Cycle News - Archive Issues - 1970's

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'78 , , 11.5" Yamaha & Suzuki 80 '78 , . 7.5" Suzuki RM 125 '77. ·78 , .. , .. 10" , . . . . 10" Suzuki RM 250 /400 '78 Kits also available for most other bikes Write for free literature Out of state call toIl free 800 -854 ·4691 90 day money back guarantee Dealer or Direct ~eu:)on:) 6reetings .JIMaNEAL D1STR1-.nNO, INC. 18340 GAUL T STREET RESEDA , CALIFORNIA 9 13U (2 13) 3«-5 175 • Oarla nd Suzuki --, lArge8t Parts Inventory In Oal1a8lFort Worth Metrople. Overnight detivery via bus IV8iIllble in most pens of Te.... OkI8homa. & Louilillne 22 =-~~ 214-'3374, Russian Gue nnady M oiseev co nt inued as 250c c World Cham p, bu t won only one round this ye ar, Oppone nts' inconsist ency helped the Rus sian KT M pilo t. ' of providing anysort of serious threat to the all -conquering Finn was American works Honda rider Brad Lackey. And he re again , Mikkola h ad things weighed -up well before the season: he predicted that Lackey would be his chief opposition th is yea r . Superb and ,meticulous machine preparation b y Mikkola 's ' Finnish mechanic, Heikki Penttila , meant that the Flying Finn fin ished all but one race. And that retirement - the first race of the Swedish Grand Prix - can be blamed on sheer bad luck;' his chain slipped off and jammed in the drive sprocket. No one else can boast a 96 percent reti rem ent -fr ee record like that, Of the 21 races Lackey started he finished 18. while third-place man in th e championship Roger DeCoster (Suz) failed to finish six races out of the maximum 24 he started , But the chief reason Mikkola won the championship th is yea r is that he is the best. He knows it and so do all his fellow riders who without exception admire him immensely. He came to Payeme, Switzerland. for the first round th is yea r and won both races with consummate ease. It was the best possib le start he could have wished for and gave h im an im portant psychologica l boost for the year. Lackey, on th e other hand . crashed in the first ra ce at Pa yerne and finished sixth. but a third place next time out gave him a 16 points total to start the season off. A Mikkola victory d id not come in 't he 'secon d round at Sittendorf. Au stria. There, a worrying 'm ystery virus ' had the Finn performing at halfcoc k. and with a win and a second place. Lackey closed to within two •points of Mikk ola. But with his iron constitu tion Mikkola came back with a bang to share a win and a second pla ce with Lackey at Gaillefontaine . France venue of the next round. . At this point , it look ed as if Lackey and Mikkola wer e going 10 ha ve a real hard-fought battle for the 1978 World title . But Mikkola scored maximum points in Denmark, and from then on began to puIl away to that record 299 points total. True, Lackey beat Mikkola once in Italy and again in Britain , but it was not enough -to prevent the Finn from gaining another title . T ragica lly, Lackey was run over at the start of the make-or- break penultimate GP in Luxembourg. and so Mikkola had just to cruise around to , win the championship. But Lackey had the runner-up spot all sewn ·up at the previous round in ' Namur, Belgium, so he was not that disappointed . He returned home early to the USA to recuperate and train for the forthcom ing Trans·AMA Ser ies. Chief reason Lackey had that runner-up spot all sewn up was the sign~1 failure of five -time World Champion Roger DeCoster and the works Suzuki in this year's contest. True DeCoster had suffered badly in an accident in February and had his spleen removed . in a later operation , but he crashed a lot and also suffered more 'th a n his share of mechanical problems. ,After a promising runner-up and a fourth in Payerne , DeCoster hit his fir st bike failure in Austria when his gearbox jammed solid in 'the first "m o to , From then on his season was a series of erratic results with crashes the principal reason for his procession of DNFs. He ended the year on 171 points. still third - the lowest position he 's held in -a World Championship for seven years. So wh y has the King slipped so badly? DeCoster largely blames the bike, He says that at the beginning of the year it was down on power and performance compared with the other Japanese works bikes. But the fact remains that at 34 he 's the old est competitive rider in the 500cc Grand Prix. and crashes are almost always due to rider error. .. the King just isn't the rider he was . . , In fact the works Suzuki team this' yea r had a d isasterous season , DeCoster's Dutch teammate Gerrit Wolsink too has slipped badly and ended the season down in fifth behind West German Herbert Schmitz, Wol sink 's record of eight ,retirements is dismal. To be fair . he suffered frequently wit h slipped drive chains, and he admits that destroyed a lot of his con fidence . " I'm not like a lot of riders. " he admitted earlier this yea r '- "W hen the bike breaks down . I tend to blame myself - my riding. So I am not so con fident . ... Schmitz's record is good this year. His fourt h place is his own personal , best , and th e W est Germ a n Ma ico fac to ry are plea sed with his performance . He a ctually beat Mikkola fa ir and sq ua re once in Am erica a nd ha s the sort of unflappable tempera ment that is a positive bonus in motocr oss. Five hundred GP newcomer Andre Ma lherbe . on th e works KTM . inje cted a brea th of fres h air into this yea r's cha m pionsh ip . Malherbe , 22 . last yea r rod e one of. th e all -conquering KTM s in th e 250 cc cham p ionshi p and finished th ir d . T his yea r on the big bike he managed sixth ahead . of Britian's Graham No yce against much stiffer opposition tha n he found in the quar ter -litre class . True . his best results wer e third places in Finland and France , but he showed th e sort of 'a ccomplishment and consistency that could well make him World Cham pion in a few years . Britain's hope . Graham Noyce, had his worst -ever season in th e GPs to finish behind Malherbe . It was doubly disappointing beca use 1978 was his fir st yea r on th e works Honda . Noyce start ed out by crashing badly and ac tually destroying one bike - probably through trying much too hard - in Switzerland. From then on things went from bad to worse . In Austria he lost his drive chain once, that. happened again twice in France, and t hen by the time he went to Denmark 'for the fourth GP , he'd not finished enough 45 minute races to be in top physical shape, Why. he asked . does my teammate Brad Lackey not suffer from slipped chai ns? It didn't do his self-confidence much good. and from then on his season ' is a story of machine fa ilures. seizures . colla psing forks. and rider failure , chie fly crashes . • I2Scc World Championship MX Series I978:The year Euro.p e a n riders finally lost their·hold to Japan's Watanabe By Jack Burnicle When he crossed the line in third place at the conclusion of the first moto in Czechoslovakia, clenched fist upraised, Akira W atanabe b ecame the first eve r Japanese a nd non-European to claim a world motocross title. - His momentous vict ory in th e 125cc World Championship MX Series was achieved d espite fierce opposition from his Suzuki teammate and triple champion Gasston Rahier, and the you ng Yamaha -mounted Dutch ace Gerard Rond, during the course of 12 superbly fought grand prix' in which all -three men held the lead at some stage. 24- year·old Watanabe was eventu ally triumphant because of his competitive speed and superior consistency. , Apart from a freak afternoon in the USA . he was never outside the first three in a single race result and scored seven wins in seven motos , which com pares favor ably with Ra hier's seven and Rond's eight. Watanabe first came to the allention of Suzuki in 1972 . when recorn . mended by his local dealer aft er three years of successfu l novice raci ng in Japan . They offered him a job testing their motocross machinery - a post he still holds . He became 125 a nd 250 cc expert Junior Champion of Japan in 1974 . winnin g every ra ce in which he finis hed - obviously a foret aste of th at magically swift consistency. The following yea r. he was fourth in the 125cc World Seri es. on e point behind Anton Barbarovsky (Cl) . Suzuki kept him in Japan throughout 1976 . but relented in the autumn with a visit to the T ra ns-AMA, where he was seventh overall . Ea ch wint er he was required to test . a nd develop th e prototype works bikes for DeCoster. Wolsink and Rahier, so he was never short of practice . Akira led the 125cc World title chase aft er two rounds in 1977 . but a crash in Belgi um left him with a severly injured left kn ee , and , committed to a long. arduous convalescence in Japan . he was destined not 10 ride com pe tit ively again until January of this year. The obvious fa vori tes for the 1978 title were Rahier and Rond, who had between them convincingly dominated the previous year' s contest after Akira's

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