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/127655
AHRMA's Battle of the Twins and Sound of Singles erbikes van Dijk, fourth in the '93 Du tch Open Series, will race the amazing alloy-spaceframed Over-Yamaha SRX with which Japanese ace Shinichiro Ohura scored so many victories in Europe during the 1992 season. Heading the Rotax-powered entries are vintage rising star Craig Mclean on a Parra-Rotax, and RUss Mattson on a '94 Wood-Rotax, descendant of the bike with which Ron Wood blazed the trail for 50S racing here half a decade ago. It 'll be interesting to see how 1994 Sas lap times around the full 3.56-mile banked circuit compare with former AMA Grand National Champion Chris Carr's times on the Wood-Rotax when he raced it in the AMA 250cc Grand Prix class a few years ago. With SoS racing increasin gly wellestablished around the wo rld - races for the modem sing les will be held not only at the World Superbike rounds, but also a t the Is le of Man TT, Austra lia ' s Bathurst meeting and the Ulster GP in 1994 - in America it's jus t getting off the ground, a fac t reflected in the va ried machinery making up the 4D-bike grid for Daytona. The race will feature every' thing from vin tage racers, like Malcome Tunstall's 350cc Ducati, up to mod ified trail bikes or hybrid specials like the popular marriage of a Yamah a TZ250 race chassis with a tuned Yamaha SRX motor. The Ducatis will start as favorites, but the little 550 engine may be outpaced by the bigger Rotax and Yamaha singles on the ban kings, On e th in g ' s for sure, tho ug h - no other race held during the week will come close to matching the Sas class for technica l diversity. The lack of variety which the AMA's one-class BoT formu la resulted in is a thing of the past under AHRMA rules, thanks to the three-class format being (Left) The Britten wIll be raced by Andrew Stroud during AHRMA 's Battle of the Twins program at Daytona on Monday, March 7. (Below) The Blmota Tesl will also take to the banked trl-oval at Daytona , International Speedway. By Robert Fawcett fter a year's a bsen ce fro m Daytona International Speedway since the AMA dropped the class, Battle of the Twins (BoT) racin g returns to the hi gh banks as p a r t of AHRMA's Vintage Day race progra m at the start of Camel Motorcycle Week on Monday, March 7 - bu t that's not all. The crowd-pleasing, twin-eylinder Thunderbikes will be joined on the 1994 AHRMA race schedule by the Sound of Singles (SaS) category, which makes its Daytona debut in a special two-race Twin Crown doubleheader. The Twin Crown will combine results from both BoT and Sas races at Daytona, and AHRMA's warmup race at Roebling Road in Georgia on March 4, to determine the overall Twin Crown Champion in each class. The main draw is the Daytona races, and especially the Sas class which will se e the Ll.S. racing d eb u t of the swift, svelte Ducati Supermono. The fuel-injected four-valv e d esmo single has set the standa rd for others to aim a t in the increasingly popular 50S class, for which an FIM-recogn ized, five-race series will be held at the major European rounds of the 1994 World Superb ike Championship. No less than nine Ducatis are entered for the Daytona 50S race. That's one third of the total production so far, and way the largest number of Supermon o desmos A ever assembled a t one place and time before - even in the Ducati factory! The line u p is headed by four-time World Champion Walter Villa, the only man to win a World Championship road race title on a Harley-Davidson - which he d id in the ho tly contested 250 an d 350cc classes in the mid- 70s. Villa raced at Daytona for the first time in his career last year in the BMW Battle of the legends "golden oldie " spectacular. Together with Italian teammates Cristiano Corradi and Douglas Marchesi , Villa will be racing a Ducati for the first time at Daytona, having ridden Yamaha-powered bikes in the SoS so far, inclu d ing the wo rks BYRD-Yamaha racer which he helped develop for the Italian Yamaha importer. Others having their debut race on the Ducati Supermono include Jim Hunter on the Reno Leoni entry, BoT and AHRMA front-runner Stephen Mathews on the Barber Racing bike, and former GP star Alan Carter from England, once the youngest-ever GP winner, as well as back in 1984 - the teammate on Kenny Roberts's first GP race team of a certain Wayn e Rainey. Cart er has led a checkered racing career since then, but at 29 he . still has a lot of racing in him . Daytona will mark his four-stroke racing deb ut. Completing the Ducati lineup are Germany's Hein Boje, victor in the Swedis h 50S title race at Anderstorp last year , and international SoS racing's winnin ges t rider, Cycle News contrib utor Alan Cathcart . The Brit won the Dutch Open title last season and finished on the rostrum in five different countries, before defeating factory-suppo rted entries from Suzuki, Hon da and Yamaha to win the Japanese Championshi p at Tsukuba last November. Sadly, no ne of these factory-backed tearns from Japan will be present at Daytona, but Los Angeles, California-based Yoshi Kosaka will run an OMC-Yamaha ent ered by the Orange Boulevard team from Tokyo. ,In addition, Dutchman Lex run at Daytona. The format confirms the ori gina l wisd om of BoT's fo u n di ng fathe rs in grouping bikes by type, to offer a fair contest and improved spectacle for the fans. It also means that the all-eonquering 851/888 Ducati 8-valves, wh ose supremacy gave the anti-Twins elem ent in the AMA a chance to kill the class off rather than restructure it as AHRMA has done, are in a minority the 4D-bike Daytona lineup - representing less than one quarter of the total entry. Headlining the lineup for the Open Twins class is the remarkable New