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/126338
Trans-AMA MX Series - Round-five Typhoon Tripes almost stops Hurricane Hannah .------ By Jim Gianatsis ST. PETERS , MO . OCT. 22 Team Honda's Marty Tripes almost became the second rider of this year's Trans-AMA Series to blow a hole in the Yamaha armor of Bob Hannah, and in fact left it well dented with a first moto win over the Hurricane at the Cycle World round in Missouri . But the second moto was all Hannah's from start to . fimsh as Marty never really recovered fr?m a. slow start and Bob went on to Win his fourth over:>l1 Trans-A~A event of th e 1978 senes on the Keith McC~rty.prepared OW · ~ 9 works mac~lne. . Tripes still held on to second overall for the day with a 10th place fin ish on his RC ·450 in the final rnoro. ~e~ll Howerton ne tted Team Suzuki ItS highest finish C?f the weeke~d in ~he 500cc -In terna tiona l class With thud overall. In 250cc Support class act ion , it was Kawasaki's Mickey Boone pulling of his second win of the seri es am id battles with T eam H onda stars Wa rren Reid and Steve W ise, who fi nished second and third overa ll behind Boon e. 500cc International Tripes, can be as fast as Han nah when he want to be ; ,,:e've se, n t~at all e yea r. Though he won t admit to It , for obvious reasons , Team Honda has been using his bike for a test rig during the T rans.AMA Seri es, so the bike's performance is never cons istent from one weekend to the next or always the way he likes it. This is possibly the reas on for his hot and cold rides each week . In the opening moto at Cycl e World, it seemed Marty ignored his problems and got on the gas to pull a second pla ce start behind Can-Am's Gary Semics, tailed by Rex Staten, Rog er DeCosrer. Tony DiStefano, H annah , Ga ylon Mosi er , Jim Pomeroy. Dar rell Shultz and Graham Noyce. Before the first lap ended . Marty had passed Sern ics and was pulling away from th e rest of the pack. Ha nn ah wasn 't about to let Marty's lead become too la rge and dic ed his way quickly towards th e front , passing teammate Staten on the fourth lap for second spot. A number of riders were having problems : Marty Smith had the ign ition timing in his RC ·400 Honda go ha ywire and cook the piston; Jimmy Weinert got sick and had to retire his KX ·420 for the afternoon ; Darrell Shultz lost the chain on his Ma ico while testing a new style chain guide; and while the Man from Suzuki, Roger DeCoster cla imed, " My front brake went out, then I got my foot tangled in the rear wheel. " Other sources indicated Roger's first retirement of the series may have been due to a blown crankshaft in his RN -420·78. The halfway point in the 45·minute moto saw Hannah finally catching up to T ripes after a steady, methodical drive. When Marty stuffed his Honda inside the tight berm around turn one, all Bob had to do was take the sweeper wide and a gear higher using the outside banking to ricochet off, and blow by Marty for the lead down the next straightaway. The running order was now Hannah, Tripes, Staten, ' Mosier and Semics in a scuffle for fou rt h . Noyce, Pomeroy, Howerton and Denny Swartz were involved in a ru ckus with Chuck Sun. For two laps, Tripes tra iled Hannah then wicked up the RC ·450's awesome power and blasted back into the lead. One la p la ter Hannah was back out in front again . The capacity crowd at Cycle World screamed themselves d izzy as th e two circulated the course in a time warp . Three more laps and th ey got the " two" lap board. Tripes wicked the Honda up again to retake the lead while Hannah was bouncing from one berm to the next , out of control and nearly exhausted . It was obvious something was wrong as he dropped back and Marty collected the checkered flag first. Hannah explained what happened during the last few laps: "My front brake cable adjusteer got looser and looser. I tried to get at it to tighten it up, but couldn't. Without my front brake I still tried to keep up with Marty d iving into the berm, but I was going into them too fast and the bike 'was swapping on the whoops. I just got too tired trying to hold on ." "I could see Hannah was getting tired when he lost his front brake," said T ripes. "T ha t was more of a thinking race than anything. We were following each other's lines and just sitting back. I could see he changed his lines after following m e for a while and I did the same. He really thinks when 7