Twice it dips into the quarry. The first descent is the highly touted 60 foot drop-away jump. The bottom of the quarry holds a little bit of water, and the second descen t, a roller coaster downhill, comes to bottom in a water-mud hole that got trickier as the day went along, mostly because of the beer cans piling up in it. A bit of peering around the pits revealed almost as many swingarm con figu rations as there were motorcycles. Some of the team KawasalUs had shocks that seemed closer to horizon tal than vertical, One thing is certain, the swingarms that are standard equipment on for-sale Thole nasty wl\oop-dea did some guy. like thi•... motocYOssers are now things of the past. Practice found the AMA officials taking noise samples with their decibel meter from about every fifth bike. Only one bike had problems. Next week the AMA noise regulations will be enforced. Jim Weinert, who became the fll'st American ever to win a Trans-Am Ia.t week, got a severe de-tuning when his Kawasaki's .throttle stuck open and hurled Jimmy and the bike in to a group of spectators, critically injuring one, The day didn't get any better for Jimmy. , The day did improve as it went along for Adolf Weil, who finished second in the first moto and then took off in the Tom Repp like thi••.. The mIIin specUtor future of the coune i. thil60 foot • YIriety of thuch, booms. _ twengs. ~. second moto for the overall win. Pierre Karsmaken' victory in the fll'st moto, combined with a third behind Sylvain Geboers in the second was enough for the second spot at the pay window. The International class was almost overshadowed by the more intense battle for the moto wins in the 2!i0 Support class which fmally fell to Rich Eierstedt. First 500 Moto Before the start of the fll'st moto, Jim Pomeroy climbed on the back of Sylvain Geboers' Suzuki and started spelling "Geboen" out loud from the back of Sylvain's jersey. Geboers tried to goose him and Jim jumped off. The two-minute sign went up and everyone got down to business. It was Adolf Weil (Mail, who led the first four laps, showing that he takes the Trans-Am seriously, unlike a few of his European colleagues. Pierre Karsmakers, on the mono-shock • Yamaha, pounding along alter him, waiting for a mistake. In third was Mike Hartwig, just flying and raising hopes in the Husqvama camp. Willi Bauer (Mai) And Weinert like thi•• It didn't kill ..ybody but produced . displaced Gary Jones (Mail for fourth on the second lap and went looking for Hartwig. Bauer wasn't too successful in his pursuit of Hartwig, but Karsmaken stuffed it inside WejJ as they came by the pits and took the lead. Pomeroy eased by Jones as Brad Lackey, in ninth behind Arne Kring, hit a faDen rider in a comer with no flagman and had to stop to straighten out his machine. After that Bradley was just motoring around. John DeSoto (CZI, his ankle now recovered enough to ride, puUed into the pits for some mechanical fiddling. The front of John's jersey just says "Hawaii" on it. Jimmy Weinert had just moved into tenth before his day came to a disastrous end. There was a nasty set of whoOJHie-dOOl where the course came by the pits. Every lap saw at Ieut one rider do a front wheel-stand 01" get . radically out of shape. This set of whoops did a number on Weinert and he thudded to earth under his bike. Jimmy lay on the track for a long, long time before he got up. He was out for the day with a fractured collarbone. The sight of his teammate seemed to do little for Lackey's failing enthusiasm for this moto. Along about the same time, Wei! feU down, but not as hard. He lost quite a few places, dropping out of the top ten. Adolf spent the relt of the moto making up what he'd lost in that faD. Karsmakers now had a pretty safe lead over Hartwig and Bauer, ndther of whom seemed to be able to catch the rider in front of him. A battle for fourth had'just broken out between Pomeroy and Kring when Hartwig's Husky quit him down in the quarry bottom. AMA rules give you five minutes to push back to the pits. You have to do it along the course in the direction of the race. There was no way that Hartwig was going to push out of that hole, back down into it and then out again in five minutes. Hartwig's moment to shine ended in the hole. Bauer took over second, but the battle between Pomeroy and Kring (which was resolving itself in favor of Kring) never got a chance to be the battle for third because Well had knifed his way up through the pack and wen t after Bauer. Four laps later, he caught Willi and lined up on Pierre. It dido't look as though Adolf had a chance until the very last lap when the pipe on Karsmakers Yama,ha came loose. Pierre had no trouble getting down into the quarry, but climbing the hill to the finish line was a problem. Karsmakers paddled the Yamaha up the hill to a 2!i-yard vic tory. Behind Weil, Bauer fmished in front of Kring. Pomeroy's Bul had given up in the last couple of laps and Gerrit Wolsink took fifth. Roger DeCoster (you remember him, the World Champion I had sort of coastc!d around, but managed to fmish sixth just because he never slowed down. Tim Hart, heading for top American in the series, was seventh. Second 500 Moto Karsmakers led the opening lap of the second moto, but it wasn't the same Willi Bluer _ ... 34 third•