Cycle News - Archive Issues - 1970's

Now how often do you get to ... {left to rightl Kent Howerton. Jimmy Weinert and Mike Kidd tueked-in-ancl-golng-tor-it on • long paved Ib lIight7 Practice day for The Superbikers Or, if we experiment with enough new forms of motorcycle racing, will we eventually find a use for the Japanese SOOcc four-stroke single? By Charles Morey Gavin Trippe and Bruce Cox, the pair of mad Englishmen who bring you the Bel-Ray USGP of Motocross each year at Carlsbad, have fathered a new brainchild. Named The Superbikers, it promises to mature into the most spectacular alI. I" f 'I IDC uslve meeting 0 motorcyc e racers ever. Of course, the recent- 20 Iy departed International Motorcycle Olympiad offered the same promise. . . But The Superbikers has two important advantages that were lacking in the Olympiad. For one thing, the Trippe-Cox/ ABC-TV connection. ABC Wide World of Sports covers the USGP every year, and the network is pleased with viewer reaction. There· fore, they also are pleased with Mr. Trippe and Mr. Cox and are willing to work with them on The Superbikers. In fact, the event is being staged almost exclusively for TV, rather than live s~ctators hanging on the fence, accordmg to the promoters. TV means money. Money means top riders. Top riders mean a good show. Good show means TV. See how easy it is when TV comes first? But equally important is the second advantage: Format of the show. It must be simple yet interesting. The Superbikers are divided into three groups: Road racers, dirt trackers and motocrossers. Each group runs a heat race on a two-mile track that is one· half graded dirt and one-half pavement. Winners are transferred directly to the main event. World Champions are seeded into the main event automatically. There are three of them: Kenny Roberts, Graham Noyce and former Speedway World Champion Peter Collins. That's one from each group: road racer. motocrosser and dirt track. So far, that's six men who have either been seeded or have raced to qualify for the main. Assuming the organizers are able to round up a 40-rider field, as they hope to do, that leaves 54 riders. They will get a second chance as the field is divided into two l7·rider semifinals. This time the top five from each semi will make it into the main event, bringing the total to 16. Finally, a consolation race will be run where the top nine transfer to the main and raise the total to 25 riders. It's a standard Winston Pro or Supercross type of elimination program. And to make it even simpler and more interesting, ABC has plans to break the one day of racing into several TV programs. interspersing the action with interviews and action clips from other events to complement the rider interviews. Now, here's the problem: What bike would you, as a rider, select, and how do you set it up? Kenny Roberts will be aboard one of Shell Thuet's 750cc twins, one of the bikes King Kenny rode on the (then) Camel Pro circuit. Shell also has a second 750 and a 500 bike set up for Eddie Lawson to ride. Roberts was making an appearance in San Francisco when the course opened for practice on Nov. 20, but Lawson was there. "The 750 flat gets it on the asphalt'" Eddie grinned, "but the 500 does it in the dirt." Lawson was undecided, but tended toward the 500 as the choice for raceday. Army-sponsored Mike Kidd had no doubt about his choice, a 750cc Big D Triumph 1T bike. Mike didn't register the quickest lap time on practice day; Team Suzuki's Kent Howerton did that on an Open class motocross machine with a 2:05 trip past Butch Lee's stopwatches. But Kidd was most consistently fast at steady 2:04 - 2:05 times. "There's a lot of things I'm going to change," Mike responded to the question. "We can knock off a good five or six seconds ... I'm serious'" he told a somewhat skeptical audience. Among the changes are a swap to Pirelli up front and Carlisle universal on back, a gearing change, bigger carbs, a larger fuel tank, and, "if I can find someone to do it, I'm gonna lay down the shocks." Fastest in practice, Trans-USA Champ Kent Howerton still had his doubts about the course itself. "The track favors the dirt track guys," Kent maintained. "They ride on this stuff all the time," he said referring to the pavement and the smoothly-graded dirt section. "We're totally out of our environment here," he added, "I don't even ride a street bike." The Suzuki that Kent and AMA 500cc National MX Champion Danny LaPorte practiced on was a basic works bike with taIl gearing, richer jetting and different tires. At flJ'St they tried the standard bobbies, then switched to Goodyear D/T II dirt track rires, then to Goodyear D/Ts. Another change to be made before the event will be lowering the suspension for better handling on the smoother course. Steve Eklund and tuner Craig Fillmer arrived with Eklund's playbike in their black Ford van. The AMA Grand National/Winston Pro Champ rides the hills around San Jose on a 1T500-powered bike with a Hallman/ Aberg frame, Maico forks and Mulholland shocks. "That's the race engine in it now," Steve indicated, "I use the stock one for play riding. " "It's the same motor he won Santa Fe on," added Fillmer. "We haven't even torn it down since then. We will before this race, though."

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