Cycle News - Archive Issues - 1980's

~ 00 C'I .... V ,.0 o ..... u o Team Lockhart wrapped up the 1987 championship with their second place finish at Riverside; Quarterley rode with Larry Shorts. Series regular Carry Andrew led Team Hyper-Cycle to a fourth place finish; Andrew teamed with James Domay at Riverside. GSXR Cup finals. H e was black flag ged afte r o nly 22 la ps due to th e fact that he had " too ma ny numbers" on his bike. At th e one hour ' mark, Suzuki became th e firs t of the leaders to pit. . Perhaps 21-year-ol d Stevens' inexperience showed, as he neglected to signal the crew before h is stop, arriving to find th em u nprepared. The long stop put th em even further behind, and team ma te Wes Cool ey soon fell a lap down to th e leaders. H ype r-Cycle pitted some 20 minutes lat er, with An drews overshoot • ing his p its and havin g to push it back, James Demay, still wearing a knee br ace after his La guna Seca injuries, took over the riding duties. Dutchman pitted soo n th ereafter with Jeff Heino joining th e fra y. The team was somewhat concerned over tire wear, as Doug Brauneck explained. "We didn't have quite as hard a tir e as Lockhart had. The sup p lies just didn 't get here wh en th ey were supposed to. We're h opin ~ ou r intermediate com pound tire Will last the wh ol e race," he said, addi ng, " if you 're going fast, you're sliding th e front wheel into tum nine to scrub off a lot of speed. You've go t to sacri fice .turn nine speed so your front tire will last longer. But then you use th e brakes more and end up using the brakes up. It 's kind of a trade off between using th e brakes and using th e tir e." . H yper -Cycle, too , was concerned. "It's poss ibl e th at we 'll have to make a tire change. I've got a really fast co-rider (De may), so I thought I'd save a little tire for him, " said Carry Andrew. . Lockhart stayed out the longest of the lead players - a full hOUT and a half - WIth Quarterley handing off to Larry Shorts. Shorts, who cracked his right shoulder blade during the Sears Point Superbike National, rode the middle stint, with Quarterley doing the first and last. It became apparent that Lockhart would be able to go the di stance on just two stops, while some, particularly Team Suzuki, would have to make three. Dutchman's quick pit : work paid off, as they gained the lead .p lus five seconds while Lockhart pitted. In recent years, Ri verside h as earned a repu tation as a rough track. In fact, no clubs raced there at all during 1985 and most of '86. When asked about th e track's condition, Doug Polen sai d it wasn' t too bad. "The faster you go, the smoother it ge ts," he joked. ' Domay disagreed, saying, "With a bike as powerful as Carry's, you 're o n the gas and you hit one bum p and the front end comes up. " J ust befo re the halfway point, Cool ey bro ught th e Suzu ki/ Arai/ Bel-Ray/Kerk er/EMGO/Mich elin/ Fox/Cam 2/Z Leathers GSXR into th e pits, wit h Steven s returning to actio n. Dutchman co n ti n ue d to lead GTO, with Lockhart second, H yperCycle third, Suzu ki fourth, and High T ech fifth. The GTU leader was on ce again UNO, with Kayo second, EMHO th ird, Team Three fourth, and C.R. III fifth. T eam Su nset, wit h ri ders Peter Carroll, David Sadowski, and T err y Statum , cr as hed their Su zu k i GS~R750 !n tu rn nine o n lap 64, ending th eir day. On la p 79, in th e same pl ace, th e Group I Endurance Yamaha FZR IOOO of Mike J ohnson and Mike Roach went down , bringmg o u t th e red flag. Neith er accident caused serious injury. Most of th e team s took advantage of the red flag situation by changing tir es, with man y including Dutchman, switch ing to softer compounds for th e 43 lap " das h" (by endurance racing standards) to the checkers. After a short delay, the race was restarted from the original grid positions. This proved advantageous to both Hyper-Cycle and Suzuki, as both had fallen a lap down to . Dutchman and Lockhart. With Dutchman gridded behind them, the y were all back on the same lap with the exception of Lockhart who started from the pole. Suzuki's Stevens got the holeshot in front of Dutchman's Brauneck. Quarterl ey had trouble, getting out of sha pe and almost rammed High T ech 's Coe. On the track it was Suzuki, Dutchman, Lockhart, High Tech, H yper-Cycle; but on paper it read Dutchman, Lockhart, Suzuki, H yper-Cycle, High-Tech. Te.am Suzu~i .tried their hand in the AMA series and came up with a third place finish; Wes Cooley rode for the team for the second time. -T ea rn UNO pu t secon d pl ace ' GTU runner Kayo. a Ia p down. Kayo's Tommy Sloan and Donnie Row had tire problems and crac ked a wh eel on th eir Kayo Corp./Yokoham a /D .I.D / G S/Cycl e Perfor- . man ce/Sh oei / AI to -Li tre z'Ke r ker backed H onda 600 Hurricane. Team Three was two laps down in third wit h EMHO fourth , and C.R. III a~ additional la p down in fifth. Quaterl ey was in hot pursuit of Brauneck, turn ing lap tim es in the high 1:28s and low 1:29s, bu t co uld no t close in. Suzuki, mean while, was passed, pu tting th em a lap dow n again. Stevens pitted once more, with , Cool ey riding the final leg . H yp er-Cycle en countered p roblems during the closing stage s wh en th eir ignition black box fell out and started dragging on the chain. They lost another lap while rectifying th e situa uo n. High T ech Racing 's Co e and Larry Jeurink had their Finlayson Design /Conser. Coach /Rel iable Cycle/ Amsoil/Michelin-sponsored Suzuki GSXRllOO in the top five all day. But with only a few laps rem aining, Coe was seen pushing th e bike behind the pit wall, done for the day . AMA Pro Twins Champion Brauneck cruised home for the win, 45.5 seconds ahead of second place Lockhart. Suzuki finished third, two laps down, with H yper-Cycle fourth. van additional lap back. First in GTU and fifth overall went to UNO, with Kayo second in i class two laps down, EMHO in third two more laps behind, -and Team T hree in fourth a further two laps in arrears. Team Cycle World 's Doug T oland and Da vidEdwards ended up fifth GTU , 14th overall, o n their Kawasaki/Metzeler/ Wo rk s Performan ce/Cycl e World m a ga zine EX500 twin. After th e race , Bra uneck smi led for the cameras as he was interviewed by Mo towor ld Managin g Editor Den is T orres (who was earlier spotted doing Randy Mamola-like "stopp ies" on a Suzuki Quadrunner in the pit lane). Dutch man Racing tha nked Yosh imura for th e use of th eir dyno earl ier in the week. The resul ts of the testing obviously paidoff. In the w iri ner's circle, T eam Lockhart's Quanerley was co nfident th at the y'd clinched th e GTO Champi onship, but wasn 't sure about the overall. The AMA' s elaborate end ura nce race scoring system awards points on a per lap basis, so it wasn 't until the next da y that the points standings were tabu la ted. With only th e October 23-25 Daytona round rem aining, it became mathematicall y impossible for Kayo Ra cing GTU to accumulate more points than Lockhart. ' • Results O/A : 1. Dutchman Racing (Suzl; 2. Team Lockhart (Suz); 3. Team Suzuk i (Suz); 4, Team Hyper (Suzl; 5. Team UNO (Han); 6, Kayo Racing GTU (Han); 7. Team Wyom ing (Suz); 8, EMHO Racing (Han); 9. Team Three (Han); 10. Team Osprey (Soz). GTO; 1. Dutchman Racing (Suz); 2. Team Lockhart (Suzl; 3. Team Suzuki (Suz). GTU: 1. Team UNO (Han); 2. Kayo Racing GTU (Han); 3. EMHO Racing (Hon), 13

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