Cycle News - Archive Issues - 1990's

Hea t 13 was the best race of th e n ight and it in vo lved Pat L in, Rick Webb , Mike Cortese and John Greg. L it t grabbed th e holesh o t with Webb all over hi s rear fender. Liu went wide in the first tum leuing Webb slid e by into first . Liu returned th e favor by getting underneath Webb in the next comer while Cortese and G regg went hammer a nd tong for th ird and fo urth. L iu had th e highest en try speed of a ny body else wi th th e possible exce ption of Diem but had trou ble keep ing it under con tro l. Lin managed to keep his bike under him and win the heat. Racers scored three points for a heat race win , two for seco nd and one for third. Fourth pl ace earn ed no points. Points were added up after the heats with the top t h r ee scorers go in g directly to th e fro nt row of the main. The remaining th ree positions were decided by the Last Chance Qualifi er with the top three going to the back row of the main. Venegas scored a perfect 15 points and took his place at pole position. Webb, with 13, would line up next to him. One exception'io that ru le occurs if several racers scored the same number of points throughout the night. The competition was so close th at two runoff races were staged to break th e tie score among those competitors. Litt won th e first run-off and Mark H annah the second, earning them a spot .in th e LCQ after Cameron Brooks was excluded for causing Mark Da y to crash . The LCQ saw more wild action as Rob ert Curry and Ha n na h collided while they bo th tried to occupy the same space at the same time going into tum one. Curry was excluded and made no bones about his dissatisfac. tio n wit h the ref's call. At th e restart Ball went down with Doug G reyson and Hannah. O n the restart it was Ball winning easily and tra nsferri ng to th e front row alo ngside Venegas a nd Webb . Grant, Greyson and Li n went to the back row of th e mam, Things go t a liule confusing wh en two riders mi ssed th e LCQ due to an oversight by th e offi cial s. They were automatically placed in th e main event to make up for th e oversi gh t. This caused some hard feelings at the en d of the night among some racers who asked to remain nameless. The main event was red-flagged o n the first lap when Venegas and Liu went down. On the restart Venegas go t th e hol esh o t a nd led th e six-rider field around th e track for th e first o f six laps. Venegas bobbled for a second leuing Webb mov e in close, but at th e ch eck ered flag it was Venegas with Webb in second and Ball a close third as John Grant trailed in a distant fourth . Greyson was credited with fifth and Lin, who crashed out in tum th ree, DNF. I'm looking forward to tomorrow night, " said a confident Venegas. "I've been concentrating on m y starts so I feel like I have a good chance to win." "Everything went well tonight," reported Webb. " I did a lot of work on m y bike . . . got my rear tir e working good. I got my head working right too; something I've been trying to do. I didn 't even qualify last year, so I'm pleased with tonight's race." World Championship, Every yea r race promoter G ary Densford invites several Europeans to race in the World Championship, adding th e interna tiona l flavor to th e event. Last year Eu ropean speedway champ Jiri Stancl, Polish star Zenon Piech, Ren e Morten se of Denmark and British League Championship medal winner Kevin Hawkins filled out th e Jan Jenson (ri gh t) also passed Ball to finish third in the World Championship main event. Charli e Ven egas (cen ter) picked up first-place trophies in both the Bob Hetrick Memorial and World Championship. ro ster. This year Canada's top ranked in doo r ice speed wa y master , Jon J en sen , made his wa y to the podium by winning two o f hi s heat ra ces and th en took a seco nd and a th ird in the two remaining heats. Hannah also won two ra ces a nd fin ished in second in heat th ree and fourth in th e first. Venegas scored two heat wins with a second a nd one th ird. Ball a lso scored two heat wins, a second and a third, which forced a run-off to decid e wh o wo u ld mak e up th e front ro w. Wh ile all this scoring was going o n th e crowd amused th em selves by sta rting a wave that went on for 15 mi n ut es. Fin ally, Ball , Webb , Ven ega s a nd J en sen lined up for th e run-off wi th Ven egas ge uing th e holeshot but he ra n wid e in th e firs t tu m a nd Ba ll too k over to win. Webb was seco nd with Ven ega s in third. G erman Ca rsten Pelzman had a positively terrible ni ght. His personal bike had been con fisca ted by British Customs and he was forced to borrow a bike which didn 't work for h im . Pelzman failed to score a single point all ni ght. . L it t also had a tough nigh t a nd to ma ke matters worse was excl ude d fro m his heat for rough riding. The crowd booed the referee 's decis ion whil e L iu sto m ped o ff the ice after a heated di scussion with J oiner a bou t th e cal l. Futherrnore, Liu fell during th e LCQ a nd si m p ly stood defiantly in the middle o f th e tr ack waiting for th e fie ld to co me back a ro u nd , wh ich they did , a lm os t running over h im. Jen sen wen t o n to win th e La st C hance Qua lifier and tra ns ferre d to the seco nd row of the m ain with Hannah and H awkins. Venegas pulled off another hol eshot to lead die six-man field at the start of the main event and he then pulled out a small lead over Ball and Hannah, who were dicing heavily for the runner-up position. By the mid-point of the race Jensen joined th e fracas and repeatedly tried to put a wheel inside both of them while Hannah struggled to keep pace when his hand grip came off. Ball slip ped a nd was forced back to the fourth spot. On lap six Venegas took the checkered flag and hi s first World Championship. Hannah had the measure of Venegas during the closi ng laps but ran out of time and had to settle for second. J ensen finished a close third. a Resu lts fiNAL: I. Charlie Vmqr-u (G· W): 2. Rick Webb (Wa): 3. Rob Ball U'w): i. j ohn Gra n. (Wa): S. Doug Gr

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