Cycle News - Archive Issues - 1980's

- (Top) Jim Gianatsis snapped this photo ofWes Cooley's Yoshimura Suzuki Katana. Wes will be riding his first bike since September. (Above left) Eddie Lawson is both a Superbike and 200 contender. (Above middle) Superbike racing is usually close. (Above right) Graeme Crosby is rumored to have Kenny Roberts' old 750. (Continued from page 22) ship and other team effort s he's been in volved wi th. So I th ink th e only problem Lawson is go ing to su ffer from is th e trouble he's had th e last co u p le of years, and that 's new bike.fever. He doesn 't know this bike well. He's just got th is bike. They haven 't got any depth in it for Am erican rac ing as well as th e fact that Lawson is in finitel y more aggressive than Ballington is. Eddie is blood-in-your-eye, he's-gonna-win . I saw him at th e last couple of races last yea r and I think he wa s pretty close to Freddie there. He wa s really putting it on. As far as the other guys, you've got Steve P ar ish on a Yamaha , Boet Van Dulmen on th e latestSuzuki model, and Christian Estrosi On probably a Suzuki. But the major guys are Roberts, Mamola and Lawson. The 750. ... 36 Right at the head of the list is Singleton. Two wins and a second in the last three years I As a Yamaha rider , he is the top dog. And I believe that his strategy, his proven track record leads him to be a real strong favorite for his third win. Plus everybody is on all-new equipment and Dale is not. He's on equipment he knows real well , that he built himself. Besides being probably one of the more charismatic, unusual , interesting guys on the circuit, Dal e's a one-man band. He does it all himself. He builds the bike himself. He just has people help a t the ra ces. Going down the list of 750s I think yo u 'll see Christian Sarron being very competitive. .Fontan, who got third last year. should be fairly competitive. Richard Schlachter on hi s Yahama 750 is another one who will be competitive although I understand he doesn 't ha ve th e budget he o nce had...which is unfortunate because he's a real good guy. Definitely David Aldana. He's good for finishes, has been for yea rs. H e's riding for the Bob Work, Don Vesco, Paul Dahmen and Wasco com bina tion and I th ink th at whole group will put forth a good effort. John Bett encourt is def in itel y in the running for a better fini sh. He's matured in his eq u ip me nt a nd sta bility. You 've a lways go t Mil es Baldwin. You can always count on Mil es for so me kind o f exci tement. I'm no t exa ctly su re what it will be. But with Miles it could be a fast crash or a fast lap. Ano the r g uy is Dan Ch ivington, who is under-rated a nd Ithink part of th at is because he's a Honda dea ler. H e wants to run Honda a nd he ca n' t qu ite get th e mach in e yet or else he wo u ldn' t be o n a Yamaha ever. A true Honda guy. He's th e kind of guy who co u ld be right th ere at th e end. And of course Nick Ri ch ich i. I don 't kn ow how he 'll go in th e 200, but I think he's a potential. And then there' s th e lat est rumor, th at Graeme Crosby will ride th e works TZ750 vacated by Roberts. If that 's so, Crosby will be a magnum th reat, because he 's reall y fast. But then so is Robe rts, and Roberts' fini sh ing record on th at bik e is awfu l. Ron Pierce may show up on Roberto Pi etri 's TZ750 prepared with help from Bob Work. Ron ha s a real good record as far as Da ytona fini sh es go ...the onl y questi on mark is th e equipment. His previous tie-ups with Bob Work have put h im in th e winner's ci rcle an d he proved th at by lea rni ng with Lawson to win th e AFM Six Hour th at h is la y-off du e to inj uries hadn ' t ca used h im to lose h is touch. There ar e 134 pre-entries of whi ch 40 ar e from ove rseas. Onl y 80 ge t to sta rt. The Predict ion I predict that Freddie Spen cer, Kenn y Roberts and Randy Mamola... with Eddie Lawson clos e as a co m et's ta iL.are going to fight tooth a nd hammer for th e lead as lon g as those machines run . And the odds-on favorite to win his third event is Dale Singleto n after the carn age. Dale has proven in the past that h e has no reason to ra ce for th e lead off th e start and be co m mi tted to the carnage. He just h as to be ba ck there, and he has all the odds in his favor . I don't believe Freddie's Honda will finish. I'm not confident Kenny's Yamaha will finish and I'm not confident Randy 's Suzuki will finish. I have more faith in Eddie 's Kawasaki because of the people who are building it , but all the 500s have no 200-mile track records. The FWS has never been in a race . I see it as Freddie leading initially, Kenny and Randy being right there with him and Singleton being first at the finish . The Superbike Race The Da yto n a Superbike race is unique because Daytona is ihe only place where anybody has ever gone, orbeenclockedat,180mphonaSuperbike, and that was one without a fairin g . People should not forget that last year at th e AMA Pro-Am Freddie turned 2:05s on his Superbike. Mind you, on a Honda, not a Suzuki with a fairing. Dale Singleton is yet to do better than that. In my years riding the Yamaha 750 there, restricted or unrestricted, I never wen t better than 2:06. Freddie and h is Superbike are less than three seconds off the lap record set by Kenny Roberts. Theoretically, Daytona demands that a Superbik e have horsepower, torque, hook-up and aerodynamics. This will be th e yea r to know about aerodynamics, because th e Katana Suzuki will be th ere, and that 's a much more aerodyn am ic motorcycle than a ny of th e other Superbikes. The Katana is designed to slip through the wind and we 've seen magazine tests where a stock 1000cc Katana was faster in top speed than an II000c Suzuki and an IIOOcc Kawasaki. So we will see if there's any advantage aerodynamics for Superbikes this year. The Daytona Superbike race is 100 miles, and they have to make a p it stop which they don't have to niake in other races. There are a lot o f challenges to it . It 's a mini-2oo. that's what it is. And we saw last year that Team H o nda caught Freddie on fire during refueling, A pit stop can be very trrcky even tor a top-rated team like Honda, and a lot of things can happen in the pits. The Frances (w ho own Da ytona) have really reco gnized the si m ilarities between th eir NASCAR and Superbike ra cing and they' ve ra ised th e Su perbi ke p u rse u p in th e past three yead a n d brought th e qual it y o f th e field up fin anciall y. Once agai n , we ge t back to Fredd ie Spencer. H e's lon g ove rd ue . In 1980 wh en I ra n the team, we bui lt the bikes, went to Dayto na, he q ual ified on th e pole and ended up seco nd with P ierce third. The next year he ca me back and was run ni ng right there wi th Cooley a nd Cros by. ca ught fire in th e pi ts, a nd sti ll fi n ished th ird. H e's overd ue . Well overd ue. So I think he's th e number o ne boy o n th e number o ne bike. And he shoul d be the num ber o ne a t th e end of th e race. Nobody is goi ng to get around Da ytona on a Superbike faster than Fred die Spencer. A 2:05! It 's unbeli evabl e. I think Edd ie La wso n and his Kawasa ki will ac tua lly have a horsepower . su perio rity over Freddie, whi ch might make a close co ntest. I th in k he's the onl y one wh o can sta y with Fred. I think he's developed the co n fide nce , the self-ass u ra nce to do that. Given th at th e mo to rcycle will run th e duration o f th e race a nd pe rform , he's th e o n lv one who ca n th reat en Fred. I don"t th ink a ny body ca n beat Fred . but if a ny body ca n, it's Lawson. I think Steve Wise is go in g to to ta lly freak o u t everybody in Superbik e just as he d id a t th e Ast rodome with hi s th ird in the TT. H e's a lways wanted to be a road racer. He' s go t th e sta m ina o f a rnorocrosser, and m ost ro ad racers a re not physically trained we ll enough , a nd Wise will ac tu a lly be o vertra ined to do th is. H e tu rned 2:ll s in h is first pr act ice wit h Honda a t Da ytona , which is respectable. I think he 'll be there, but he 's not going to be in the top five unless we see a lot of attrition. Rainey on Kaw asak i, I think will ruri about th e same speeds as Wise. but I think Wise will beat h im head-tohead. I think Roberto and Baldwin will be close to turning the kind of.times Fred and Eddie willtunr, but I don 't see them being! in th e same ra ce. They 'll be back racing for third. Wes Cooley and the Yoshimura Katana ar e hard to predict, because we can 't exclude the fact that he suffered a major injury and was in a plaster cast for some time and he 's just recovering now. Not only does he have to fight the physical thing, there's the mental thing. No matter who you are. The first lap he takes in

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