Cycle News - Archive Issues - 1970's

"I said I was (thudd!)gonna go to (ooof!) Sears Point, (bounce) do some laid-back (scrape) club racing (bonk) and have fun (oueht]" And Clark Winn's gonna have fun t ill it hurts. NorCal MX at Sand Hill By Steve Castillo LI VE RMO R E, CAL., MAY 9 Paul Turner , riding a Keith Bontrager tuned Su zuki , was th e star of 125 Pro class. Bontrager , a road racing tune r at heart was given t he Suz u ki by Lo fan o an d Sons and told to find a good rider fo r th e bike. Keith did. In the first m ota T urner o u t-p ulle d all of th e hungry riders o ff the lin e with apparen t ease . Foll owing Turner were Cliff Bagot (Ha n) and Troy Deherrera (Ya m) . Turner pulled out abo u t a six second lead as Bago t and Deherrera h ad it ou t for second. In a race th at literall y cam e down to the wire, Deherrera go t by Bagot wi th seconds to spare. Mota two, Troy Deherrera pulled th e plug with Paul Turner not far behind. Deherrera got in t o so me trouble on th e far sid e of the track, and now it was a Turner-Bago t affair. Bago t pressured T urn er for several laps. Then Paul went high on one of the many uphill jum ps an d when he landed h is chain ca me off. Turner wasted little time in puttin g th e chain b ack on and rode lik e a man posses sed to ca t ch Bagot. In ab ou t two laps he started to harrass the Honda rider. Turner and Bagot reall y had th e spe ctators t o their fee t as Turner u sed the skill he has learned fr om his professional brother and yea rs of racing himself to ge t by and blast away wi th the lead. Tr oy D eherrer a fin ish ed ah ead of Bagot wh o dropped ba ck towards the end of t he mota . • Results in Results Sec t ion. AFM .Sears Point: Hackamus! By John D. Ulrich VALLEJO, CAL., MAY 16 "Where's the oil co me ou t ?" th e reporter asked the be arded fellow standing next to the sidecar. "Everytime the sidecars run, th ey dump oil on the tr ack , right?" 28 For a momen t it 100 ked Iik~ th e poor guy was going to bite right through his unlit cigar . He almost croaked . " That '5 a bunch o f nonsense ," he said. But the meeting, which be gan tensel y in the Sears Po int pits, turned out amicab ly . The sidecar m an exp lained all abo u t h ow Larry Col em an had reju ven at ed the clas s, im p ort in g tric k frames, in stalling Ron Gra n t Suz uki 75 0 engi ne s, an d blo wing off the sidehack team that used to th ink it was above reproach. The cigar-cho mp ing sidehacker wh o set t he repo rter straight rode as m onkey on anot he r o f Cole man's creat io ns . His lea the rs an d helme t bore the marks of asp ha lt ras h in flic te d d uring th e ultimat e han g-off - ho rizontal at 90 mp h in T urn Two of Riverside. " Bu t why ," persisted the reporter . . "Why ride o ne o f th o se things ins tead of a m otorcycle? I mean , t hese things ar en' t cheap, right?" "Becau se it 's a gas, " replie d t he monkey . " Beca use it 's a gas." Could be. In terms of sheer spee d and acc eleratio n, sidecars are a bore. It isn"; until reall y viewed - like th rough a 50 0m m m irro r Nik kor - tha t t he t hings . become in terest ing. Nine hacks ca me cra bbing through th e second turn of the road co urse , with peop le cli mbing all ove r the m, han gin g off and lu rch ing from sid e to side. Seeing Wayne Lo ugee and Gary Gipe trying to stuff a Hond a hac k inside Co leman and Wen dell Andrews' Suz uki at t he en t ra nce to Turn Three- was downrigh t inter esting. See ing Co leman and An drews . slamm ing the d o or on Lougee jG ipe was even better. It lo o ked lik e th e damn th in gs never ran really st raig ht, rather in an erra tic lin e co m posed o f little co rrections, le ft an d righ t, weave and bob - but, of co urse, th at 's in th e eye of an amate ur hack o bse rve r. Caught in a fish's eye - another Turner brother, Paul by name, winning 125 Pro at Sandhill. Coleman won , Lougee go t under Marx , and Garnett, with passenger Bill Stewart , staved o ff the a ttacks of a much larger mach ine with a Kawasaki 50 0 . And, in t he carou sel, that Kaw never did get mo re th an two wheels down at any give n moment. In t wo-wheeler ac t io n. J ack Bak er Ne w Zealander Paul (Suz) beat McLachl en (Yam) in McLachlen's first U.S. road race . McLachle n will be in the U.S . th rough the AMA River side Nat ional. He says t he rough Sears tarmac is as good as m ost New Zeal and tracks. At one p oint Mc Lac hlen passed Baker , whe n Bake r slid a bit in a turn. But Baker , always to ugh t o beat at Sears, rep assed. Harry Klin zmann ran away with 25 0 GP. The real figh t was for second, be tween Pat Eagan, Carter Fisher , and

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