Cycle News is a weekly magazine that covers all aspects of motorcycling including Supercross, Motocross and MotoGP as well as new motorcycles
Issue link: https://magazine.cyclenews.com/i/127401
Jim Bernard (near lane) sped past Paul Cast (far lane) on the last eighth-mile of th e drag strip to score his fir st-ever National win. Bernard surprise winner at Indy By Todd Veney INDIANAPOLIS, IN, SEPT. 1-3 o me riders used to en vy J i m • Bern ard beca use at age 22, the you ngest 'rider o n the NHRA Pro Stock tour had made the fin al ro und at half the races he'd ever run. Others pitied hi m becau se until th e 1991 U.S. Na tiona ls. he had lost every tim e. " You begin to wonder if you're ever goi ng to win on e." Bernard said after finally breaking th rough at the .Nationals. the drag-racing equivalent of the Indy 500 (wh ich is contested just five miles east of Indianapolis Raceway Park at th e fam ed Brickyard. th e Indianapolis Motor Speedway). Bernard fin ally shed hi s repu tat ion as the racer who regularly whips every rider in th e co u n try except David Schu ltz "and John Myers, who hav e utterly dominated the quarter-mile in the 1990s. winning every race but one. the 1990 Springnationals in Columbus, Ohio. Final-round showdowns between Myers and Schultz. the only active racers who know what it feels like to S 22 win th e U.S. Nationals. have beco me a forego ne concl usion. T hey usua ll y lose o nly to each other, but for o nce, Myer s, the re ig n i ng 1990 NHR A Ch ampion. was upset in th e second ro und of elmina tio ns - wh ich " racp 'tica lly clin ched the 1991 Champio nsh ip for Schultz. wh o was gu nn ing for hi s fourth Indy victory in five-years. Sc h u l tz. who did so me th i n g unheard of in qual ifyin g (he qual ified a rel atively untested n ew Su zuki CSXR, then withdrew it from competition - forfeiting his po siti on in th e field to start all over with th e sam e Kawasaki ,ZX-I O he's raced all year). sli p ped th rough th e preliminary rounds to make th e fin al four, wh ere he was pitted against Bern ard, wh om he beat in the final for the 1990 Indy titl e. Schultz. winner of the first fou r races this season, would have rolled over Bernard again in the semi-finals had Bernard not come through in the clutch with his q uickest reaction time (to the "Christmas tree " st arting ligh ts) oftheevent in the opposite lane. Bern ard dumped the clutch just .04second after the gr een lights flashed. but Schu ltz-who had cu t a .002 light an hou r earlier in th e quarter final s - the best of the year for any rider - was already go ne with a .03. The bikes were locked side by side, gear for gear, all the way down the course as Bernard used all 1320 feet to ma ke up , the .0I-second head start that he had gi ven up to Schult z on th e starting lin e. By covering th e quarter-m ile oneh undred th of a second quicker - 7.83 secon ds/ 169.17 mph to 7.84/171.03 Bern ard reached the fini sh at virt ua lly the same instant. The true-win indicator. accurate to the th ousandth of a second, decided the photo-finish heat in Bernard 's favor by .004-second. For the second straight year at the U.S. Nationals and for the sixth time in hi s skyrock eting career. the perennial bridesmaid was one round from victory. Only this tim e, with nemeses Schultz and Myers already out of th e way, Bernard had a more realistic shot at win ning than ever before. Standing between him and the ultimate victory was Paul Cast, who had won just one NHRA National event in his life, beating - you guessed it - Bernard in the last round of the '90 Springnationa ls. - Cast qualified relatively low for a finalist - No. 5. 7.85/167.94 - 'more than a 10th of a second off Myers' IRP record-setting 7.72/17 3.51 and behind Bernard (No.2, 7.78/ 172.18), Schultz (No . 3. 7.78/172.57). and legendary engine builder Byron Hines (No.4, 7.84/ 172.81). But by du plicating that run in eliminat ions, C ast whipped Ron Ayers, Hines, and Tim C off (who had upset ' Myers in rou nd two) with remarkably consistent runs of 7.85. 7.84, and 7.85. With mid-7.9s. none of the riders in Cast's wake came close to stopping him. , In the race of hi s life, the final, Cast produced hi s stronges t run , a 7.82, afte r leaving th e sta rt i n g l i n e o ne thousandth of a second behind Bernard, .054-second to .055. "I looked I over a t half- track and could see I was st ill in fron t." sa id C ast. whose imperceptible lead van ished in the last eigh th-mile of the track. I Bernard. whose Suzuki CSXR was moving 2 mph faster by the time they arr ived at the finish line (170.26 mph to 168.57), slipped by C ast with th e fastest competition run of his li fe (q ualifying not included), a 7.79. ' "I can't do any better than that." said Cast after the heartbreaking loss. "I'm going to have to go back to work and get the spee d up over the last part of the track . That's where I'm losing a lot of these races." aI