Cycle News - Archive Issues - 1980's

Fit for. king, the I.test version of V.m.he'. 500cc V-4 Grand Prix recebike••Irlifted to Californi. for testing .nd racing. .nsw..... King Kenny Roberts in .ction .nd in the pits••nalyzing date .nd spitting out click. click. click. AMA Grand National ChamDionship til Camel Pro Series: Round 17 KingKenn~. wins lind quits - By John Ulrich MONTEREY, CA, JULY 22 "I wanted to go out on top," said King Kenny Roberts after winnIng both 100kilometer segments' of the Champion Spark Plug 200 at Laguna Seca Raceway, in front of 82.000 spectators. "This is it I guess." Three-time 500cc World Champion Roberts said before 8 and after the race that he wouldn't race motorcycles again, that Laguna Seca was his farewell to the sport that made him rich and famous. As Roberts tells it, the training and practice required to ri~e "on the razor edge, at the level I'm at" takes too much effort, especially since he's not competing on the World Championship circuit anymore. "I catch myself thinking about things that should just come naturally," Roberts said before the start, explaining his de· cision. Yet Roberts, who said he was out of shape and had lost his fine edge, set a new lap record in qualifying and took the pole position for the start, turning one lap of the 1.9·mile course in 1 minute 6.95 seconds for an aver· age speed of 102.163 mph. Roberts set the old record last year, at 1:07.751 and 101.86 mph. "That's a problem I've had all my life," said Roberts when a reporter pointed out that he was the fastest man on the track despite his claims of Roberts leed. Memola .nd Baldwin •• the front racing trio cut inside to lap • Dave Schloaer .nd Ricky Orlando. lacking interest and being somewhat rusty. "I come in and tell Kel (Carruthers, his long-time tuner and himself a former 350cc World Champion) that something's wrong; he fixes it and then I go faster." To illustrate his point about the razor edge, Roberts then said that if he was in 100% condition he could turn I :05s after a week of practice and testing on the track. '. Be that as it may, King Kenny was the fastest. Nobody else was even close. Mike Baldwin qualified second fastest at 1:07.77/100.926 mph. Randy Mamola was third fastest at 1:07.92/ 100.702 mph; reigning World Champion Freddie Spencer fourth at 1:08.19/100.306 mph. Spencer's qualifying the day before the race was cut short when he crashed after a few laps. Spencer said later that when he put on the brakes for the corkscrew turn, the lever came into the bar and nothing happened. "I pumped it but it was too late,' said Spencer. "I had to lay it down." He came up from the crash rubbing his left shoulder but thought he was uninjured, and said he'd race. But when the shoulder started aching later on, x·rays revealed a cracked col· larbone. So Fast Freddie scratched from the race and mechanics Erv Kanemoto and George Vukmonovich crated up Spencer's Honda NSR500 V-4 for the flight back to Europe. The bike Spencer crashed was the latest Grand Prix weapon from Honda. And the machine used by Roberts to dominate the w~kerid at Laguna was the latest from Yamaha, a works 500cc V·4 identical to the ones used by Eddie Lawson in Europe (Yamaha ordered Lawson not to go to Laguna, worried that an injury would evaporate his chances at winning the World Championship; he currently leads the standing by 20 points). It was first thought that Roberts would ride the 695cc OW69 he used to win the last two Daytona 200s and last year's Laguna Seca race. But Roberts argued convincingly for an airlift of the 500, which was raced by Tadahiko Taira in Europe for several Grands Prix. Roberts reasoned that he could test Dunlop tires and suspension settings on the bille, and that the data gathered in the testing could help- Lawson win the World Champioi\ship. He also pointed out that riding - and improving - the OW69 would serve no purpose, since the bike wouldn't be raced again and was obsolete. Yamaha bought that line of reasoning and flew in the V-4 in time for a new Yamaha Motors Corp. U.S.A. black-and-yellow paint job before Roberts and crew headed to Laguna for testing. After several days of work Roberts had waded through piles of Dunlop tires with new constructions and compounds and tried suspension change after suspension change. Roberts is good at that, one of the few riders - maybe the only rider - who can come in off the track and squint off into space and then tell Carruthers exactly what the bike needs. Roberts doesn't talk in terms of what the motorcycle's doing or what he thinks it needs. He analyzes what's going on and then spits out the answer, like a computer, with no prompting or questioning from anybody. "Hey Kel, give me 5mm more preload on the forks," Roberts said after one Saturday practice as a reporter observed, fascinated. "No," he said a split second later, his brow knitted in concentration, "make that 4mm." Then Roberts went out and set the new lap record. The day of the race, he never even practiced on the bike; just climbed on it on the starting grid, took the warmup lap with everybody else, and raced. With Spencer out, Honda fielded Mamola and Baldwin against King Kenny, Mamola on a works NS500 V-3 and Baldwin on an RS500 V-3. The NS has the latest and trickest parts the Honda racing department can build, the fastest V-3 engine, the lightest parts - like the carbon-fiber swingarm. The RS500 is a limited· production, for-sale racebike anybody can buy; this year privateers Wes Cooley, Rich Schlachter, Randy Renfrow, Jeff Haney, Gregg Smn and Miles Baldwin have all purchased RS500s, and the bike is fast becoming the workhorse of the Formula One class, a position formerly held by the long-in-tooth Yamaha TZ750. What anybody couldn't buy is prep by Phil McDonald, formerly a racer, now Baldwin's mechanic. McDonald's job is to prepare Baldwin's machines. That's all he does, every weekday at Honda, and on weekends at the track. He's uprated Baldwin's RS a bit, working on the cylinders to bring the porting closer to NS500 specifications. McDonald's work makes Baldwin's RS500 the quickest RS on the track, an advantage three-time U.S. Formula One Champion Baldwin doesn't particularly need to win Camel Pro Series races. Helping at Laguna was a new 16-inch rear wheel and Michelin radial tire borrowed oU Spencer's bike and which put more rubber on the ground than even the 17-inch rear radial used by Mamola. Still, against the faster works bikes of Roberts and Mamola, Baldwin was out-gunned, a situation he rarely faces in U.S. races. Maybe that's why Baldwin seemed moody ~fore the start, his stern race

• Cover