Cycle News - Archive Issues - 1980's

lo-< V ..0 8 v ;> o Z Broe Glover (3) moved from a third-row start to finish third. Eddie Lawson bnlking heavily and banking over for the tight first tum at the start of the Superbike,. final. followed by Mickey Fay (59). Doug Chandler (81) and Fred Merkel (84). Lawson was super-smooth on the pavement. SuperbiJ(ers V Lawson 'damn fast' in • Superbikers win By David Edwards CARLSBAD, CA, NOV. 6 The Superbikers, that annual manufacturedfor-television coming together of the various motorcycle racing disciplines, proved two things this year: I) A motocross background is not a necessary prerequisite for winning and 2) put any kind of two-wheeled device under Eddie Lawson and he will proceed to ride the wheels right off the thing. Lawson, thls year's fourth-place finisher in the 500cc World Road Race Championship, put his pavement prowess and previous din track experience to good use as he chaperoned his Yamaha YZ490-hased machine around the half-din, half-asphall Carlsbad Raceway circuit for the win, all duly recorded by the ABC Wide World of Sports cameras. The victory marked the first time in the evem's five-year history that a non-motocross rider has won. At the inaugural Superbikers in 1979, Kem Howerton, then riding for Team Suzuki, was the winner. In 1980and 1981, motocrosset-tumed-road racer Steve Wise blasted to fame as the Superbike Champion. Then in 1982 Danny "Magoo" Chandler, who has been described as motorcycling's answer to Huckleberry Finn, powered his ,, Honda across the finish line first, grinning all the way. Chandler was back this year to defend his title, but hampered by a shift lever bem back almost double during a runin with a haybale, he had to settle for second behind Lawson. Team Yamaha motocrosser Broc Glover, the 1983 National Open Champion and coming off a fifth-place finish at the San Diego Supercross the previous night, finished third. The 1-3 Yamaha showing was good enough to gamer the Bel-Ray Manufacturers Challenge Cup. Adding an international flare to the finishing order, Andre Malherbe, the 1979-80500cc World Motocross Champion, and Eric Geboers, this year's 125cc World Motocross Champion, both put in good rides to take fourth and fifth respectively. The day wasn't so kind to other champions. Randy Goss, the justcrowned Grand National Champion, didn't transfer to the the final. Neither did three-time Champion jay Springsteen. Ditto for 1979 Champ Steve Eklund. On the motocross side of the program, 1983 500cc World Motocross Champion Hakan Carlqvist didn't make the cut, and the 1~2 Champ Brad Lackey was also watching from the sidelines when the final was flagged off. Oneofthe road race favorites, 1983 Superbike Champion ~d ex-din tracker Wayne Rainey didn't even line up for his heat race. Saddled with mechanical problems on his 2-year-old Kawasaki, Rainey elected to park it for the day and assume spectator status. Heats The three heats - motocross, road race and dirt track - would transfer the top three riders in each heat to the final, with all the rest advancing to the one-and-only semi-final. That race would also transfer the first three finishers to the final, making for a 12rider grid. After an almost one-hour delay caused by over-watering of the track, the motocross heat came first, and Malherbe showed that he hadn't come to the U.S. just to see the sights when he swept into the lead ahead of Chandler. Magoo was putting heavy pressure on the Belgian, though, and on the second lap he squeaked by to take over the from-runner position. As Chandler pulled out to a winning lead, both YZ-mounted Glover and Ricky johnson, aboard a booming Yamaha TT600 four-stroke, pulled up to Malherbe and began a high-speed debate to see who would transfer directly to the final. After six laps of shuffling, it was Malherbe and Glover behind Chandler, and johnson out of I uck and I ubricam, finishing in founh with a cracked oil reservoir. Geboers, in perhaps his last Suzuki ride before a rumored switch to Honda, was fifth; Carlqvist finished in sixth; National Enduro Champion Mike Melton nailed down spot number seven; Lackey, riding a Pro Circuit Husqvarna that kept oiling its rear tire via a faulty en~ gasket, was eighth; and Mike Baker, son of Dallas Baker, worked his way hack to ninth place after a mid-pack stan. The dirt trackers were up next. Springsteen,like the rest of the Harley team, had opted for the stability and ~wer of l;,he XR750 V-twins rather than the agility of their recently homologated 500cc thumpers, and as Springer jumped into the lead at the end of the long asphalt start straight, it looked like a good decision. Team Honda's Mickey Fay put his 600cc single-cylinder TT bike into second, with the familiar number 44 of Alex jorgensen closing in for third. Two laps later, Springsteen's ride came to an end as he threw his left hand up in the air and pulled off the track, the victim of a broken gearbox. The withdrawal elevated Fay into the leader's spot, with Wood-Rotaxmounted jorgensen in second and Doug Chandler, the 18-year-oldCarnel Pro Rookie of the Year. piloting a 600cc Honda into a challenging third. While Fay was out front with a seemingly comfonable lead, Chandler put a nice move on jorgy going through the din track section of the course to grab second place. When Fay turned around just before taking the checkered flag, he was surprised to see Chandler coming up fast. Fay was first, the impressive Chandler was second, despite the fact that his engine had stripped a cylinder bolt in the process, and jorgensen was third. Ted Boody finished out of the transfer spots in fourth; Steve Eklund, working hard on a two-stroke KTM, was fifth; Bubba Shobert, already sporting scuHed-up forearms from a practice crash on the pavement, fell twice but still managed to claw his way up to sixth; Goss, who admitted to "not going fast enou!/;h. and searing myself," was seventh; speedway star Mike Faria spent most of his time getting used to a bike that had brakes for a change to notch an eighth-place finish; Scott Parker dropped out with mechanical gremlins for ninth; and Springsteen's gearbox problems relegated him to a 10th. The final heat was made up of road [ ; '] (

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