Cycle News is a weekly magazine that covers all aspects of motorcycling including Supercross, Motocross and MotoGP as well as new motorcycles
Issue link: https://magazine.cyclenews.com/i/126819
(Above) The firs t lap of the first leg of the Kerker 100, Schwantz (289) just ahead of Cooley (9 ) and Merkel (1 ) heading into the th ird turn . This was the race. (Below, ri ght) 20-year-old Kevin Schwantz, from 600cc Stock to Nat ional-winning AMA Expert in five months. With Schwantz already gone, .t he second leg became a battle for second place between Merkel (1) and Cooley. Merkel got it . AMA Superbike Championship Series: Round 2 . . Suzuki's Schwantz sweeps \, By John Ulrich RO SAMO ND , CA, AP R. 28 Kevin Schwantz rode the Yoshimura GS700based Suzuki Superbike to win both legs of the Ker ker 100 a t Willow Springs Raceway, beating reigning Superbike Cha mpion Fred Merkel of Team Honda and '. . . two-time Superbike Champion Wes Cooley on the Starfire Rae. . . mg ~on~a. Sehw~ntz and the 8 Suzuki built by Suehiro Wa tanabe, Do n . Sakakura and Dave ~olman dominated both lfi- Iap, 40-ml le legs on th e 2.5-mile, nine-turn course and turned the fastest lap time - of the day at I minute, 27.91 seconds. He won his heat race, too, making it three starts and three wins for the day, all three coming at the expense of Merkel. " We grabbed 'em by the front of the shirt and shook 'em, and yelled 'Pay attention!' that time," Schwantz said after winning his hea t race. He was even more enthusiastic after winning the first leg of the final race, pulling a wheelie up ~he hill out of turn three after recervmg the checkered flag , setting the bike down with the wheel cocked, kicking out his left leg and waving his left arm and punching the air in a display that illustrated pure, overwhelming joy. The crowd lo ved it , and cheered, just as they had cheered his charge into first place in each leg and his daring, sliding passes of back markers when there was clearly no room to pass. Schwantz was at his best using traffic to block h is pursuers. and his skill at getting around slower riders irn pressed all watchers. Among those watchers were topranked representatives of Honda, Yam aha and Suzuki, and a ll eyes were on 20-year-old Schwantz, the Houston, Texas prodigy who found himself propelled from riding a stock FJ600 in 1984 WERA endurance events to Superbike stardom almost overnight, on the basis of a single test session with Yoshimura arranged by a n impressed journalist. There were doubters when Schwantz's aggressive abi lities were first reported, but Schwantz proved at Willow that he is a top-class Superbike pi lot. And rumors of h is accom p lishments being made possible by an illegal, oversize motorcycle were silenced when the Yoshim ura Suzuki was torn down after the race and found legal. A protes t by Cooley claiming that the bike had an illega lly-modified steering head angle - something Cooley said he rea d in a Cycle Guide magazine report on the Yoshimura bike - was disallowed when officials compared Schwantz's Superbike to a stock Suzuki and found no change in head angle and no illegal frame modifications. Schwantz's victory did not diminish the efforts of Merkel and Cooley. Both went blazingly fast, Merkel even though he suffered from some sort of influenza that found him feverish, pale and nauseous the m orning of the race . And Cooley, who challenged and passed Schwantz the most during both races, lost second in the first race to Merkel by a wheel, then slammed his knee painfully into the pavement when he lost the front end in the second leg, finishing in pain and almost falling off his bike at the finish . Theday started with Cooley jumping hi s Larry Worrell-tuned VF750F Superbike into the lead of the first heat race for grid position and simply running away. Cooley's Starfire Racing teammate, Todd Brubaker, came from last on the grid to tak e second i n the five-lap race, wi th Jimmy Filice third on the Super Team Fl750 Yamaha tuned by Lou Vallerga and Jim Vreeke fourth on his Kerker Fl750 ahead of Sam McDonald 's Larry Kane-tuned Fl . John Ashmead had slid both wheels of his Bi-Star Raci ng / T ea m Ontario VF750F and crashed at the exit of turn two while running in the top three on the second lap. He was bruised but not ser iously hurt . Schwantz passed Merkel in sweepin g , wide-open turn eight on the second lap of the second heat to take first p lace and leave. Scott Gray, riding his own Jim Williams/Cycle Pro/ Frank Thomas-sponsored GS750 Suzuki with a Yosh imura engine, killed his bike's engine on the grid and couldn't push start it due to ank le tendons severely torn in a crash two weeks ago - Gray hobbled around on crutches when not riding. He finally got hel p to start the bike as the field disappeared around turn two , struggled to get his injured lef t leg over the seat, and took off in pursuit. On the last lap Gray had caught R u eben McMurter, who was running third, and the two raced side-by-s ide around turn eight. Suddenly McM urter was off th e track, riding parallel and streaming a roostertail of dust at a tremendous speed, fina lly getting hal ted and turned around and back on the track way past turn nine, to cross th e line seventh. " I d idn't do anything," Gray la u g h ed la ter. "There isn 't any blue paint (from McM urter's Honda) on my bike. He just wanted to shut me off and I wasn 't going to get intimidated." Terry Hampton was fourth in the heat race. Schwantz led off the start of the first leg of the final, with Cooley, Merkel and Bruba ker just behind. Cooley passed into turn three, and Schwantz repassed. The first four formed a string less than two seconds from front to rear, pull ing away from Gray, who was already in a secure fourth . Behind Gray, McMurter and Hampton raced on their Hondas; behind them ca me Earl Roloff (Kaw), Vreeke, Walt Nitto