Cycle News - Archive Issues - 1990's

did th eir best and you can 't ask more than that. Perhaps the best thing to come out of the whole weekend was that just one superbike rider crashed and did n 't hurt himself. This at a circuit that the best four-stroke riders 'i n the world feared too much to come near . The wo rst thing. undoubtedl y. is that Canada's future involvemen t in the champ ionship is in do ubt. Weekend sponsors Budweiser an d Castrol were ob viously unimpressed with it all and the publ ic showed their disapproval by staying aw ay in dr oves. The weather was nice. th ough. Qualifying To contrast with the action off th e track preceding th is meeting which left it bereft of any international stars . the re was precious li ttle dram a at Mosport itself. No crashes. no major blow-ups, just the normal niggling dramas, problem s that beset every tea m at a ny race meeting. And jus t li ke a normal race meeting, the serious guys who had turned up were here to win . whether this was a mere shadow of a World Championship mee ting or not. With that in mind. qualifying served to show up the riders wh o were go in g to figure in that leading group. Leading th em at the end of a bright and pleasant day was 22-year-old Tom Kipp. The Mentor. Ohio. rider's last minute decision to attend the meeting paid off with a best effort of onemin ut e, 26.77I-Seconds on h is Wiseco Yamaha. Compared to Jamie James ' lap record of 1:25.781 it wasn't a bad effort at all and that was on a track which Kipp felt had slowed in the last year: "T h ere' s more bumps and it feels like there is less adhesion. particularly in turn one.... he commented. " I haven't reached the limit yet. I was at a comfortable pace. I wasn't even in qualifying mode. " Kipp's best time had come after spending much of the two days sorting out the standard carburetors. th en dialing in the suspe nsio n in the fin al 45 minutes. The 21-year-old French -Canadian. Pascal Picotte. was second on th e Michel Mercier-managed Fast/Sunoco Team Yamaha OWOl , content to have simply made the front ro w and conserve his new tires for Sunday. Rueben McMurt er was gi ving the yo u n gsters a hard ti me . p u sh in g hi s Ho n da Canad a RC30 into third ahead of h is team mate. Yves Brisso n . th e Fren ch- Ca nad ian having diffi culties keepin g th e bi ke under co n tro l d o w n the undulatin g m a in straight. " The bike is handling very badl y down in the back strai gh t." h e explained. "T o go faster means pushing beyond the limit. It is a suspension prob lem rather than the bu m p s because th e whole circuit is bumpy and it's only happening in th e top gears on the long straight. Some laps it was so bad I was forced to back off. We have tried maybe 10 different setti ngs and it has made little difference." Rounding out the front row was Steve Crevier on his new Weld Rite Kawasaki. nearly two seconds off the pole time. albeit only four-tenths slower than Picotte: "It's only our second weekend with the bike and we still have a lo t of th ings to sort out. We've got a handling problem and we 're changing steering dampers because the last one wasn't up to it. Hopefully that will take some of the chatter wobbles and high-sides away. "There is a lot of room for im provement. Kipp and those guys have got Ohioan Tom Kipp (16) won the second leg at Mosport by some nine secon ds, bu t suffered a DNF in the first leg . two years o n me with th eir bikes , but we're getting there." Benoit Pilon was ano th er eighttenths slower on his OWOl , with J im my Adamo next on the 907cc GiaCaMoto Duca ti upholding Ita lian honors ahead of the Kawasaki of Mich ael Taylor. Picotte's teammat e Linnley Clarke on Mercier 's 1990 Canadia n championship w inni ng bike and the ZXR of Ca lifornian P hil Kress rounding out th e top 10. In to tal , 17 bikes made th e start, the smallest ever World Superbike field and undoubtedly th e weakest. Race One There were hopes th at we wo uld ha ve some good racing, the theory going th at th e front few were all even ly matched. Like pl enty of ho pes and . th eories before them th ey were das hed when the light went gr een. That's when the green eventually went. Brisson did two warm-up lap s where there was only supposed to be one, necessitating an extra warm-up lap for everyone when he 'd finally been persuaded to sto p. As a result the race dropped back from 25 to 24 laps. Pico tte took off chased by Kipp, but when the Ame rican p itted o n the th ird lap after an EXUP shaft bent and bl ocked the ex ha us t " killing the motor, " P icotte already had fo ur seco nds on the McMurter/ Brisson/ Crevier battle for second. And when McMurter left the race after six laps, the Honda run ni ng on th ree cyli nders af ter p robably dropping a valve; the to p three was set. Picotte en ded up wi nn ing by 7.5 seconds, after leading by more than 13 at one stage. spending the last few laps popping wheel ies and gi vin g some rare entertainment to the crowd. "I wa s ridi n g comfortable, n ot tryi n g too hard, " he said. "I pushed for the first couple of laps and my pit board was saying plus ' two seconds, plus four seconds. so I j ust kept up my momentum, rode easy and didn 't even hav e a slide." Brisson, ha ppier with the suspension after winding the spring up, hel d off Crevier while Clarke was secure in fou rth. T aylor came o ut on to p of an entertaining ba ttle with Pilon, while Ada m o had kep t them in sight throughou t. No cras hes . no real drama. No real excitement either for that matter. Race Two This ti me i t was Kipp's tum to win as he liked while Picotte pulled out on lap seven. the Yamaha developing a n increasingly severe misfire over 10,000 rpm , which had firs t seen him give up th e lead to j he American then second to Brisson before slipping ba ck into the clutches of th e pursuing grou p of McMurt er , Cr evier and Cl ar ke. Iron ically, Pico tte had loaned Kipp parts to ensure that he got to the start lin e for race two. Brisson he ld ri gh t onto Kipp for those fir st seven laps, but th e pace was much hotter tha n th e first leg, m id to low 1:26s being the order of the race rather than 1:27s and h is rear Dunlop felt the effects and beg an sliding around m uch earl ier. So whi le Kipp was p ulling away to a nine-second lead, Brisson was slo wing while the threesome ba ttl ing for third - at one stage more than 10 seconds behind - began to reel him Canadian Linnley Clarke tied with Yves Brisson as the top point scor ers. ID. " We all three hooked up toge ther," enthused Clarke. "There was nothing hairy, nothing scary. it was an honor to ride with those guys." Clarke was putting in his best ride ever on a superbike, McMurter (riding h is spare wh ich was actua lly his number o ne bike he was savi ng for Brainerd) and Crevier's pace helping him to knock more than three seconds off his q ualifyin g timel H e wasn't j ust tagging along either, as he led them bo th for much of the way. Inevitably they caught Brisson wi th j ust two laps to go , Clarke slip p ing by first , then Crevier taking the H onda at Moss Corner on the last lap only to have both R C30s come flying back by u p the long straight. It all got hairy at the last corner, with the group having to negot iate Kress's out-of-fuel Kawasak i, but the y all made it with Clarke .9-of-a-second .. ahead of McMurter, Brisson just fivethousands of a second behind him and a frustrated Crevier losing o ut by .075. The fin ish had the spectator s off their sea ts for a typical superbike fini sh at a very u ntypical mee ting. . Pilon fought off the attentions of John Hopperstad's Yamaha to take sixth. while Taylor crashed out at low speed without i nj ury and Adamo retired the Ducati wh en a brace su p porting the rear of th e tank broke and dropped it do wn onto a spark plug wire and crimped i t, turning the 907 into a 453.5. t:l'I Results H EAT t : I. Pascal Picone (Yam) 2. Yves Brisson (Hon) ; S. S""", Crevier (Kaw); 4. Linnley Clarke (Yam): 5. Miroa.,l T aylor (Kaw ); 6. Benoi t Pilon (Ya m): 7. Jimmy Adamo (Due); 8. J ohn H opperstad (Yam); 9. Christian Gardn er (Hon ); 10. Tom Etherington (Yam) . T ime: S5 min., 17.0S 5

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