Cycle News - Archive Issues - 1980's

Kurt Hall led The Human Race Team to t hei r f irst-ever victory at the Wil.low Springs 24-Hour, and their second 24-tiour w in of the yea r. Vance & Hines Motorsport Centre's four-year win streak came to an end when they f inished second, 23 laps beh ind the Zoomin' Humans. Heavyweight Productio n w inner Team Sledge (8) leads Team Suzuki (2 ) t hrough turn six. Team Suzuki finished third overall after crash ing twice. The Honda R&D entry led much of the race , but crashed out. WERAjEBC Brakes Endurance Road Race Series: Round 11 ·Iap tim es, and be there at th e end to ca pitalize o n their com petitors' misfortunes. Butthis year, it was th e inhuman Human Race T eam of Kurt Hall, And y Fenwick and T im Morrissey, along with substitute riders (or "s ubHumans" ) Barr y Burke and T eam Motor Sport's Phil Kress, who wo n th e race, doing so in fin e styIe. The Yam ah a FZRIOOO-mounted defendin g series cha mp ions covered 2065 miles, or 826 laps of th e 2.5-m ile, nine-turn , hi gh desert circ ui t, to claim a who ppi ng 23-lap mar gin of victory over th e second-placed Vance & H in es Mot orsport Centre effort. T ea m Suzuki End ura nce fin ished third , a furt her two laps in ar rea rs, after a tro uble-filled race. T he win was th e Human's second in a 24-h our race th is year, having won th e 24 Hours of Nelson Ledges in Jul y. (Tea m H ammer, now T eam Suzuki Endurance, was the last team to win both 24-hour races in a single season, in 1984.) But since WERA allo ws j us t nine races to be co unte d towards th e cha mp ionsh ip , and only o ne 24-hour race, the on ly benefit of the Humans winning here was that arch -rivals Team Suzuki didn 't. HRT T eam Captain Dave Zupan's stra tegy was for his rid ers to turn cons istent lap tim es in th e I:32 range, which wo u ld give th e team ap pro ximately 100 mil es more th an th eir Nelson Ledges total , and th e correspondin g mil eage points, should nothing go wrong. Such was not th e Humans win, end Vance & Hines' win streak at Willow Springs 24-Hour By Brian Catterson Photos by Richard D. Thompson. Mike Doran and Catterson ROSAMOND, CA, SEPT. 9-10 O nly in fables does the tortoise always beat th e hare, or so it would seem after the sixth funning of the annual WE RA 24-Hou r West a t southern California's Willow Springs Intern a tion al Racewa y. For th e last ' fou r years, th e &H' h Id V a nce m es team as p aye th e slow-a nd -steady role to th e 12 rabbit 's pace set by T he Human Race Team and Team Suzuki Endurance, and ended up taking four co nsecutive fair y tal e win s. { Although th e re~ord b<;>oks .show thr ee y an ce & Hines wms, It wa~ ess7n ua lly th e same T orrance, Californ ia, sho p th at won here in · 1985 as Cycle Tune, before becoming pa rt of th e Vance & Hines chai n.) Van ce & H ines' ga me pla n was th e sam e for thi s year's ra ce as it ha d been in th o se win ning years: turn co nsistent 1:35 case, how ever. Yes, the Human's lap tim es were fast enough that they . could have broken th e existing 24hour mileage record (2155 miles set by Van ce & Hines in 1987), let alone th eir 2104-mil e Nelson Ledges tall y, but two red flags on Sunday morning brought a halt to an y reco rd attem p ts. The Human 's on ly mom ent of. weakness came just 15 minutes into the race, whe n H all pitted wit h a mysteriou s vibra tio n. The problem was th ou ght to be a defective front wheel bea ring, or possibl y an o utof-ba lance fro nt tire, and the crew q uic kly cha nged th e wh eel and sent H all back ou t. Another interestin g developme nt saw th e Human s start th e race o n a rear Mich eli n slick, in sp ite of their ·Metzeler sponsors hi p, whi ch they would use until switch ing back to a Metzeler a t their first tir e change. The re aso n g iven was that th e Mich elins work better in the desert's intense aftern oo n heat; th e Metzelers work better in cooler temperatures. HRT is sponsored by Yamaha Motor Corp., Metzeler, Arai, Fox and Klo tz. Vance & Hines Motorsport Centre's chances of a fifth stra ig ht win here were thwarted by th e scorching pace set by th e leaders, by the fact that HRT didn 't break, and by a co up le of tim e-wasting mechanical problem s. First, th e taillight fell out whil e r acing journa li st Nick Ienatsch was ou t a t night, and the crew spent 15 minutes pilfering a replacem ent from their spare street bike. Later, an axle bearing spa cer weld ed itself to th e axle, and David Deveau brou ght th e bike into th e pits wh ere it took nearl y 45 minutes to beat it free with a hammer. The resu lt of these delays was th at Van ce & Hines rid ers Peter Carroll, Peter De Leo, Dal e Kieffer, Deveau and Ienatsch, campaign ing a moreor-less stock Suzuki GSXR750, were in danger of being caught by Team Suzuki in the final stages of the event. But Ienatsch turned up th e wick for the fina l hour, turning 1:32s to hold Suzuki at bay. Team Suzuki suffered through two mechanically-induced crashes which resulted in much :downtime in the pits. The first incident occurred just ' ·a half-hour into. the race when Pau l Bray carne off in turn two when the front tire valv e stem pulled out of the rim. Bray was able to remount and carefu ll y rode back to the pits wh ere th e crew replaced both wheels, a footpeg and th e fairing. At th e end of th e first hour, T eam Suzuki was listed in last (35th) place, II laps shy of the leaders . '

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