Cycle News - Archive Issues - 1990's

GROAD RACE AMAICCS u.s.Endurance Cham~ionshi~_Se_rie_s: R _d _O_Ull 7 _ I Chris H aldane led Du tchman Racing to the victory on a wet Kansas track. . David Sadowski returned to action wi th Team Mad Dog II and fin ished second. , Dutchman wins, Toomer clinches GTU title at Topeka By Brent P lumm er P hotos by Werner Fri tz TOPEKA, KS, SEPT. 7 wo Mad Dogs and foul weather could not stop Chris Haldane and teammate John Choate from leading Dutchman Racing to a threeminute margin of victory at Heartland Park Topeka. Rain poured down during the first and last hours of the , three-hour race; the hours that Haldane rode in leading the team to the overall win. Things went smoothly for the twotime defending champions. The only problem Dutchman encountered was the tarmac itself: "It was like glass. I've never ridden on a track that was so slick in the rain. " New Zealander Haldane said. "There was a time in my last stint where you co ul dn't actually see part of the track, it was full of water." Indeed, at times the rain was so hard that visibility was down to about 50 yards, if that. ' New Dutchman rider John Choate was lucky - he rode the middle hour, during which no rain fell, though the track stayed wet. Though new to endurance racing, Choate really had things in perspective: "We did the best we cou ld, and the best we could was worth a first today." In addition to helping Dutchman win, he avoided the ultimate endurance foul-up by keeping the bike upright. Second overall went to the Mad Dog II team, with two riders who were new to the series, although they 're well known names in road racing circles John Ashmead and David Sadowski. They rode the Hank Dow-owned Mad Dog II Yamaha, finishing a few laps ahead of the number one Mad Dog team of Rick Kirk and Mike Harth. Third overall went to GTU competitors Team Toomer, who took their fourth in-class win of the season. At Thursday's practice, it looked doubtful that the team would even make the race, as one cylinder on the team's Kawasaki refused to fire all day. The problem was not electrical, but rather an. intake manifold leak. According to Jon Roberts: "We left T hursday nigh t T 28 not knowing what waswrong with it. We found the leak Friday morning just before the first practice." ' The team ran behind in practice, getting a li tt le time Friday after ' scrambling to fix the bike. "We had a really rough time working on the bike. We just had to go with what we had, and were kind of lucky it was raining because the bike was not properly set up, We just softened it up and went with it," Team Toomer's Mike Barnes said. With teammate Craig Gleason handling the riding chores in the dry middle hour, Toomer finished a scant two laps down on the winning team, The weather held until the riders gridded amidst a sudden downpour. Teams began scrambling for rain tires, or even DOT street tires, At the start, Dutchman was caught in a mad dash to get rain tires fitted. Rider Haldane missed the starting boards, and had to wait on pit road whilst everyone else took off. With Haldane out of the way, the two Mad Dog teams were left to dominate the opening minutes. Harth rode the Team Mad Dog FZRlOOO, while Sadowski - shiny new Mad Dog leathers and all - was chasing his teammate on the Mad Dog II bike. After everyone sloshed off to the first turn, a sole machine sat waiting in the starting grid: it was the number 37 '-. Team America GTU bike , owned and ridden by Frank Slaughter, who was teaming up with John Condron. The weak link proved to be one in the chain, which snapped right at the start. This was doubly bad for the team, as many other GTU teams were stuck on slicks - obviously a bad situation in a heavy downpour - while the America GTU team was using K59Is. With a new chain fitted , they were off to join Team America GTO riders Andrew Deatherage and Jeff Atwell in the race. At the completion of the first lap, strange things began happening on the front straight - people were falling down while going in a stra ight lin e. This made little sense until you saw the drag strip burn-out pit nestled at the beginning of the front straight. Like so many other dual purpose , tracks, the rubber laid down there is very slick when wet. When Northwest Racing hit this ugly spot, their big Suzuki became uncontrollable, fishtailed a few times, arid plopped down on the tarmac, belly up. Team Boul der Yamaha's Dan Hough, Marc Schellinger and Jason Curran had made the long trek to Topeka only to go down with Northwest, no t even a lap completed. Somehow, in the misty wreck, Northwest 's gas tank had a hole punched in it, spew ing gas down the straight. At the end of the first lap, the two Mad Dog teams had bu ilt a lead of approximately four seconds, being helped by the rain tires outfitted on their bikes. Veteran Team Magicrider Jan Svensson pushed his FZR up to third, while Haldane was not far behind on the Du tchman bike. Dale Quarterley soon Came past, way back in the pack. The H uman Race Team's woes were just beginning with th eir inital prob lem being a set of slicks they were riding on . These unsuitable tires were giving Quarterley fits. He was wiggling and sliding all the way down the straight, but in a minor miracle, he kept the costly Bimota upright, .soon to pull in for new tires. The Human's tire problems paled in comparison to those encountered by Mad Dog. On on ly the second lap, Harth pitted wit h a fiat rear Michelin rain tire, no big deal, but wai t, it gets worse. A new one was fitted, and Harth was off again, then in again, another flat rain tire. The tire's problem was an elusive one, with the team guessing between spun tires, a fau lty rim - both were on the same wheel - and just plain rotten luck. Not surprisingly, the Michelin guys gave the same "We don't know" answer, which was no doubt true at the time. T he third Michelin proved to be a winner, not a problem involved with it. By the fifth lap, Haldane had passed Svensson for third, and Quarterley pitted for rain tires . With the proper skins fitted, Quarteriey began a charge to the front. After 20 minutes, Haldane had passed Sadowski for the lead spot, Quarterley had just broken into the top ten, and Team Toomer was spearheading a GTU challenge for the overa ll lead. Mike Barnes was riding the trick Muzzy built ex-Supersport Toomer ZX-6 - with a ZX-7 upsidedown front end in place. Contrary to so many other teams , Toomer was running smoothly in third overall, on the same lap as front-runners Dutchman and Mad Dog. To their advantage, Team Toomer made two quick and tidy pit stops; each to switch between Barnes and co-rider Craig Gleason and have a splash of gas dumped in . Closely following Toomer was N2 Racing, another GTU team. N2's hopes suffered a setback at the 45minute mark when they ran off in tricky turn 14, the last bend before the front straight. Team OTS had a shaky hold on fourth overall, but the H uman Race Team, Gold Hill Ra cing, and Team Good Times Accessories were all on the same lap, vying for the position. At the halfway point, Du tch man had put Choate in control. He was cru ising with a comfortable one-lap lead over second p lace Ashmead on Mad Dog 2, with Toomer's Gleason doing a commendable job of holding off H RT's Douglas. OTS had been relegated to fifth overall a lap down, with Team Good Times Accessories breathing down their neck. Gold Hill was not far behind, nor was N2, who were back on the same la p as the OTS bunch led. Slightly after the midpoint, Douglas dropped the Human's Birnota, and at the time, little damage appeared to have been do ne. But hidden in one of

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