;
•
s
III
t
IAbove) The view other competitors got of DeCoster during the fi rst moto. .
IAbove right! Jimmy Ellis went 7-7 on the 366cc Can-Am. IBelow) Brad
Lackey hed Unadilla in the bag until two laps from the end. lFiIe photos)
Trans-AM A MX Series - Round three
.L ack ey loses a
close one
By Charles Morey
NEW BERLI N , N.Y ., OCT. 9
"TheD always wins in the end. " T h at's the way
a disappoin ted Brad Lackey sum med u p his
second placing to Roger DeCoster at the end
of a cool, rainy afternoon at the Un adilla Valley
Sports Center Trans-AMA race,
round three in the eight-race
international motocross series.
It was close. Brad had looked
12
like a winner over Team Suzuki's fivetime 500cc World Champion. But
with under two laps to go in the final
moto he made a small, yet critical
blunder on the heavy, mud-laden
RC400 Honda and saw a "sure thing"
overall victory go down the tubes. The
American 's error a get -off,
compounded when the motor flooded
- helped the handsome Belgian
superstar win his second event of the
'77 Trans-AMA MX Series. At the
time, Lackey was leading t he m oto
• with a 35-second margin over
DeCoster who , nearly blinded by mud,
rode in third place. DeCoster would
have had to catch Lackey to win . It all
came down in the final two laps of the
second moro,
Moto one-RD leaves no doubt
Round one began with holeshot
anist Gary Semics and veteran Roger
DeCoster, who had wisely chosen his
start ing position right next to the gate
operator, hitting tum one side by side.
Herbert Schmitz, Steve Stackable,
Many Smith, Jim Pomeroy, Andre
Malherbe, and Bengt Aberg followed .
Semics led at the completion of the
opening lap , although his time at the
top would be short-lived, Pomeroy lost
his fifth position near the end of the
first lap when he ran into problems
with on e of the steep and slippery
Unadilla hillsides, one that would be
eliminated from the course for the
second moto d ue to its difficulty. Jim
com pleted lap one in 27th place.
Andre Malherbe, third in the 250cc
World Championship Series behind
fellow KT M riders Moi sseev and
Kavinov this yea r , was hot. The young
Bel g i a n gained o n e spot from
Pomeroy's demise and had overtaken
both Sm it h and Stackable during that
first lap. Malherbe held fourth behind
Semics, DeCoster, and Schmitz.
DeCoster got past Semics on lap
two , but Malherbe, still charging, also
whipped around the Kawasaki rider,
then overtook DeCoster for the leadJ
