Cycle News - Archive Issues - 1990's

eEVENTS e Phil Converse finished second overall at the I1Iinois Cross Country Championship. Dave Schultz Oeftl claimed his fourth NHRA Pro Stock Championship in Pomona. NHRA WInSton Drag Racing Series:fInal Round Schultz crowned in Pomona By T odd Veney POMONA, CA, ocr. 28-31 yron Hines' better-known partner, drag-bike godfather Terry Vance, went out on top. Exactly five years later at the 1993 NHRA Winston Finals, Hines came within a round of winning the same event in his farewell to drag racing when he was beaten in the Pro Stock finals by Dave Schultz, whose winning streak has now reached epic proportions. Schultz scored a record sixth-straight victory in NHRA national-event competition - more than even Vance had ever done in his career from the 19705 to 1988 - after cl inch ing his fourth NHRA B 24 Championship mere ly b y m a king a qualifying attempt at Pomona Raceway. "This has to be the best year of m y career," said Schultz, who al so won NHRA championships in 1987 and 1988, and ran second to John Myers in 1990 and 1992. The Winston Finals was typical. Schultz qualified on the pole with a 7.72-second elapsed time, more than half a tenth ahead of Hines and the rest of the field, then proceeded to set the lowest e.t . of every round but the second, where he was one-hundredth of a second behind Hines, 7.76 to 7.77. Schultz, whose most recent NHRA Championship came during his association with the Vance & Hines team in 1991, remained within hundredths of a second of his former teammate, Hines, throughout elimination s. He trounced Ke ith Freeman in the firs t round, 7.77/ 168.4 to 8.07/165.3 . One pair ahead of them, Hines wheeled his Yamaha to an iden tical 7.79/167.8 win over Nigel Patrick's 7.91/165.8. The only quicker run of th e round was mad e by outgo ing 1992 NHRA Winston P ro St ock Champion Jo h n Myers , who quali fied ei ghth, w h ich always me ans a se cond- round m atch with the No.1 qualifier . Myers' 7.76 from the pr eviou s round secured lane choice for the Schultz race, where he made the qu ickest run outsi de the final, a 7.794/ 168. Schu ltz's SUnlJCo bike, tu ned by crew chief Greg Cope, arrived at the finish line first, how ever, with a 7.77/ 173.6. Schultz' s near-perfect .409 reaction time against Myers (.400 is perfect) was the difference in the race, allowing him to win with a slower time, though Myers was n't exactly late off the line with a .453. (.456 is average.) In the semifinals, Paul Gast cut a .404 reaction time opposite Schultz , but Schultz was right behind him with a .416, and he opened his lead on the former Springnationals winner with every shift of the a ir-bu tton transmission. Schultz prevailed by several lengths, 7.76/166.6 to 7.92/164.1. W ith a time nearl y id entical to Schultz's, Hines won the other semifinal heat over Russ Nyberg's Kawasaki, wh ich ha s become a fixture in that round at recent events. Hines sped to a 7.77 /1 66.7 against Nyberg, who has .emerged as one of the cla ss' quickest riders in the season's second half. With Schultz's and Hines' bikes running with in one-hundredth of a second of one a n o th e r throu ghou t e liminations , the final should hav e been a classic. It turned out to be anticlimactic decided, like most finals these days, right at the starting line. H ines took himself out of contention with an overanxious .369 foul start and shut down immediately. The last ride of his foreseeable future was so slow that his e.t. nearly matched his speed, 25.8 seconds to 26.3 mph. Vance, doing color commentary over the P.A. system, dropped th is bombshell : The 1993 season will he the Vance & Hines team's last, at least for a while, in drag racing. V&H will concentrate more on its road-racing program next year . Eighteen seconds before Hines cro ssed the finish line, Schultz set the lowest e.t. of eliminations with a 7.752/1 67 .22 . Schultz had won 24 straight rounds, but it was a season that almost didn't happen. . "After that wreck at H ouston (Schultz recovered from a 167-mph crash at the Slick 50 Nationals), I didn't plan on racing anymore," Schultz said. "I only did becau se the next race was in Gainesville, too close from home to pass up . We got runner-up there, and I th ought, ' Well, let's see how far this goes: Here we are:' £N Results 199 3 NHRA WINSTON DRAG RACING SERIES FINAL STANDINGS: I. Dave Schultz (10926); 2. John Mye rs (9168); 3. John Sm ith (6694); 4. Byr on H in es (5688); 5. Paul Gas! (5586); 6. Russ Nyberg (5500); 7. Ron Ayers (5282); 8. Michael Phillips (5086); 9. Lance Boyer (4628); 10. Kerry Larkin (44S6). 17th Annual Illinois Cross Country Championship Fredette strikes again in Illinois By Merle Acord M ORRISON,IL, ocr. 31 h e Illinois Cross Country Ch ampionship ha s been often referred to as "The Race to Hell," T "Nightmare Creek," and, simply, "The Race." This year's event no doubt lived up to all of th ose nicknames, as the course consist ed of two 58-mile loops, includin g the infamous Rock Cr eek, Dyes Swamp, Coon Creek and Keegans Ditch sectio ns, as well as many miles of tigh t woods, open fields and, of course, the dr ead ed pea t bogs. For man y, these obstacles proved to be too mu ch to han" d le, as only 19 rid ers, out of 200 starters, finish ed the race. Many of the non-finishers had "houred ou t." Jeff Fredette, on a Fredette Racing Products-prepped Kawasaki KX200, completed the grueling, 118-mile race in fi ve hours and six minutes, and he scored the win with nine minutes to spare over runner-up Phil Converse, riding a Taber's Fun Mart-backed Yamaha YZ250 . John Martin, former National Hare Scrambles Champion, powered his Kawasaki KX250 to third overall, 13 minutes behind winner Fredette. Martin, a five-time event winner and promoter of the Spring Creek National MX in Minnesota, confessed that he has not been riding enough lately. "This is a tough race," said Martin. Ron Whipple, who rode a Kawasaki KX500, led the first wave of Experts off the line moments after the dead-engine start, which was held on the Bike Bam Club grounds. However, Whipple's lead was sh ort-lived when Larry Bergquist, on his Tuf Racing-backed Yamaha , passed him entering the first, long open field. Before the race, promoter Bill Gusse warned the racers about the high probability of engine seizures in the powerrobbing sand sections early in the race. "Boys, you can't win this race in the first 10 miles, but you can sure lose it if you seize." Bergquist apparently d idn't heed Gusse's warning; he was the first to fall victim to the open sand fields. Martin inherited the lead about three miles out. But like Bergquist, Martin's reign outin front was cut short. "When I tried to climb a IS-foot vertical bank in Keegans Ditch, well, I almost made it." said Martin. He then spent valuable minutes trying to restart his bike before discovering that his bike's tail pipe was packed with mud, resulting from the backward slide down the bank. Martin recovered and was less than a minute down at the end of the first loop . Knowing what it takes to win this race, Martin may have tossed too much caution to the wind wh en trying to reel in Fred e tt e. The form er cha mp punched an ov er-han ging tree limb with his helmet and again wasted valuable time getting things s traigh tened out. His final mishap was taking the wrong line a nd getting stuck less than 20 miles from the end of the race and needing help. to get back on the trail. . Fredette, a lo-time ISDE gold medalist, went on to score the win , matching Martin's five race wins. "There weren't any real surprises out there, " Said Fredette. "I've ridden this event so many times I know what to expect. Don't tell Bill (Gusse), but it was one of the easiest of his events. But that was mostly due to the good weather. Still, it was definitely big-time challenging. "At the end of the first loop, there was a five-man pack: John Martin, Tim Taber, Phil Converse and Kelly Cetz," continued Fredette. "It was just 'go with the flow: you don't try to break away, or you'll just make a mistake and the pack will catch right back up. So I was hanging back a little and letting them . clean off the leaves and find all the bad stuff. Whoever was leading wouldn't lead for very long; he'd blow a comer,

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