Cycle News - Archive Issues - 1980's

.~ z 0 lJ) ~ ii: 0 e ..J 0 Z <{ Z ~ 0 a: ~ CD W ..J 00 ~ <( ....... 0 > CD ~ ~ lJ) 0 ..... C\I 0 ~ ... :I: V ..0 0 .... u 0 Kenny Morgan (shown) teamed with Kevin Schwann, James Trimble, and Brian Floores on the Hurst Yamaha and Marine FJ600. WERA/Dlinlop National Endurance Road Racing Series: Round 9 FJ600s ford rivers to win flooded Texas 8-hour By John Ulrich COLLEGE STATION, TX, OCT. 6 Team Hurst Supply's Kevin Schwantz, Kenny Morgan, James Trimble, and Brian Floores rode a stock Yamaha FJ600 to beat 39 teams and win the WERA/Dunlop National Endurance Series 8-hour at Texas World Speedway. Team Good Times' FJ600 (ridden by Stuart Cooper and Bob Sellers) and EI 36 Faco Ba's GS5SO (pilots Reggie Hartsfield, john Kocinski and Alston jennings) finished second and third, respectively, in a storm-shredded race dominated by small machines with stock airboxes allowing them to ford a two-foot-deep, SO-foot-wide river that swept across the course at two places and forced the race to be redflagged for about half-an-hour near the mid-way point. Among the leading National Endurance Series teams encountering problems as their velocity-stackequipped racebikes literally drowned out in the raging current were QuesterlSullivan Racing, North Ridge Racing, l-P Racing and Team Hammer. At one point Team Hammer crew chief Ken Hoogland removed the team's bike's spark plugs and pumped water out of the fluid-locked engine before the team continued to finish 12th. QuesterlSullivan finished seventh, North Ridge 13th, and l-P 19th. The race didn't change tbe order of the top teams in season points standings. QuesterlSullivan and Fabulous Speed Boys (who finished 11th in Texas after a front wheel change cured wheel-bearing-failure-induced handling problems) lead Team Hammer in points. But in the best-eight finishes-count scoring system, QuesterlSullivan and Fabulous Speed Boys have eight races counting toward points; Team Hammer has six, with two events remaining in the series. After the Texas World round, unoHicial scoring showed that Questerl Sullivan led with 749 points from eight races; Fabulous Speed Boys were second with 684 points from eight races; and Team Hammer was third with 668 points from six races. Team Hammer overcame a poor tart with new slicks and brake pads - 20th off the LeMans-style run-toyour-bike, jump-on-and-go start to pass early-leaders Houston Kawasaki (Ru ty Allen/Craig johnson, Kawasaki Ninja) and Schwantz, on the way ma!<-ing up 40 seconds and leaving Questerl ullivan's alwaysfa t-starting Mike Harlow (parmers Toby Barenbrugge and jerry Holm, Team Hammer's Moriwaki·framed GS1150 Suzuki didn't go through the Texas rivers well; got stuck twice in eight hours. GSIIOO), Team Good Times' Cooper and others. Team Hammer led going into the second hour. Many of the traveling teams on the National Endurance Series circuit who hadn't been to Texas World before were intimidated by the rough track, which has steep banking so bumpy that holding the throttle wide open all the way around is an accomplishment, Other parts of the track are deceptively fast, and since it's the only track in its area, the entry list was filled with hard-riding Texans familiar with every bump and trench in the pavement. Besides the bumps and furrows in the asphalt, there are two low spots in the road course part of the track, and as rain fell from the sky during the fourth hour, those low spots filled . and became deeper and deeper. The storm hit hard, abated, the track started to dry, and then the douds let loose full force. Team Hammer, still on slicks, pitted for rain tires, then went out and encountered the first problems with splashing through the water; meanwhile Team Hurst Supply kept running around and piling up laps. When Hammer's Dave Schlosser ran through the second water-crossing on the course one lap, the bike sucked water and died - he pushed more than a mile into the pits, his crew prevented from reaching him by tall fences. QuesterlSullivan's Barenbrugge flooded out in the same crossing but got going again. North Ridge's Don Sielschott (partners Ralph johnston Sr., Ralph johnston jr., and Doug Cross, FjIIOO) sputtered and pushed into the pits. l-P Racing's Gregg liua refused to ride through the rising water, pitting and turning the bike over to partners Kevin Perry and Lex Hutton to finish the race. "Somebody's going to stall in the water and get rammed from behind, and drown," lizza said, calling for an immediate end to the race and demanding that WERA throw the race out of the series, counting only the best seven finishes. Even after the red flag and a wait for the rain to abate, even after officials changed the course to eliminate one water ford, the deep water remained a fa tor in the race. Riders continued to come in with stories of water over the engine cases knocking their feet off the footpegs and drowning their bikes. Unaffected by it all were the Hurst supply pilots, especially brash Schwantz, who rammed into the water full throttle and slithered out the other side, foot down, like a man possessed. Young Schwantz may have a bright future in mud-track racing, should that sport become established. Team Good Times' chances for the win also died in a water crossing, wben their bike's air filter dogged with water - they removed it to finish second, two laps behind. Schwantz and crew, having encountered that air filter problem once before, had removed their bike's air filter before the race. When the track finally reached a state of being mostly dry, several teams started making up time. loP's Hutton and QuesterlSullivan's Voorhis locked in a back-and-forth battle as they made up laps lost in the storm. l-P continued to run rain tires on the drying track, and as the tires overheated and got slippery, Hutton's job got more difficult; Voorhis ran on Dunlop Elites. Texans on the move after the storm induded Team Scream (Brian Graver, Keith Coker, Mike Ryan, Richard Prescott) and Team Visa (Ronnie Luqsford, Scott McCutcheon, Alan johnson, Nat Maschmann), both teams on Honda VF7SOFs; Scream would finish fourth, Visa sixth, bracketing the consistently-fast fifth-place 5SO Vision of Roy's Racing (Roy Thoma, Wes Goggan, Michael Snoddy.) Results 1. TEAM HURST SUPPlY: Kevin Sc:hwenoz. Kenny Mo

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