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eROAD RACE e WERA Pro Series: Round I Petersen scored his second Formula USA win in a row at the 1991 season opener. Kurt Hall (60) led th e first lap of the final. Robbie Petersen (16) started in sixth . Rich 'Oliver (97) and Petersen (16) wove through slower traffic in the F· USA final. Petersen wins F·USA opener at Road Atlanta By Larry Lawrence BRASELTON. GA, MAR, 24 eam Marl boro Roberts rider Robbie Petersen kicked off the 1991 \VERA P ro Series by winning the Road Atlanta opener on his Yama ha YZR500. T he Zim babwe rider overcame a slow start to catch and pass T 14 teammate Rich Oliver and win by J.72 seco nds. The win was the second straight for Petersen in Form ula USA competition. Petersen , 29, won the final round of the '90 series here at Roa d Atlanta, riding the same machine. Petersen 's race average of 104.002 miles per ho ur, was a tad off the record pace (104. 150 m ph) he set here las t November. As expected, the G P machines ridden by the Mar lboro Rober ts riders were dominan t in the I n ter state Battery-sponsored series race. Surprisingly, even th ou gh Petersen and Ol iver pushed each ot her during the race, the best time for both riders was I:26 flat. That is nearly a second slower than the track record ( I:25.18) set by Scott Russell on his Muzzy Kawasaki ZX7 last year at the Grand National Fina l. . With the cancela tio n of the May AMA Nationa l road race at Road Atla nta, i t was thought that some of the top AMA Superbike teams wo uld show for the WERA Pro event . With the excep tio n of Team Mad Dog , none of the to p AMA teams sho wed. Perhaps the prospect of running up agains t top flight G P ma chinery didn 't enco urage the Superbike teams. T wo poten ti al top fi n ishers in Formula USA came to Atlanta but were unabl e to race. Col orado's Danny Wal ker was still sma rt ing from a broken wrist he suffered at Daytona. Walker tr ied to rid e but couldn 't hold o n to the bike well eno ug h in prac tice and called it a weekend: Ditt o for Rick Kirk , wh o hurt h is an kle in a practice cras h on his OTS Yama ha 250 on Friday. Kirk also tri ed to ride but was in grea t pain and he too hung up his leathers for this race. Petersen liter all y cruised to the checkered flag en rou te to win ning th e firs! heat race over Mad Dog's Mike H arth. T he pace was quite slow (1:28s) lea di n g Petersen to explai n tha t havi ng hea ts on .the same day of th e race causes h i m to ride extra cau tiously. O liver wo n the seco n d - 'a n d considerably faster - heat race. He had to keep the pace up during h is hea t, since ample pressure was being applied by Kurt Hall o n hi s Val volin e Suzu ki GSXRIIOO Superbike. Hall 's ability to stay so close (less than a second at the finish ) to Ol iver. in the hea t race ga ve some hope that the bigbo re Supe rbike mach in es co u ld stay wi th the GP bikes during the fin al. That hope was magnified at the start of th e fin al wh en Hall outbraked O liver go ing into turn o ne to put hi s red , wh ite and blue Suzuki into the lead. Hall was on th e gas earl y seeing an early breakaway as hi s on ly cha nce .to beat the 5OOs. As th e pa ck snaked th rough th e esses head in g up to turn five, it was Hall by 15 bike lengths over Oliver. Then came H arth , Britt Turkington and Donald J acks. Petersen got a slow start and was five to 10 bike lengths behind J acks in sixth, followed closely by Chuck Graves. The Marlb oro Yamahas flexed their mu scl es o n the h igh- speed Road At lan ta back straig h t a nd Oliver zip ped past Hall to take the lead, while Petersen was poweri ng by th e Suzukis of J acks and Turkington. At the end of the first lap, the running order was Oli ver, H all , Harth, Petersen , Turki ng ton and J acks. Oliver was o n the gas, tryi ng to ope n up as much ground o n Petersen as possible, and by th e th ird lap Oliver had a three-second lead over the second place battle which now read Petersen, Harth and Hall. " I kn ew he'd (Petersen) be coming," Oliver said. "It was just a matter of wh en. I wanted to get as far out in front of him as I co uld." By lap seven , Petersen had made up all the gr ound and was trai ling right behind his teammate. Harth was opening up a gap on Hall in third. Hall said later, " Hart h 's bik e was leaking wat er and I was nervous about getting too aggressive behind him." Just as Petersen was ready to make his mov e to pass Oliver, the two came upon h eavy lapped traffic. Oliver sq ui rted through just before turn five, while Petersen was left to languish behind th e slo wer rid ers. Now Petersen would ha ve to mount ano ther assault on Oliver. On lap 13 Petersen fin all y caught back up to Oliver, but this tim e he didn 't wait arou nd and drafted past O liver to take over the lead. " I figured I would be in a better positio n to deal with tra ffic if I was lead in g," Petersen exp lained. About 10 seconds back , Harth had pulled clear of Hall in the battle for th ird. J acks in hi s first F-USA ride with T eam Hammer, was in a solid fifth. The next good dice was o ne between Turkin g ton and Tripp Nobles over sixth place. Up front Petersen go t into a big slide coming o ut from under th e Nissan Brid ge. The slide wa s significant eno ugh that the cro wd in the stands above rose to its feet to catch the action. Announcer Glenn Billings sounded lik e he nearly had a heart attack while call ing th e Petersen slide. Afterwards Petersen said that the sli de looked much worse than i t actu ally was. " . In th e clo sin g laps Harth crashed hi s Mad Dog Yamah a, perhaps a victim of th e leak in g water. That left '89 FUSA cham p Hall , and his big Suzuki, a lonely third, som e 20 seco nds behind