Cycle News - Archive Issues - 1980's

Heated action at Nelson Ledges saw eventual third place finishing Solmax USA (95) leading winner Pro-Motor 2 and Solmax USA (3). the runner-up team. Pro-Motor 2 led a sweep of the top six places by Yamaha. Pro-Motor 2's Jim Tribou assists during one of the teams pit stops during the 24-hour.race. Pro-Motor 2 finished two laps up on the runner-up team. WERA/EBC National Championship Endurance Road Race Series: Round 8 Team Pro-Motor 2 wins 24 Hours of Nelson By larry Bell WARREN. OH, AUG. 9-10 Team Pro-Motor 2 turned In a textbook example of endurance road racing by winning the 18th Annual 24 Hours of Nelson at N e1son Ledges Road Course: Riders Jeff James, Jim Tribou, Paul Zieschangand Tom D'Etorecrank- ed out 999 methodical laps for a total of 1998 miles on the two-mile track with their Kayo Corp.! Yokohama/D.LD.! hoe i-supported Yamaha FZ750 in a race which saw the lead change at least 10 times and frequently had the top five machines runningon the same lapor a few laps apart. Pro-Motor 2 pulled the lead for good with one hour' remainingafter leading intermittently for .five hours-in a steady downpour which lowed the average lap speeds. olmax USA, a leader for eight of the24 hour, fini hed its EBClVetter/ Yamaha/Dunlop-backed Yamaha FZ750 in second place. Riders Ron Bowen, Terry Bailey, Chris Chandler, Dwayne Palmer and jim Clemmer turned in 997 laps. Darotune/RacingOttawa made the trip from Canada and finished third on a Wolf Exhaust/Silkolene/Kiwisupported Yamaha FZ750. Ottawa had the lead for five hours and its three riders-Dan Witmer, Frank Dinardo and Bugs Green-churned Out 981 laps. Intrepid Racing, span ored by Ontario Honda-Yamaha, Bel-Ray and Pirelli, raced a Yamaha FZ750 shod with prototype Pirelli Demon tires and finished fourth with 975 laps. Human Race Team survived numerous battery problems and placed the only Middleweight clas bike in the top five, a Yamaha FZ600, with a total of 962 laps turned in. Human was followed home by Yamaha FZ750mounted Cycle Speed Racing to give Yamaha a sweep of the top six place. "That's the longest hour of my life," aid an exhau ted jim Tribou JUSt after finishing the race for ProMotor 2. Tribou's hour wa not only the culmination of the race, but also the hot, dry weather which had prevailed fOL most of the weekend; the rain that started around 1:00 p.m. ent some teams to the pit and some to the crash truck. "I knew I had to just take it one lap at a time. You don't plan too far ahead or you .make mistakes," said Tribou. This marks his second winning 24 Hours of Nelson ride; he was a memberoflast year's winning team, Speed Boys. The scheduled 3:00 p.m. start on Saturday saw 30 teams take to the grid with the top 10 teams in the point standings lining up first. Point standings leader Team Hammer occupied the pole position. At the drop of the green flag, Hammer's Doug Toland bolted from the pack with Horn Brothers Racing and Racin~ Ottawa in tow. Toland immediately .set a fast pace, short shifting d!'e Suzuki as he easily sliced through traffic as he lapped backmarkers. Toland's lap times were in the one-minute, 16-second range. The first hour belonged to Hammer as they put two laps on the field and established the top miles-per-hour average for the race at 93.532 mph, ac ording to the track timer. At the hour's end, the next eight teams were on the same lap, with Solmax USA in second and Pro-Motor 2 third. Team Hammer ran into trouble in the second hour when a faulty fork eal soon had Dave Sadowski covered in oil. The problem was misdiagnosed a a faulty cam cover. That was just the start of problems that dropped them to 23rd, eight laps 0[[ the pace of leader Pro-Motor 2. Pro-Motor 2 had slipped past 501max for the lead by a lap at hour's end. Sol max held onto second with Cycle Speed Racing and M&M Racing in third and fourth. Cycle Speed turned up the gas and passed Pro-Motor 2 and Racing Ottawa to take the lead in the third hour. As darkness started to fall, Hammer began to sort out their problems and Sadowski was picking up five to six laps per hour by clicking off 1:18 laps. Toland climbed on board as it turned dark and hit tride with I: 17 laps. Nelson offers its own set of problems to competitors. The sun sets right in the eyes of riders as they are going into turns three and four and coming out of the carousel. Smoke from campfire covers the track much like fog, compounding the problem of seeing at night. Keith Mar hall of Heschimura Racing said, "Your perception of speed changes. You can only judge speed by what your Iight sees. It's a natura] tendency to go slow because your universe narrows and shrinks. The trick is, the track doesn't change," Heschimura isa past winner of the 24 Hours of Nelson and this year the team was racing the same machine on which they won the 1983 race-a Honda 750 Interceptor with a stock motor. The Northgate Honda-backed Heschimura team had been running fourth in the early hours buta thrown chain with Gregg Kirby at the controls cost them II minutes and dropped them to 13th. Team members Chris Ross, Bill Wilke and Sam Williams powered the bike into the lead in the pre-dawn hour only crash in the mornin~, Racing Ottawa, running strongly with only a stock headlight, pitted just into the seventh hour for additional lights. That pit top took JUSt two minutes. olmax wanted their Dunlop RS rear tire to go at least six hours before a change but they had to change it early, and took advantage of the stop to also add lights for the night. In less than two minutes they accomplished both and were back on the track in third place, turning in their 256th lap. Leader RacingOttawa had logged 259 lap, while second place ProMotor 2 had covered 258. The average speed at the ix-hour mark was 87.075 mph. By the II th hour the three leading teams were all on the same lap, the 420th one. Cycle Speed Racing's Richard jagoe crashed while runningsecond. The get-off bent the bars, levers and pipe and the team lost at least 20 minutes in the pits, Then the team lost another 10 minutes when the bike ran out of gas just before the halfway mark with Rob Whelan aboard_ Whelan crashed in turn 12 later and 10 more precious minutes were lost replacing parts. M&:M Racin~, second in the point

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