Cycle News - Archive Issues - 1980's

~ ~ :I: U a: ..J :::> z :I: ..., 0 > CD (II 0 ... 0 :I: ~ .... 00 O"l ...... ~ c...r c...r .... C'.J ;::j bll ;::j < Fred Merkel blasted to big wins in both Superbike segments; (right) Rueben McMurter stuffs underneath Sam McDonald in the last race. AMA Superbike Championship series: Round 7 . Merkel runs away at Portland By John Ulrich PORTLAND, OR, AUG. 12 Flyin' Fred Merkel won both legs of the Beaverton Honda 100, a pair of 30-mile sprints that added up to 60 miles/IOO kilometers of racing. But the racing wasn't for first place: Merkel was never challenged, never passed, and barely seen by the rest of the field gathered at Portland International Raceway. 10 Merkel's margin for victory in the first 16-lap leg was 30 seconds almost two seconds a lap - and his margin of victory in the second leg was 32 seconds - exactly two seconds a lap. It figures. When Merkel lacks competition, he races with himself. "We try to go faster every time we go to a track," said Merkel's mechanic, Mike Velasco, who, along with engine builder Merlyn Plumlee, attended to Merkel's Honda VF750F Interceptor race bike and a nearly-identical spare. They did. Merkel's fastest lap in the first leg was I minute 13.73 seconds; his fastest second-leg time was 1: 13.26. The only man who's given Merkel any competition lately - Wes Cooley - sat at the top of the racetrack tower with announcer Larry Huffman, adding color commentary during the races. Yoshimura R&D of America isn't racing outside California this year, so Cooley had no Superbike to ride. He was at the track because he had loaded his truck with a squadron of 1'-2 bikes before leaving California for Pocono. The hauled-for-cash machines helped Cooley pay for his trip east, but forced him to travel to next week's Sears Point National via the Portland Pro-Am. Merkel won his heat race, easily, ahead of Canadian Rueben McMurter, Mike Harth and Rich Oliver, Oliver almost getting Harth with a big drive off the last corner that had his Kawasaki hopping and wobbling to the finish line; but not quite enough. Sam McDonald won the second heat, just barely ahead of Roberto Pietri, who drove hard off the last turn in a straight line for the finish, scaring the standing-mid-track-withthe-flag starter but not getting past McDonald. Pietri had passed McDonald on the last lap in the fourth turn, but lost the lead again on the back straight; he almost got underneath McDonald again entering the last turn, then tried to win the drag-race to the finish line. Local star Randy Skiver, known for winning Castle Rock TTs on a Triumph in the mid-70s, was closer to Pietri and McDonald than anybody would have guessed he could be, considering his near-stock-engine, stock-brakes Interceptor. Superbike racing these days is serious business. Merkel has full-time mechanics paid to prepare his bikes; Merkel gets a salary and all expenses and bonus money from American Honda for wins. McDonald gets no salary and runs a privateer effort. But he's got a fulltime mechanic - Larry Kano - and gets advice and maybe a little backdoor help from his older brother Phil, who's paid by Honda to tune Mike Baldwin's I'-I RS500 and Sam's 1'-2 RS250R. Roberto Pietri is a self-supported privateer, spending his own money to race, with two paid mechanics. They suspect their VF750F is slower than McDonald's because .they can't always buy new HRC parts as quickly as McDonald gets them. McMurter travels with a couple of friends but is often seen with wrenches in hand, working on his own VF750F; ditto Rich Oliver and his KZ750 Kawasaki. Then there's Mike Harth, who, after having nothing but trouble with his Interceptor, finally bit the bullet and paid Ken Augustine to build the engine with new parts. He came to the race with one mechanic. And finally there are guys like John Williams and Terry Hampton and most everybody else, building and tuning and riding their own bikes. Often it's possible to determine where different riders will finish by looking at the size and seriousness of their effort. Sometimes other factors enter into the equation: privateer Dale Quarterley is well-supported with an engine builder and sponsorship money but rides a Kawasaki instead of the faster Hondas. He charges hard to make up for it, but missed Portland because he broke his collarbone over-riding a Ninja ata Willow Springs club race - in practice. I digress. More to the point, Williams missed the race entirely after a crash in 1'-2 practice. McDonald rode hurt, with a damaged elbow and knee after his own crash in 1'-2 practice. Oliv.er was hurt, too, barely able to bend his leg enough to use the footpegs at day's start, unaffected by day's end. His problem? He looped out his KX80 in a parking lot the weekend before, and underwent four hours of knee surgery before leaving for Portland. He rode with stitches. Rode damn hard, too: Merkel led the first lap of the first Superbike leg, but right behind w~s Rich Oliver on his KZ750, ahead of guys and bikes he shouldn't even have been able to run with, McMurter and McDonald, Harth and Pietri close behind. Oliver was in third by the third lap, Merkel long gone and McMurter pulling ahead, too. Pietri was up from sixth and behind Oliver for just a lap; then he, too was past. But not gone. Oliver stayed in the big draft formed by Pietri and McMurter. Pietri closed up on McMurter; Oliver stayed just behind Pietri. McMurter led Pietri; Pietri passed; McMurter passed back. At the finish it was Merkel, Pietri, McMurter, Oliver, then McDonald and Harth and Jeff Haney; then local boys, Keith Pinkstaff (Suz) and Skiver; then Jeff Haney. There's a series of esses leading onto the back straight at Portland, and it was there - as well as on the straights themselves - that the power Plumlee and Velasco had built into Merkel's bike showed. Merkel's engine featured a dry clutch, small and light and good for fast tracks, compared to the larger, £lywheel-like wet clutch Plumlee and 'Velasco give Merkel at tracks requiring more grunt and less peak power. This engine was buill to spin, to steam down straights. You could hear it, coming through those esses. Merkel would accelerate, the engine gaining speed, the exhaust note orderly in its rise. Then the note changed and the revs double-timed their rate of acceleration as the bike broke the rear tire loose, the bike not sideways, not out of control, just skimming the rear tire; the engine sought to move the bike forward faster than tire adhesion could bear. Merkel exited the esses onto the straight with the rear tire spinning, the bike leaping forward with a difference - compared to the others the naked eye could see. McMurter's bike did it a little, too, in one spot; but not like Merkel's, not .out of one curve and through the next and on to the straight. Merkel's bike spun the rear wheel as much in the second leg as it did in the first, and he won again. This time McDonald, who came through the first heat pretty well, was up tocharging, so he charged. The battle behind Merkel involved Pietri, McDonald and McMurter. Oliver wasn't there, losing the big draft in a private battle for fourth with Harth, finally getting past Harth two laps from the end when Harth's bike momentarily ran out of gas on the straight, way too late to catch the fast freight down the straight. So the three - McDonald, Pietri, McMurter - traded places and drafted and out-broke each other. McMurter had a favorite place to pass, diving underneath McDonald entering the last right-hander. (We've got a turn like that ata track back home," McMurter would say later, "and I thought to myself 'I've been here before.' I just ran it in there and hoped I wasn't jumping him in there.") McMurter made that pass several laps in a row, but on the secondfrom-last lap he really had to come from behind to make it again McDonald had pulled some distance - but somehow did it again, just getting underneath McDonald. They passed ,the white flag, heading on the last lap, McMurter ahead of McDonald, trying to hold him off on the straight, which is where McDonald always re-took second. McMurter did a pretty good job he was still in second when his bike dropped a valve on the last lap and probably could have held off McDonald if his bike hadn't broken. It did. He didn't. McDonald was second, Pietri third, Oliver and Harth fourth and fifth. Pinkstaff beat Skiver again but this time ever-improving Haney, a dirt-tracker on his inaugural road racing season, beat them both. "My mouth was bleeding from biting my lip, ,. McDonald said when it was over. "My elbow would start hurting and I'd bite my lip. At the

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