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/126913
~------------------------ THE ANATOMY OF ROAD RACING 5 herm Cooper was the only American in the Incas Rally. tion nervous - we boarded the 747. The main impression your ace reporter picked up is that the Contine.ntals are definitely onto something. The racing provides all the excitemen't that any variety of handlebar-rauling induces, pi us an extra dif)1ension that's hard to explain without pretentiousness. Being so completely alone in the desert or mountains and yet in the middle of a race brings on a strange state of mind - it seems to empty itself of all the clut,ter that usually takes up so much space. Zen and the Art of Motorcycling Thrashing! Despite the concentration obviously required for dodging rocks at 90 while trying todecipher the handlebar-mounted road book, you feel curiously relaxed. It's like the "white line fever" you get on the best long road rides but much more intense. The desert especially made a particular impact. An odd euphoric feeling would sometimes creep up after an hour or so of riding,until I found myself grinning inanely as the Armstrong and I bounced along. At times I almost wanted to get lost. In Britain it's almost impossible to put much dis~nce between yourself and the rest of the seeth lng masses, and the unfamiliar solitude pulled gently but insistently at both head and heart. Peru itself has to be the best place yet discovered for this type of event, apart (rom the difficulty and expense of gelling there. The terrain varies enormously and, outside the big towns, nearly all the roads and tracks are unsurfaced. You could ride (or years and never exhaust the store o( new places to go. Days one and two (25 and 697 kilometers - 15.5 and 433 miles - respectively!) were near-disasters for the British contingent. All the rules were in ltalian, as was the road book, and I had no real experience in enduro navigation so I made a complete cock-up of all the checks and just about everything else. The official English briefing (or the non-Italian speakers was also a waste of time, consisting largely of a cheery "no problems tomorrow" when there bloody well were. Finally, the tripmeter on the Armstrong wasn't working which meant constant mental arithmetic to convert road book distances to the numbers coming up on the main mileometer. The net result ·was that I received two maximum time penalties which more than doubled my actual ,special test times. On the second day I followed an ltalian (or some of the way; he seemed to actually know where he was going and together we wound our way up a staggering- climb to nearly 16,000 feet in the Andes between Lima and our AlIA • • "CTIONID THE NISSAN 200 July 12 and 13, 1986 Laguna Seca Raceway, Monterey, CA ACamel Pro Series National Championship • The Bell Superbike Oassie On Saturday THE MEN: THE MACHINES: The Nissan 200 has been the showtase The Formula One rnathines featured in thefar the talents af bath the best riders in Nissan 200 are 350 pounds of fury, the United Stales and the best Americans capable af speeds af 140 miles per hour competing in Europe and we exped 1986 here and prodUling harsepower of sUth to be no dilferent. Past events have seen magnitude that brutal accelerution arid appearances by Kenny Roberts, Randy spine-chiling wheelies, even off the tap of Mamala, Freddie Spencer, Eddie lawson, the wond famous dawn hill "corkscrew," Wayne Rainey, Mike 8aldwin and many became commonplace all around the cirmare. Ta the man, they like the challenge cuit and all the way from green ta of the laguna Seea Cittuil. And the com- checkered flag. peiitian between them has become legendary. Situated on the beoutilul Monterey Penin· TH E CIRCU IT: sula, laguna Se